ON FIRE: British buyers lead the way as foreign market in Spain zooms up

AN avalanche of foreign buyers is setting Spain’s property market on fire!

A total of 53,359 homes were acquired by foreigners in the first half of 2018.

The massive figure dwarfs the 33,000 sales recorded in the same period of 2007, when Spain’s property market was at its peak.

And, no surprise, the British continue to lead the way, accounting for a record 7,613 purchases, up 8.8% on 2017.

That’s according to the latest official figures from Spain’s notaries showing that 14% of all foreign buyers were British.

Second up come the French, who bought 4,211 properties (a drop of 5% on last year) and the Germans, who bought 4,138 homes, some 2% less than last year.

When it comes to buying trends it turns out that the Irish, Danish – and most interestingly, the Moroccans – are the fastest growing nationalities.

Spicing up the market, Moroccans bought 3,662 properties, a growth of 29% on last year, while the Danes were up by 18% and the Irish 25%.

Romanians meanwhile continue to be a strong market having bought 3,872 homes.

Destination-wise, Valencia was the favourite destination for investors, accounting for a third of all foreign sales, with 15,613 sales.

It was the region with the highest year-on-year growth at 16.7%.

Andalucia came in second with 8.2% of the foreign market (9,737 sales), followed by Catalunya with 7,570 sales, unsurprisingly a 5.3% decline from the same period last year, much to do with current political tension.

The fifth highest destination was Madrid, where foreign market sales increased by 5.4% (4,911 purchases).