The sale of homes in Spain grew by 21.6% during 2014, reaching a total of 365,594 transactions, according to the Ministry of Development’s real estate transactions statistics, which highlights that this is the highest figure for home sales since 2010.
All of Spain’s regions registered increases in the number of home sales transactions last year, compared with the figures for 2013, with the greatest year-on-year increases being recorded for the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla (+44.7%), followed by the regions of Madrid (+31.3%), Navarra (+31.1%), Aragón (+30.8%), Asturias (+30%), the Basque Country (+29.3%) and the Balearic Islands (+29.2%).
Increases were also noted in every province in 2014, the most pronounced being registered in Ceuta (+57.6%), Burgos (+46.8%), Salamanca (+39.2%), Zaragoza (+38.2%), Guadalajara (+37.9%), Vizcaya (+34.3%), Melilla (+34.1%) and Guipuzcoa (+33%). The number of home sales transactions rose by 19.5% in the fourth quarter of 2014, to a total of 111,921 transactions, which represents the highest figure for a fourth quarter since 2010, when a total of 150,494 transactions were recorded.
All regions recorded increases in home sales in the last three months of 2014, with the greatest being for Aragón (+40.1%), La Rioja (+36%), Catalonia (+34%), Extremadura (+31.2%) and Asturias (+30.9%). Some 94.9% of the total transactions registered during the fourth quarter of 2014 (106,217) were for private housing, while 5,704 of the transactions were for social housing, representing 5.1% of the total.
New housing accounted for 14,637 of the transactions in the fourth quarter of last year, representing 13.1% of the total, while the transactions on second-hand housing reached 97,284, which is 86.9% of the total, and the best quarterly figure for second-hand housing since the second quarter of 2007.
With regard to the nationality of the buyers, transactions carried out by foreigners resident in Spain experienced year-on-year growth for the fourteenth consecutive quarter, rising by 19.7% compared to the fourth quarter of 2013, to a total of 16,336 transactions, while a total of 1,315 transactions were carried out by non-resident foreigners in the fourth quarter, representing an increase of 13.4% over the same period the previous year.
Europa Press reported that, altogether, the transactions carried out by resident and non-resident foreigners amounted to 17,651 in the last three months of 2014, representing 15.8% of the total, and the provinces which recorded the highest numbers of home purchases by foreign residents were: Alicante (3,852); Málaga(2,226); Barcelona (1,536); Madrid (1,285) and the Balearic Islands (1,126).
