British buyers accounted for 1 in 6 of all property sales in Murcia in the first half of this year

Brexit fails to deter the Brits from snapping up homes in the Costa Cálida!

Data published this week by the country’s notaries show that the number of Spanish residential properties bought in the first half of 2018 by non-Spaniards was the highest since comparable statistics were first compiled in early 2007, exceeding by far the level at the height of the boom in the market which preceded the crash shortly afterwards.

During the period from January to June the figure of 53,359 represents 18.7 per cent of all sales and purchases in Spain, whereas in the first half of 2007 non-Spaniards accounted for only 7.6 per cent of all purchases as the natives were drawn like flies into the speculative purchasing which characterized the boom.

Furthermore, whatever fears there might be over Brexit appear not to have deterred British buyers, with a total of 7,613 representing an 8.8 per cent year-on-year increase and a return to the levels achieved prior to the referendum which led to the decision to leave the EU.

In the Region of Murcia there has been a highly significant increase in activity in the property market this year, with the growth in sales in the first nine months of the year being by far the most significant in any of Spain’s 17 regions, and the notaries’ data confirm that UK nationals are playing their part in this surge. Sales to foreigners in the first six months amounted to 2,442, an increase of 21.4 per cent over the same period in 2017 and as much as 27.4 per cent of all transactions involving non-Spanish buyers, a proportion exceeded only in the Canaries (39.4 per cent), the Comunidad Valenciana including the Costa Blanca (35.6 per cent) and the Balearics (34.1 per cent).

But perhaps the most striking piece of data relating to the Costa Cálida in the notaries’ bulletin is the fact that among these 2,442 sales to non-Spaniards as many as 57 per cent involved British buyers. Nowhere else in the whole of Spain is the foreign property market dominated to a higher degree by one single nationality, and with Brits also leading the way in Andalucía and the Comunidad Valenciana with shares of 28 per cent and 21 per cent respectively it can be said that with market prices relatively low the market in the south-east of Spain is highly dependent on UK purchasers.

In the region of Murcia the second most common foreign purchaser nationality is the Belgians with an 11 per cent share, but this translates in real terms to 269 transactions, as opposed to 1,392 in which the purchaser was a UK national. In other words, an average of over seven and a half homes per day were brought by Britons in Murcia in the first half of this year, and UK nationals accounted for almost one in six of all purchases in the Region!

In Spain as a whole UK nationals accounted for 14.3 per cent of all non-Spanish purchasers, the next highest proportions being those of the France (7.9 per cent), Germany (7.8 per cent) and Rumania (7.3 per cent).

It is interesting to note that the Chinese contributed 18 per cent of all purchases by non-Spaniards in Madrid, and that in the northern coastal region of Asturias 22 per cent of the 214 transactions involved buyers from the USA!

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