Finally, and after the crash of real estate market in Marbella at the beginning of 2008, the prices are starting to show a different tendency. Although they have been flat for about three years, it is now when they are starting to show an increase. That is what we can see on the data released last week by the Ministry of Housing. It is not a high increase but at least it seems that we have reached the inflexion point.
I have been talking in my later newsletters about a sense of a better market. An increasing number of transactions was the first signal of the recovery and 2013 already showed that tendency that has been confirmed in 2014. However, during this year the prices remained flat up to now. An increasing number of properties in the market and a still weak general economy were probably restraining the raise in the price index. In fact, as can be seen in the attached chart for the province of Malaga, the foreigners are the ones leading the recovery with an also increasing percentage of transactions.
The situation in Estepona is completely different. In a way the news are also “good”. In this case, the prices are still going down but with a lower pace. In 2014 the index in Estepona kept the downward tendency but the one showed was not as bad as the one in the precedent years (2008—2013) when it accumulated most of the 48 % drop from the 2007 prices.