Real estate registrars confirmed that the housing market is close to restoring its normal state before the pandemic, publishing data for May. Home sales doubled compared to May 2020, but are still 3.8% lower compared to the same month in 2019. Mortgage lending in May increased by 33.3% year-on-year, but still decreased by 1.4% compared to two years earlier.
The comparative data for May were fully formed by the pandemic, as well as measures to limit the spread of coronavirus infection, which were still in effect in May 2020. According to the College of Registrars, if in May last year the fall in house sales reached 53.8% year-on-year, a year later, in May of this year, transactions increased to 108.4%, that is, they more than doubled, to 44,435 transactions.
"In the sales and purchases section of registered housing, compared to the same period last year, there is a noticeable drop, which reached 50% in May and 33.4% in June 2020. However, immediately after, there was a trend of gradual recovery, interrupted only in October.
In January and February, the data returned to the negative direction, -15.5% and -3.7%. In May of this year, the largest annual growth was recorded, reaching 145.9% in total sales and purchases and 108.4% in sales and purchases of housing, compared to the same month last year," the registrars analyze.
By region, registrars offer only data on the total number of sales and purchases, which include houses, farms, land and other real estate.
The largest changes compared to last year are observed in:
- Murcia (265.1%)
- Castile and Leon (252.7%)
- Extremadura (202%)
But we can see more stable and normal indicators when compared with May 2019, where six regions exceeded sales data in May 2021. There are the leading cities:
- Aragon (14.1%)
- Murcia (11.5%)
- La Rioja (5.8%)
- Madrid (5.7%).
The mortgage market shows more stable indicators. The number of mortgage loans for housing in May increased by 33.3% and reached 33,114 transactions compared to 2020. However, these data are only 1.4% less than in May 2019, in the pre-pandemic period. Recall that the drop in May 2020 compared to May 2019 was 35.2%, while slightly less than 25,000 mortgage loans were issued.