Residential property sales in Andalusia, as elsewhere in Spain, continue to break records nonstop. In March of this year, the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE) recorded 12,248 real estate transactions. This is the highest figure for any month since January 2008. The same pattern emerges in the whole country.
In Andalusia, the results in March 2022 were 37% higher than in March 2021. At the same time, the increase was 25.6% in the whole Spain. The Autonomous Community also took third place in the national rating. The region’s result is pretty similar to the 2008 "boom" indications. Although it is still far from the results of January 2007. January 2007 is the starting point in INE statistics, with 16,521 residential properties sold.
The leading indicators of Andalusia make sense, considering the population size of the autonomous community. However, in terms of purchases per 100,000 members of the population, the region is third in the country. Andalusia's result is 182 units per 100,000 people. The Valencian Community is in second place with 214 units, and the Balearic Islands are first with 198 units.
Today, we can easily say that there is a new "boom" in the real estate market. However, it is different from events that happened 15 years ago. The current trend is based on the growth of transactions in housing real estate in the secondary market, and not on mortgage loans and purchases in the primary market.
In March 2007, the secondary sector accounted for 53.8% of the total number of transactions in the market. Today, 78.1% of all real estate transactions involve second-hand property. Almost 8 out of 10 properties sold belong to the secondary housing. In March 2022, 9,572 transactions were carried out in this category of residential real estate. This is an all-time historical record. The growth was 37.2% in annual terms.
Sales results in Andalusia
Despite the fact that the secondary market sales are impressive, new buildings show the same interesting results. In March, 2,686 selling transactions were recorded in the primary market. In annual terms, this is an increase of 36.7%. Excluding November 2021, with 2,820 new buildings sold, in the current year the market showed the best result since 2014. However, the rates are still significantly different from the records of 2007 and 2008. Then, in March, 7,305 and 5,099 residential units were sold, respectively.
The market shows a low percentage of homes constructed with the use of any subsidy as one of the less positive results. Housing sales using free pricing hit 91.7% of all sales with 11,253 units. At the national level, this share is 92.2%, which is slightly higher. It is still higher than it was recorded in March 2007. In absolute terms, more social housing was sold compared to the same period in 2007: 1,441 units vs. 996 subsidized units.