The report of the Association of Land Registrars in Spain for the first quarter of 2017 gives some interesting pieces of valuable information about the real estate market that I would like to share. It is mainly about transactions by foreigners in Spain and in the Malaga province and the distribution of transactions between new and second hand properties for the province of Malaga. I have taken the data and prepared some charts that are self explanatory. Regarding the distribution between new and used, it can be seen an important increase in the sale of new properties vs second hand although still low, just 24% of the closings.
In relation to the transactions closed by foreigners, there is nothing that everybody would have guessed. The British are the only nationality that saw the number of closed transactions going down by 27,2% specially after the Brexit vote although still is the nationality with a higher percentage among the foreigners with 14,5% of the closings that is still higher than the French, the second in the ranking, with 9,6 % and a 35 % increase in the last year. Furthermore, the rest of the nationalities saw increases in the number of transactions. However, even with that increase, the percentage of transactions by foreigners (13,1%) went a little bit down in the first quarter because the number of Spaniards buying also increased and in higher percentage.
