Taking into account that in the first quarter of 2022 all records have been broken in terms of the number of home sales, it is interesting to check how housing prices behaved in that first half of the year, the latest published by official agencies, and also compare them with the asking prices obtained from the real estate portal Idealista.
In Marbella and as can be seen in chart 1, it can be said that all the housing prices analyzed continue to rise by around 5.5% per quarter, which is a very high value for a single quarter. This increase can be seen in asking prices provided by the portal Idealista, as well as in the actual closed prices from the Land Registry and in those published by the Housing Ministry from the official valuations that are carried out.
GRÁFICO 2 - NÚMERO DE VIVIENDAS VENDIDAS EN BEHAHAVÍS 2º TRIMESTRE 2021
On the other hand and in Benahavis, there is a change in the trend of the prices that had been rising since 2014. The asking price, which continued to rise during the second quarter, has started to show this change since August of this year, observable in the table below, when we have begun to notice a certain slowdown in the market. Normally this price, the asking price for properties, is the last one to show signs of change since the market always has a delay in assuming a new situation. What can be seen in chart 2 for Benahavis is that in the second quarter, with a record number of closed transactions, the average closing price was already lower, just over 10%, than in previous quarters.
If we go into more detail, as shown in chart 3, we can see that the drop is both in new built units and in second hand homes, although it affects second hand homes to a greater extent. Whether the effect is temporary or whether we have reached the inflection point in prices will be seen in the coming months, although taking into account that in the second quarter the historical record of transactions was reached, it may show that prices, as I have been saying lately, have reached their maximum and that they were rising excessively, up to an annual increase of almost 20%, which I do not think was very healthy in the long run.