US interest in Spanish property is growing with a strong Dollar, and Mallorca is well-placed to attract its fair share of the attention.
Hollywood A-lister Michael Douglas owns a spectacular house called S’Estaca on the Tramuntana mountain coast of Mallorca close to Deià and Valldemossa, and has called Mallorca the place he “loves the most in the world”. He is not the first famous American to fall in love with the island and follows in the footsteps of Hollywood legends such as Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, Errol Flynn, Orson Welles, and Rita Hayworth.
As US interest in Spanish property increases with the help of a strong US Dollar, Mallorca’s attraction to buyers from the States, and history of famous American visitors, puts it on the radar for a new wave of US buyers getting a big bang for their bucks.
A strong Dollar that broke parity with the common currency in August, and peaked at the end of September up 18.5% against the Euro in the year-to-date, was already up by almost 10% by mid-june, and must be one of the factors that contributed to a 76% increase in American purchases in the first half of the year. According to the Spanish notaries’ association there were 1,162 Spanish home sales involving a buyer from the USA in the first six months of the year, up from 662 in 2021, and up 88% from 619 in 2019, pre-covid.
The surge in US demand has put US buyers in first or second place in small markets like Navarre and Cantabria, and even first place in the much bigger market of Madrid. But in the Balearics, where German buyers dominate with almost half the foreign market, followed at some distance by the British around 10%, US buyers do not show up in the figures that are broken down by nationality, so we don’t know exactly how many of them there are.
What we do know is that US interest in our properties for sale in Mallorca has exploded this year, with 270% more enquiries made through our website than last year, the majority of them coming from New York, Florida and California, with an average budget of 1m€, and 5% of them with a budget of 5m€ or more. 30% of enquiries were for rental properties with an average budget of 3,000€ per month or more.
Assuming the US Dollar remains relatively strong against the Euro we expect US demand for homes in Mallorca to remain high, and even increase in 2023, as it gets easier than ever to fly direct from the US to Mallorca, with United Airlines again putting on three direct flights per week from Newark to Palma between May and September of next year, as it did with great success for the first time this year. According to AENA – the world’s leading airport operator by number of passengers – Mallorca is the best-connected airport in the Mediterranean.
Tourists from the US have visited in greater numbers than ever this year, with 55,942 US visitors in the year to June, almost the same number as visited in the whole of 2021, according to Turespaña. With the tourists come potential home-buyers, not to mention celebrities like Michelle Obama, Bruce Springsteen, Jeff Bezos, Leonardo di Caprio and Jack Nicholson, all of whom have visited the island in recent years.
With a strong Dollar giving US buyers greater purchasing power than ever, direct flights to the US making Mallorca easier to reach, and the A-list influencer Michael Douglas acting as an informal ambassador signing the island’s praises, we expect US buyers to become an ever more important segment in Mallorca’s housing market.
