Spain statistics

A couple of statistics caught my eye this week and they are related to the "how" of buying a property. In previous posts I talked about the "who" (British decreasing, other Europeans increasing) and the "when" (2016 a stellar year for both quantity and price). But how do buyers finance the buing of their Spanish property?

In 2016 a whole 32.8% of purchases were transacted in cash. That is 1 in 3 buyers did not require a mortgage. An inference from this could be that people with money on the sidelines, who have waited until the signs were clear to them, have decided to get back in the Spanish property market. So with that in mind, I researched another statistic, the number of buyers who bought as an investment (i.e. not for holiday and not as a main residence). For 2016, 28.02% of transactions were by investors, compared to 24.65% in 2015 - a 13% increase over 2015 (not 13 percentage points, 13% over the 24.65 value, which is the number that helps identify the strength of the trend).

Before rushing to conclusions that the "smart money" has decided the time is ripe for property, I offer another statistic which i consider relevant: the amount of negotiating margin when it comes to closing the deal. The range of price change before a sale in 2012 was 14%, and in 2016 this has dropped to 6.2%. This item has no official source, since it relies mainly on website/advert numbers compared to final selling price, however it does fit in with my previous post on a large number of sellers increasing their selling price versus those decreasing it. This might indicate tightening conditions from the point of view of the owner, and that the seller's market might not last for long.

In conclusion, we cannot objectively say that the market has put in a bottom, however investors do not buy without good due diligence, and they are usually the first movers. So this is another data point that might indicate more demand in the works for Spanish property.

PS: the majority of data has come from Registradores.org