This is a website for buyers, owners, and sellers of property in Spain, offering reliable information and resources to help you get things done with confidence. It is run by Mark Stücklin, author of the Spanish Property Doctor Column in The Sunday Times (2005-2008), and the book ‘Need to Know: Buying Property in Spain’ published by Collins.
The Spanish property portal Idealista has produced two maps illustrating how Spain is a big country but, when it comes to the property market, all the action is on the coast, or in Madrid.
Buyer heat map
The map above is based on buyer searches and shows that the vast majority of searches done are focused on Madrid, or the coast, or the islands. There isn’t much heat in the Spanish interior, though one good reason for that might be that in rural areas, contacts, not search engines, are they key to sales. Nevertheless, you get the point. Spain is a big country, but a lot of it is rural wilderness, and most of the population lives near to the coast.
Spanish housing inventory for sale
The other map produced by Idealista (below) shows the resale inventory on the market as a percentage of the overall local housing stock in each province. The darker the green, the more homes on the market. Alicante province leads with 5.4% of its housing stock on the market.
In most cases the two maps converge, with buyer interest focused on areas with the highest inventory of homes for sale, which suggests that buyers will find what they want without necessarily pushing up prices.
But in the case of Madrid, buyer interest is high yet inventories are low (just 1.9% of the housing stock), which suggests that upward pressure on prices will be at work. It’s a similar story in Barcelona, where the inventory for sale is 2.7% of the province’s housing stock, yet the heat map suggests buyer interest is very strong.
