As sales growth dried up in September it looks like the post-pandemic boom in home sales has gradually run its course.

There were 55,968 home sales in September, up just 0.8% compared to the same time last year, according to figures just released by the Spanish notaries’ association.

As you can see from the chart above, sales growth has been drying up all year, from a high of 36% in January to just 0.8% in September, with a steady downward trend-line as the year progressed, a small uptick in August notwithstanding. 

This does not mean that the Spanish market is necessarily going into decline, just that the strong rate of growth we have seen since the beginning of 2021 has run its course, as it inevitably would.

If you compare sales in September going back to the boom year of 2007 (next chart) you can see that sales this September were the strongest they have been since 2007 even though growth fell to under 1%. If sales start declining on an annualised basis volumes are still high by the standards of recent years.

The 12-month rolling total of sales gives the best picture of the underlying trend as it smooths out the ups and downs of each month. As you can see from the chart below, this measure shows sales still rising but the growth rate falling, though the rate of decline has started to flatten out in the last couple of months.

Looking at sales and the growth rate in regions of most interest to foreign investors (final chart), we see sales still growing in all regions with the exception of Madrid (-9%) and the Balearics (-13%). Sales were still up by 9% in the Valencian region and the Canaries, but only up 1% and 2% respectively in Andalusia and Catalonia. I will look at the headwinds and tailwinds behind these figures in a quarterly analysis of the market in an article “coming soon”.