The 48,201 real estate transactions recorded in June confirm the best figure for this year, according to INE statistics, and push sales and purchases to their best semester since 2008, with more than 267,700 transactions between January and June. The housing market is stimulated by the recovery of the economy and the savings of families.
The housing market in Spain is picking up the pace lost with the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic at cruising speed after the publication of data on sales and purchases of housing by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), of the Property Registries Association.
Last June, 48,201 real estate transactions were recorded, an increase of 73.5% year-on-year, just in the month when the first state of alert decreed by the government to fight the coronavirus pandemic was lifted. . This is the best month so far in 2021, and it nearly equals May 2019 (48,351) and July 2019 (48,337), confirming that sales are returning to the pre-pandemic period.
Home sales and purchases have now reached four consecutive months of increases, following increases of 32.4% and 65.9% in March and April, respectively, with the number of transactions more than doubling in May.
The rise in home sales and purchases in June compared to the previous year was the result of the sharp increase in new home transactions, which rose 71% to 9,363 transactions, as well as the increase of 74 .1% of sales and purchases of second-hand apartments, which totaled 38,838 transactions. Of the homes transferred, 19.4% were new and 80.6% were used, according to June data.
But the most remarkable figure is that which has been accumulated during the first six months of the year. Between January and June, 267,715 homes were sold, 31.4% more than a year ago, which represents the best absolute figure since the first half of 2008, when 313,248 transactions took place. The figure for the first half of 2021 is 0.6% higher than the figure for the first half of 2019, when it reached 266,018 sales and purchases.
For Francisco Iñareta, spokesperson for idealista, “one more month of data formalizes the recovery of the purchases and sales market and its return to pre-pandemic reality. In fact, the more than 48,000 homes sold in the month of June represent a monthly peak that has only been exceeded four times since 2008. Undoubtedly, this volume of transactions is directly linked to the optimism generated by the success of the vaccination processes, the imminence of European aid, the weak interest rates and the increase in household savings over the past year. Even so, it is possible that the volume of transactions will be affected by the inclusion of sales and purchases paralyzed by uncertainty which have been reactivated in a climate of greater optimism, so we will have to wait for future data to confirm whether the market is based on these record numbers.
Record new home sales in the last seven years The best half-year in the last 13 years is accompanied by other exceptional new home sales data. Not since the first half of 2014 (67,429) has such a high figure been observed in new construction transactions. Between January and June of this year, they reached 55,777 operations, which is 13.5% more than in the same period of 2019, before the pandemic.
The data for February and March, exceeding 10,000 new home transactions within two months, increased the volume of transactions due, among other reasons, to the inclusion of sales and purchases paralyzed during the worst months of the coronavirus crisis. .
