The ‘Coastal Housing Market 2016’ report just released by Tinsa, Spain’s leading appraisal company, paints the brightest picture for years of the market situation on the Spanish coast.

I’ll break the report down into different regions over the next few weeks and publish them as I go along. Here I’ll just give you an overview of the main points:

• Year-on-year, house prices in Q1 rose in 71 of the 135 coastal municipalities analysed (53%), compared to 35 last year (26%), and 4 in 2014 (3%). So house price are now rising in more than half of coastal municipalities.
• The Costa del Sol, Alicante, the Balearics, and the Canaries are the most dynamic markets on the coast, whilst Castellon (Costa del Azahar), the coast of Cantabria, Menorca, and La Palma (Canaries), are still in the adjustment process.
• Teguise y Tías in Lanzarote, and Gavà in Barcelona, delivered the highest price increases in Q1, whilst Piélagos (Cantabria), Antigua (Fuerteventura), and Los Alcázares (Murcia) declined the most.
• The never-sold-homes glut is slowly being absorbed by the market, but it still outsized in Castellón (Costa del Azahar), the central coast of Tarragona province (Costa Dorada), the coast south of Barcelona, in the Manga del Mar Menor (Murcia), and the west coast of Almeria.
• Home sales rose 9.4% on the coast last year.
• New home building was highest last year in Torrevieja, Orihuela, Elche (all South Costa Blanca).
• In provincial capital cities on the coast, planning approvals were highest in Barcelona and Alicante.

“The holiday-home market on the coast consolidated last year the first signs of a change of trend first noticed the year before,” say Tinsa. “Although this trend, more in line with stabilisation than a clear recovery, is slowly spreading, the coastal market is very heterogeneous: some areas are still getting cheaper at an annual rate of more than 5%, and the most common picture is one of no new development or land sales.”

So the picture is improving on the Spanish coast, but some areas still have a long way to go before we can talk of a recovery.

Tinsa is the leading valuations company in Spain, and offers services in English such as legal searches, official online valuations, and energy certificates.