Home Buying by Foreigners Rises by 12%
September 18th, 2012
9,502 house purchases were made by foreign residents in Spain during the second quarter of this year, representing an increase of 12% compared to the number of transactions recorded in the same period of 2011, and the highest figure since four years ago, when it reached 11,130 sales.
One clear factor explaining the rise in foreigners’ property purchases in Spain has been the drop in property prices, which in the second quarter fell by 8.3% to 1,606.4 per square metre – a return to levels seen at the end of 2004.
In contrast to the highs recorded in 2006 before the housing bubble burst, and according to data from the Ministry of Development, home purchases made by foreign residents in Spain marked a record low in the first quarter of 2009, when the number of transactions fell to 5,036.
With regard to location, El Pais reported that most home purchases made in the second quarter were in Andalusia (1,676), Valencia (3,114), Catalonia (1,615) and the Canary Islands (1,173), while the lowest number of operations were recorded in Cantabria (15), Ceuta and Melilla (16) and Extremadura (18).
As for the purchaser’s province of residence and the location of the property, Alicante headed the list with 2,645 transactions, followed by Malaga (1,127), Barcelona (847), Tenerife (655), the Balearic Islands (536), Las Palmas (518) and Madrid (522). At the other end stood Avila (2), Ceuta (3) and Palencia (4).
Foreign investment in Spanish property during the first three months of the year rose by 2.5%, compared to a year earlier, to 1,163 million euros. According to the latest data from the Bank of Spain, this amount – the largest disbursement since the second quarter of 2011 – contrasts with the downward trend experienced in the Spanish investing in properties outside of Spain, which reduced by 50%, to 95 million euros.
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