Every month the SPI House Price Index Tracker plots the progress of the six most-watched house price indices in Spain, and puts them all on one page.

Three of the four indices published in March were positive, and showed average house prices rising by between 1.8% and 4.5%. However, the asking price index published by Idealista was -5.4%, a fraction better than the -5.6% in February (all highlighted in yellow above).

Regular readers may be aware that I don’t think much of the average house price data published in Spain, but I increasingly think the asking price data published by portals is particularly flawed. As any house-hunter who has spent any time searching for property at the big portals will know, they are full of duplications with different prices, and lots of properties that are no longer for sale. To make matters worse, vendors don’t really know what their property is worth (because it’s difficult to check), and asking prices reflect this. It’s the blind leading the blind. That said, I guess there is some value in knowing the asking price trend, but it has to be taken with a fistfull of salt.

At least the Tinsa index is based on professional valuations following a consistent methodology. The Tinsa index (table below) showed prices rising by 1.8% in February, down by -0.3% on the coast, and up 4.4% in the Balearic and Canary Islands. Having spent a bit of time looking at the market in the Balearics recently, I’m not surprised to see prices rising in the islands. The thing about islands, is land is scarce.