The number of new homes started in the Balearic region is back to where it was in the years after Spain’s property bubble burst.

There were 379 planning applications for the whole of the Balearics in the third quarter, according to the regional statistics office IBESTAT, based on figures for planning applications from the Balearic College of Architects. 

That’s the lowest level for a third quarter since 2014, when the Spanish home building industry had been wiped out by the property market crash that came in the wake of the financial crisis that helped pop the housing market bubble of the mid-noughties.

As you can see from the chart above showing Balearic housing starts based on planning approvals going back to Q3 2007, a feeble recovery in home building between 2015 and 2019 seems to have petered out in a region that desperately needs to build more new homes to house a growing population.

Compared to the same period last year, planning approvals were down 64pc in the Balearics as a whole, by 56pc in Mallorca, 49pc in Menorca, and 80pc in Ibiza / Formentera. New home building in Menorca and Ibiza / Formentera has fallen to insignificant levels, though it is interesting to note that Ibiza normally builds more new homes than its bigger cousin Menorca.