Spanish Property Price Declines Steady Around 4 Per Cent

Spanish property prices fell 4.2 per cent over 12 months to Octobre reveals the latest house price index from Tinsa, a Spanish appraisal company.

The index now stands at 1,337 points, taking it back to where it was at the beginning of the summer of 2003.

October’s annualised fall of 4.2% was the same as September, suggesting that price declines are holding steady, rather than getting any bigger. That’s good news by the awful standards of the Spanish property market.

The general index has been falling for several months at an annual rate of around 4 per cent, less than half last year’s rate when the average price for property in Spain was experiencing an annual decrease of 8.5 per cent. This phase of price stabilisation began in summer 2013 with the general index falling by just 3.4 per cent in the first ten months of 2014 against the 8.4 per cent seen between January and October in 2013.

Price levels in provincial capitals and large cities registered an annual drop of 2.2 per cent in October to reach 1,343 points. This is the best performance for the five areas included in the statistics. Metropolitan areas (districts around the large cities) decreased by 3.4 per cent in the year to October 2014. On the Mediterranean coast, the annual adjustment was 4.5 per cent.

The largest price drops took place on the Balearic and Canary Islands where prices fell 5 per cent compared to October 2013, and in the group made up of the smallest municipalities not included in the areas already mentioned. In this ‘Rest of Municipalities’ group, year-on-year prices decreased by 7.1 per cent.

An analysis of the change in property values between the end of 2013 and October 2014 shows provincial capitals and metropolitan areas as the ones with the greatest stabilisation with a 2.1 per cent fall in prices in the first ten months of 2014. The ‘Rest of Municipalities’ group stands out with the biggest fall during this period – 6.4 per cent. Both in the smallest municipalities and on the islands (Balearics and Canaries), the rate of price adjustment has been faster this year than during the first ten months of 2013.

The Mediterranean Coast continues to be the area with the largest price adjustments from peak levels – down 48. 6 per cent. Just behind them are provincial capitals and large cities with a fall of 44.8 per cent from the highest point of the market cycle, and metropolitan areas (-44.1 per cent). Only the ‘Rest of Municipalities’ group (´36.5 per cent) and the Balearics and Canaries (-32.1 per cent) show a price drop since 2007 of below 40 per cent.