ARCHIVED - UK nationals bought 41 per cent fewer homes in Spain in the first half of 2020

Murcia and the region of Valencia remain strongholds for the British market

One of the inevitable effects of the coronavirus pandemic has been a sharp drop in the number of residential property purchases in Spain this year and it is logical that this decrease should be matched by a similar drop in the number of properties bought by non-Spaniards, but in the context of the departure of the UK from the EU it seems that the downward curve in the number of British buyers has been steeper still.

Figures produced by Spain’s notaries show that the number of homes purchased by non-Spaniards in the first half of 2020 was 37.4 per cent lower than in the equivalent period last year at 32,395, the lowest six-monthly total since 2013, while the number of British buyers dropped by 41.1 per cent to 3,917. As a result, for the first time since 2009 UK nationals did not represent the largest group in terms of nationality, being overtaken by the catch-all category of “other countries outside the EU”.

Foreign buyers accounted for 17.3 per cent of all purchases made between January and June, a proportion which is broadly in line with those reported in recent years, but the decreasing figures for the UK mean that Britons were responsible for only 2.1 per cent of the overall figure.

At the same time, the regions which saw the sharpest falls in foreign buyers were, in general, those on the coast, with decreases of 42.2 per cent in the Comunidad Valenciana, 42 per cent in the Canaries and over 35 per cent in Murcia, Catalunya and the Balearics. The list of regions where non-Spanish buyers accounted for the largest proportion of all transactions is headed by the same Autonomous Communities: 34.8 per cent in the Canaries, 34 per cent in the Balearics, 32.5 per cent in the Comunidad Valenciana, 26.3 per cent in Murcia and 17.4 per cent in Catalunya, and between them these five regions accounted for 60 per cent of all purchases by foreigners throughout Spain.

The fall in the number of British buyers is indisputable in the context of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic, but it is interesting to note that the Region of Murcia and the Costa Blanca remain strongholds for the UK market. In Murcia as many as 56 per cent of all non-resident foreign purchasers in the first half of this year were UK nationals, a proportion unequalled by any nationality in any other region, the only similar dominance being that of the British in the Comunidad Valenciana at 52 per cent.

In both of these regions the second most numerous group was that of Belgian buyers, while the UK was also the leading contributor in Andalucía (24 per cent), Extremadura (25 per cent) and Galicia (21 per cent). Germans were the dominant group among non-Spanish buyers in both the Balearics and the Canaries (48 per cent and 26 per cent respectively), with the UK second in the rankings (18 and 15 per cent).