The purchase and sale of homes rose by 5.8% in February compared to the previous year and ended twelve consecutive months of falling transactions, according to data published yesterday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) . In total, February closed with 52,796 operations, 2.9% less than those signed in January.
The dynamism in February was mainly due to the increase in the sale of new homes, which rose by 20.8%, the highest rate since December 2021, to a total of 11,528 transactions, its highest figure since January 2014.
According to the employers’ association of the developers, APCE, “the great imbalance between supply and demand for housing explains that the little that is generated has a quick exit. But what these data tell us is that housing production is at much lower levels than what we need”.
The sale of second-hand homes, on the other hand, increased by 2.2% year-on-year in February, reaching 41,268 transactions, more than 78% of all market activity.
In the first two months of 2024 the sale of homes has increased by 1.6%, with an increase of 11.8% in the case of new homes and a drop of 0.7% in that of used homes . It should be remembered that 2023 saw a 9.7% drop in sales, to 586,913 units, and ended the two years of a real estate mini-boom caused by the pandemic in 2021 and 2022.
Home purchases increased in February in thirteen autonomous communities, with the highest increases in Navarre (50.6%), Galicia (38.4%) and Murcia (19.5%), while the most moderate they were for Madrid (0.4%) and the Basque Country (1.4%). In Catalonia, the increase in sales reached 6.8%. At the other extreme, transactions were reduced in four communities compared to the same month in 2023: in the Canary Islands (-12%), the Balearic Islands (-10.3%), Andalusia (-1.5%) and Castile and León (-1%).
The General Council of the Official Associations of Real Estate Agents of Spain (Coapi) indicated in a statement that the data indicate that 2024 will be a turning point after the “generalized pessimism” of 2023 due to inflation and the increase in the price of mortgages due to the rise in interest rates. In his opinion, this year, with the predictable drop in rates, a “new economic panorama” opens up that will boost sales, since “small savers needed stability to buy homes and lose their fear of the Euribor”.
Francisco Iñareta, spokesman for Idealista, warned that the change of scene when interest rates are reduced will translate into a rise in prices, rather than a recovery in transactions. “Although the volume of closed operations in February of this year is close to what was recorded in the same month of 2022, the available supply continues to fall strongly in the main markets”, which, in his opinion , “makes a strong growth in the number of operations impossible and predicts an increase in market tensions that would lead to a greater growth in prices”.
According to a report compiled by this portal using data from its own listings, the supply of homes for sale in the first quarter fell by 6% compared to last year, with even greater declines in major markets , which reach 11% in Madrid and Malaga, 16% in Barcelona or 21% in Valencia. Most of the provincial capitals have fewer homes for sale than there were a year ago, with the biggest reduction in Ávila and Santander, where it reached 26%. In the Catalan capitals, the supply rose by 6% in Girona, but fell by 9% in Lleida and 1% in Tarragona.
Fotocasa’s director of studies, María Matos, emphasized that for the second month in a row sales exceeded 50,000 transactions, with a beginning of the year “very similar” to that of 2023, a year that “showed a downward trend that has been broken in the first two months of 2024”. In his opinion, in addition, in the coming months “we will see how banks adjust their mortgage offers”, which will once again boost the real estate market.
