House sales up 15.5% in February
Number of property transactions carried out in Spain has now risen for six months in a row
The number of house sales in Spain increased 15.5% in February compared with the same month in 2014 – the largest rise in recent months – according to data released by the National Statistics Institute (INE) on Thursday.
Property sales have now increased for six consecutive months as the market gradually begins to recover from the huge crash that hit when Spain’s housing bubble burst at the end of 2007. The rise can be attributed exclusively to a 50.4% increase in sales of existing homes – 21,613 of the 29,714 transactions carried out in February were of this sort.
In contrast sales of new homes dropped 28.6% compared with the same month last year, with just 8,101 operations.
The figures correspond to sales entered into property registries relating to contracts signed in previous months.
In terms of the number of sales per 100,000 inhabitants, the biggest rises in February were seen in the regions of Valencia (105) and Madrid (96), while Andalusia continues to lead the way in total sales with 6,149 transactions, followed by Madrid (4,834), Catalonia (4,558) and Valencia (4,132).
