Steady as she goes. The Spanish housing market continued to expand in February, with both home sales and house prices rising.

There were 38,176 home sales witnessed by Spanish notaries in February, up 10% compared to the same time last year, though a more bullish 12% when corrected for seasonality (chart above left).

House prices were up by 2.5% (chart above right) to an average of 1,305 €/m2, with both apartments and single-family buildings rising in price.

But as I always need to point out, national house price data in Spain doesn’t really tell us much because it’s so unreliable. But for what it’s worth I’ll review it in my end-of-month roundup of all house price data published in April (Spanish house price index tracker).

Turning to Spanish mortgage lending , new residential loans were up 2.5%, and the average loan value was €125,445, up 0.6%.

As usual, the Notaries provide us with pitiful information. They have all the data, but their statistics portal is about as user-unfriendly as it gets. When you buy or sell a property in Spain, they read out the deeds, as if your lawyer can’t do that for you, witness the signatures, then charge you for the privilege of adding no value.

Having recently bought a property in Spain with a mortgage, I’ve had to fork out around €2,000 on notaries, and as far as I’m concerned it was a pointless expense. At least one of them was a friend with good taste in cigars (D4s), so at the very least I’m hoping to be invited to a good lunch.