Andalucia property market
After recently posting an article on the level of property transfers in October I thought I would do a bit a research to get a clearer idea of how Andalucía and hopefully the Costa del Sol has faired as general national information is only useful up to an extent.
First a bit of background information, total property transfers throughout Spain (mainland and islands) during the month of October stand at 149,158. A decrease of 17.7% compared to October 2008. A decrease of 2.6% month on month.
Out of a total of 149,158 property transfers, 72,586 were actual property sales with the remainder being donations, swaps, inheritance, etc…
According to the INE, property sales are down 21,8% compared to October 2008 and down 7.6% compared to September 2009.
Of the 72,586 property sales, 87.8% corresponded to ‘urban’ properties, of which 33,060 were dwellings. The sale of dwellings has decreased by 21.3% year on year and decreased by 12.1% month on month for October 2009.
Of the total dwellings sold it is interesting to note that the level of new and resale properties sold have reached near parity with new builds making up 50.8% of the total sales. With a total sales of new build standing at 16,778, this is a decrease year on year of 28% and a month on month decrease of 16.6%. The resale market has faired better with 16,282 sales in October, a year on year decrease of 13% and only a drop of 6.9% month on month.
Of the 33,060 urban dwellings sold in October, Andalucía accounted for 19.83% (or 6,397) of the total. Interestingly, unlike the national statistics that show an even split between the sale of new build and resales, Andalucía had 56.3% (3,586) new build property sales and 44.13% (2,811) resales. The higher percentage of new builds in Andalucía as compared to the national statistics can be primarily explained by the ‘property investment’ boom that was experienced in areas like the Costa del Sol.
Based on changes in the market, we can expect the level of new build sales going to title deeds to further decrease. Although with a substantial stock of unsold new properties still to be digested by the market, I think we should realistically expect new builds to account for 20/30% of the total, which would be more in keeping with the with Spain’s property market prior to the latest property boom.
Regards
Andrew Belles
