Alex Trelinski
MAY’S home sales figures in Spain plummeted by 21.5% compared to a year earlier.
The National Institute of Statistics(INE) showed 44,013 were carried out in May- the worse figure for that month since the Covid pandemic broke out in 2020.
It was also the largest monthly fall recorded since September 2023, but figures from the notaries released a week ago did show an overall purchase rise in May of 3%, compared to the same month last year.
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Some experts put the INE fall down to people hanging on for lower interest rates while an analyst says a new computer system used by notaries caused a long-jam in sealing deals.
According to the INE, the year-on-year decrease in the sale and purchase of homes in May has been due to lower sales for new flats and second-hand homes.
It says new flat deals went down by 14.4% year-on-year, to 9,105, and second-hand properties fell by by 23.2% year-on-year in May, to 34,908 operations.
In month-on-month terms), home sales between April and May fell by 17.1%, while in the first five months of 2024 the average fall was just by 4.1%.
All of country’s 17 regions registered falls with Asturias (-25.8%), Andalucia (-25.0%) and Catalunya (-24.5%) leading the declines.
The Basque Country (-3.0%), La Rioja (-8.6%) and Extremadura (-14.2%) registered the lowest falls.
Experts believe that potential home buyers are holding out for lower interest rates.
Maria Matos from the Fotocasa real estate portal said that that 2023 ‘turned out to be the second best year of activity since 2007’ which means expectations should not be focused on beating last year’s figure but rather towards ‘achieving normality and adaptation to current economic policy’.
Francisco Iñareta, spokesperson for the real estate portal, idealista, says the fall was down to computer issues suffered by notaries.
“After an April peak, it could have been predicted that May’s figures would show a fall, possibly related to rising prices, but the change was undoubtedly fuelled by the effects of a computer system update for the preparation of signatures between notaries and registrars.”
“This happened during several days in May and caused many operations to be delayed by more than a week and that the resultant ‘traffic jam’ moved many purchases to June”, he concluded.
“Soared” and “plummeted”
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