Homes sales in April were huge compared to the same month last year, which is hardly surprising given the world was locked up at home last April.

As illustrated by the chart above, there were 51,136 home sales recorded by the Association of Spanish Notaries in March, up 237% year-on-year, and 42,211 sales inscribed in the land registry, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), up 69%. See bottom for more detail on the difference between the two sources.

The figures from the notaries reflect actual sales in the month, making the monthly comparison more accurate. It’s hardly surprising that sales were up 237% compared to a lockdown period, probably the biggest increase in history. But compared to April 2019, sales were only up by 1.6%, which shows how distorted any comparisons with last year will be. It is hardly worth comparing anything with what happened last year, as everything was heavily distorted by the pandemic. It’s more enlightening to compare sales this year with 2019, and on that front it’s encouraging to see that sales in April were slightly up.

However, it is interesting to note that new home sales have recovered much more strongly than resales compared to last year, as you can see from the next chart. Perhaps this has something to do with the way the pandemic has changed demand for housing, or perhaps the reason is more mundane, like the way in which industrial process of new home delivery has been affected.

Regional sales

Looking at the regional sales figures from the INE, sales in regions of interest to foreign buyers were up across the board, as you would expect, but not as much as you would expect in the Balearics, where they were only 23% higher than during lockdown.