ARCHIVED - Notaries report 5.6 per cent drop in November Spanish property sales

Almost half of all purchases in October were financed by mortgage loans

The latest set of data regarding the residential property market to come from Spain’s notaries was published on Wednesday, reporting a significant drop in sales figures during November which seems to reinforce the impression that a downturn in the market may be beginning.

Very sharp falls in the sales figures were reported in June and July, making a fall in November of 5.6 per cent to 47,182 seem relatively slight, but it is worth pointing out that in the last eight months the notaries have reported only three year-on-year rises and the most significant of those was a mere 1.4 per cent. At the same time, the provisional data show that the average price paid for units of housing fell by 0.4 per cent in comparison with November 2018 to 1,406 euros per square metre, although as ever it should be remembered this is a hard figure to analyse: variations in average price are not necessarily due to any nationwide trend, as they could be caused by more properties being sold in different regions of the country where prices are higher or lower, distorting the national average.

On the other hand, the number of mortgages constituted on housing purchases during November was 10.3 per cent higher than last year at 24,638, with an average loan capital of 133,506 euros (2.5 per cent lower than in the same month last year). Arguably the most significant statistic, though, is that as many as 54 per cent of all purchases in the month were financed by mortgage loans, the highest proportion since 2011, while in these cases the mortgages accounted for an average of 74.6 per cent of the sale price: this seems to indicate that fewer buyers are in a position to finance their purchase without the help of a bank.

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