The British remain one of the biggest foreign buyer groups in Spain, but 2025 confirms a longer-term story: their relative weight in the market continues to fade.

According to the latest annual and Q4 figures from the Spanish Land Registrars, British buyers purchased around 7,767 homes in Spain in 2025, down 3.3% on the previous year and 11% below the ten-year average. Over the same period, total foreign demand rose by almost 5% to more than 97,500 transactions. In other words, while the wider foreign market is still expanding, the British segment is contracting.

Shrinking share of the foreign market

The most telling number is market share. In 2015, British buyers accounted for more than 21% of all foreign purchases in Spain. In 2025, that share has slipped to just under 8%, and in Q4 it fell even further on a year-on-year basis. The final quarter of 2025 saw roughly 1,911 British purchases, down more than 10% compared to Q4 2024 and around 15% below the ten-year average for the quarter.

This isn’t a sudden collapse, but part of a clear structural trend. An index of British demand set at 100 in 2015 now stands at 77.9. Over the same period, the overall foreign-buyer index has climbed to 208. In simple terms, foreign demand as a whole has more than doubled since 2015, while British demand is around 22% lower than it was a decade ago.

What it means

For vendors in traditionally British-led markets, this is a reminder that the UK can no longer be treated as the engine of foreign demand. Other nationalities are increasingly driving growth. For British buyers, however, a less crowded field could mean more choice and potentially greater negotiating power in certain areas, especially where sellers have been slow to adapt to a more diversified foreign market.

The British remain an important part of Spain’s international property story, but they are no longer the dominant force they once were.