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.
Mark Stücklin
The SPI House Price Index Tracker, which plots the six most-watched Spanish house price indices on one chart (above), shows that home prices rose robustly in the course of 2021.
Some of the data sources take their time to publish, which explains why this tracker is published months after the quarter referred to, in today’s case the last quarter of 2021. All the indices have now been updated to include the last quarter of 2021, or later.
As you can see from the chart above, which gives you a sense of the general direction of Spanish house prices over time, all of the indices were firmly positive in 2021. It was also the best year for Spanish home sales since the real estate bubble year of 2007.
The next chart gives the results in Q4 2021, which is the same as the annual change for 2021.
In detail, annualised Spanish house prices changes by index in the third quarter of last year were as follows:
- The Spanish government (MITMA) based on valuations +4.4%
- The National Institute of Statistics (INE) based on data from the Land Registry +6.4%
- The Spanish Land Registrars’ Association using their ‘repeat sale’ methodology +8%
- The Association of Spanish Notaries based on sales witnessed by its members +8.2%
- The Idealista.com (property portal) resale asking price index +2.8%
- The Tinsa index based on property valuations carried out by the company +7.5%
It is worth noting that the Idealista asking price index, which has played the part of bellwether in recent years, turned down sharply in the last half of the year, ending 2021 on +2.8%. That suggests that the chart at the top might show prices cooling in the first quarter of this year when the data is available.
The notaries also publish a regional index showing house price changes in each of Spain’s autonomous regions. You can see the regional price changes in 2021 in the next chart.
The appraisal firm Tinsa also provides house price data broken down by type of region. Prices rose the most on the Mediterranean coast (+12.5%) and the Balearic and Canary Islands (+8.2%), both areas that attract the greatest number of foreign investors looking for property for sale in Spain.
Despite the increase in Spanish house prices last year, a recent report shows that Spain was the only big western economy where property prices declined in real terms in 2021.
