The Ministry of Housing just released the data of the housing price index for the first quarter of 2016 with good news for all of us, except maybe for the buyers, as the increase in the housing prices for Marbella and Estepona seems to be, yet slow, consolidated. On a yearly basis, and for the first year since the 2008 crash, we are seeing increases in the index price of about 4% for both Marbella and Estepona.
I have been talking about this issue and, even, when I wrote in January about the price index I still had some concerns about the recovery because I was still feeling, at street level, that the market was still slow, but seems that we are definitively getting out. Taking a close look to the chart we will see that in all the municipalities around Marbella, except maybe for Fuengirola, the prices seemed to have reached the bottom and are starting to increase.
To get a closer view, I produced a chart with the year-to-year increases in the price index in the same municipalities in the last three years and we can see clearly the difference: in 2013 an average of 10% decreases, minimum decreases in 2014 as the transition year and increases in 2015. We are talking about a still moderate 4% increase but the important fact is the change in the tendency. Some analysts already predicted the same increases for 2016 and seems to be right. I hope that the political instability in Spain and the brexit vote will not affect this recovery.