Spanish Property Market Analysis – H1 2021

This report on the first half of 2021 comes at a crucial time for the Spanish property market.  As the shock of the coronavirus pandemic wears off, it is leaving behind profound changes that are reshaping the property market in ways that create new opportunities.

The pandemic forced an accelerated digital transformation in many companies and industries, blurring the lines between home and work. The realization that a holiday home could become a semi-permanent residence, the need for additional space for a home office or “urbanites” looking for a property with outside space to enjoy resort-style living whilst having all the perks of living in a city, shifted the real estate demand towards specific types of properties and locations that meet these “new needs”.

The return of foreign investors with the lifting of travel restrictions, and the injection of billions of Euros in the Spanish economy in the form of EU recovery funds, are expected to further boost the Spanish property market.

All the market data published so far this year points towards a sustained recovery in Spanish property sales, prices and mortgage lending, not just compared to last year, when activity was severely impaired by the lockdown, but also compared to the two years previous to the pandemic, which is even more encouraging.

The report explores the prime property markets in the Spanish regions of most interest to foreign investors, from the most important cities, such as Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia, to the sought-after resort areas along the Costa del Sol, Costa Blanca, Costa Brava and the Balearic Islands. A regional comparison of sales over the last three years illustrates how transactions have recovered strongly this year, in most cases exceeding the sales level in 2019, before Covid.

We hope this report will give readers a deeper understanding of how the pandemic has changed the Spanish property market, and help them inform their real estate decisions.