Housing fever in Spain: race against each other

Every time Antonio's phone receives a notification, his heart starts racing. He knows that if it is a notification of a new apartment for sale, every second is worth its weight in gold. We must do it quickly. The housing race is about to begin.

No one thought that against the backdrop of a pandemic, when the economy was struggling with waves of coronavirus, and instability became commonplace in the daily lives of Spaniards – one day a volcano erupts, another day humanitarian evacuation is underway, and on the third day, a war is declared – the housing market will experience a boom that Spaniards have not seen for a long time.

But that is the way it is. Spain has a "housing fever".

Antonio knows that. Every time he wants to visit the house he likes, he has to act without a second thought. Economists know this: they predict that there will be more housing deals. Real estate agents expect prices to keep rising. The Bank of Spain also knows about this "fever" and is closely monitoring the sector's recovery.

"Amazing, very dynamic development"

Whoever you ask, the answer is the same: there is unprecedented euphoria in the Spanish real estate market.

"2021 was exceptional in housing demand – over 674,000 homes were sold, which is 18% more than the number of homes sold in 2019 (before COVID-19), and almost 40% in 2020," says Samuel Poblacion, National Director of Residential Real Estate and Land CBRE in Spain, answering the question of laSexta.com.

"After a year of pandemic, unemployment, ERTE... the market behavior was amazing, very dynamic. The market has done very well under enormous uncertainty," says Constanza Maya, Director of Operations and Expansion at Engel & Völkers in Spain, Portugal and Andorra. She gave an interview to local media just a few hours after presenting the results of the real estate company's work for the past year.

Data from the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda on real estate transactions indicate that the Spanish housing market is at a higher level than before the pandemic.