Date Published: 21/11/2019
ARCHIVED - Property sales to non-Spaniards rising in Murcia
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
British buyers account for 1 in 7 of all sales to foreigners in Spain
Last week saw the publication of figures by Spain’s notaries which indicated that 28.5 per cent of all homes sold in the Costa Cálida during the first half of 2019 were purchased by non-Spaniards despite a 12 per cent drop in the number of British buyers in Spain as a whole, and while another set of data issued this week by property registrars paints a rather different picture the importance of international investors in the Murcia property market is again underlined.
In Spain as a whole the registrars report that non-Spaniards were responsible for 12.55 per cent of all purchases between 1st July and 30th September – the notaries had reached a figure of over 18 per cent for the first six months of the year – with 14.27 per cent of those purchases being made by British buyers. The next largest proportions belonged to buyers from France (8.38 per cent), Germany (6.63 per cent) and Belgium (6.17 per cent), followed by Morocco, Rumania, Italy, Sweden, China and Russia.
More specifically, the data show that UK nationals bought 2,160 residential properties during the quarter, and that the proportion of the overall total rose by almost a full percentage point in comparison with the previous three months, although it is worth pointing out that the 12-monthly figure is still at its lowest (14.54 per cent) since similar data were first compiled in 2009. At that point the dominance of British buyers was such that they accounted for one in three of all properties sold to non-Spaniards.
That diminishing proportion, though, is due more to interest from other foreign buyers having increased than to the British buying fewer homes in the sun, and the Brits are still buying around 9,000 homes in Spain per year – an average of around 25 per day!
In terms of the regional breakdown, the registrars report that in the third quarter 21.6 per cent of all buyers in Murcia were non-Spanish, the fourth highest proportion behind the Balearics (28.2 per cent), the Comunidad Valenciana (25.9 per cent) and the Canaries (23.7 per cent). Furthermore, they note that the dependence of the regional market on foreign purchasers is increasing, with the proportion having risen steadily from only 11.4 per cent in 2012, while in the Balearic and Canary Islands it appears to be falling significantly. In the province of Alicante, meanwhile, the figure remains at over 40 per cent!
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