Registradores de España has presented its property market results for the last quarter of 2022. As expected, on a full-year basis, we recorded the best results in years! This confirms the systematic development of the Spanish property market, in which Poles are taking an increasing share.
Andalusia with another record
According to data collected by the Registradores de España, during the 12 months of 2022, more than 133,000 property purchases were made in Andalusia. This is more than 30 thousand more than in Catalonia, which ranked second in the list. A total of 646,000 transactions were recorded within Spain, a 14% improvement on the previous year. Looking at the historical data, we can see that the 2022 Spanish property market performance is the highest since 2008, i.e. in 14 years!
Q4 2022. Andalusia, like the other Autonomous Communities, saw a decrease in transaction volumes compared to the previous quarter. Nevertheless, between October and December, a total of more than 31,000 transactions were concluded in Marbella, Malaga, Seville and other Andalusian cities, of which 25,000 were in the secondary market and 5,800 in the primary market. Thus, this southern region of Spain accounted for more than 20% of all transactions concluded in Spain.
Very good results were also recorded in the Andalusian provinces. The regions of Málaga and Seville ranked fourth and sixth respectively in terms of the highest number of transactions throughout 2022. In the Malaga region, which includes cities such as Marbella and Estepona, more than 41,000 transactions were recorded during the past 12 months, including 9,000 in Q4. This means that, year-on-year, the result has increased by 25%! The provinces with the highest number of transactions were Madrid (83 thousand), Barcelona (66 thousand) and Alicante (49 thousand).
Secondary versus primary market
The foundation of the entire property market in Spain has definitely been the secondary market. According to data from the Registradores de España, there were more than 531,000 transactions for ‘second-hand’ flats in 2022. This is a result as much as 17% better than that achieved in 2021 and also the highest since 2006. For the primary market, the increase was lower at 1.9%, which translated into a total of more than 114,000 transactions.
It is worth emphasising here the market conditions quoted by the Rzeczpospolita. This is because the statistics for the third and fourth quarters reflect decisions and property choices made most often in the preceding quarter, i.e. the second and third quarters respectively. This applies to the secondary market, as well as to newly-built estates which are ready to move into. In the primary market, where estates are still under construction, there is a significant time lag. Reservation agreements signed in 2022 will have an actual notarial purchase with a time lag of one or two years – when the housing estate is put into use.
In the case of Agnes Inversiones, the purchase of a property from the primary market in 2022 accounted for 50%, so it will be reflected in the statistics this year and in 2024 respectively. It should also be remembered that properties from the secondary market are entered in the statistics practically within two to three months, while in the primary market we have a shift of one, two or even three years.
At the same time, an increase in property sales was recorded in all Autonomous Communities, with double-digit growth in fourteen of them. As in recent years, it was the third quarter that saw the highest number of notarised property purchase agreements concluded. We can therefore confidently speak of the enormous success of the property market in Spain, which has become an excellent way of investing accumulated capital.
See also our blog post about what mistakes to avoid when buying a house in Spain?
