ARCHIVED - Murcia property market showed signs of a bounceback before the second wave of Covid

September sales figures were higher in the Costa Cálida than in the same month last year

It goes without saying that the statistics relating to the residential property markets in Murcia and in Spain as a whole this year have been distorted hugely by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, but in September, when the country was largely free from restrictions on movement before the second wave of contagion gathered momentum, the number of homes bought and sold throughout the country was only 1.1 per cent lower than in the same month last year.

At the same time, Murcia was one of the regions where the year-on-year comparison actually showed an increase, rising by 1.7 per cent to a monthly total of 1,574, and the average of 136 sales per 100,000 inhabitants of house-buying age was the highest in any of Spain’s 17 Autonomous Communities. In May of this year the monthly total of transactions registered dipped as low as 584, the lowest since comparable data were first compiled 13 years ago, but the latest data can be taken as an indication that the market in the Costa Cálida can still be dynamic when it is allowed to operate in “normal” conditions.

Across Spain a fall of 22 per cent in the cumulative figures for residential property sales in the first nine months of the year is of course attributable in large part to the effects of the pandemic, but again a return to close to the level activity reported last year (37,839 transactions in September) comes as a reminder that the market is not inherently an unhealthy one. The May total of 22,394 was close to being another 13-year low, but since July something approaching normal levels have been regained.

This leads to a feeling that the market is almost ready to leave behind the effects of Covid, always assuming that the current second wave of contagion can be overcome and that the effects of the vaccines being developed will be as dramatic as hoped.

As ever, there are considerable variations among the situations in the 17 regions of Spain, and the September year-on-year comparisons ranged from increases of 53 per cent in Extremadura and 47 per cent in Asturias to falls of 24 per cent in the Basque Country and 15 per cent in Navarra and the Balearics.