It seems that things are finally turning around for Spain’s real estate market. Buyers and investors had once shied away from the region because of low employment rates, unstable real estate values and a shaky bank economy due to the European debt crisis, but the market is now steadily rising. According to the quarterly report from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, the Spanish economy registered a growth of 2.7 percent in the first quarter of this year versus 0.2 percent from last year, with an increase of employment at a rate of 2.8 percent. And with prosperity slowly returning to Spain, so are the numbers of investors, homeowners and foreign buyers.
Banks are stabilizing and mortgage rates are dropping, drawing buyers back to the area, mostly notably to major cities. According to the Marbella Real Estate Market Insight, in 2014 Madrid and Barcelona had a record high of over €2.7 billion in commercial real estate assets, setting them apart as the prime real estate markets in the country. They trail just behind Andalusia, where the seaside town of Marbella has maintained its value throughout the economic downturn and still draws in wealthy buyers from around the world with its beachfront property and newly-built luxury homes—some that even have waiting lists for certain property types.
With Spain’s unemployment rate still low, almost 13 percent of real estate buyers in 2014 were of a foreign nationality, an increase from 2013’s 11.22 percent. The Marbella Real Estate Market Insight shows that the UK, France, Russia, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Italy and Norway top the list of foreign buyers, with only 87.02 percent of sales—down from 2013’s 88.79 percent of sales—from Spanish nationals.
In 2014 a total of 365,594 property sales occurred according to the Ministry of Public Works, a 21.6 percent increase from 2013 and the highest figure the country has seen since 2010. Madrid saw the biggest increase among mainland cities with an annual increase of 31.3 percent from 2013 to 2014. The Spanish Registrar reports that in the first quarter of 2015, between January and March, 90,534 properties were purchased—up 16.25 percent from last quarter and a 9.05 percent increase from the first quarter of 2014.
