13/03/2014
The latest statistics released by the Ministry of Development indicate that of the 300,349 residential properties sold in Spain last year 47,901 were in the Comunitat Valenciana, 10.1% fewer than in 2012, although the province of Alicante had an excellent year, delivering some of the best statistics in Spain.
Despite this negative result, the figures based on sales registered during the year show that sales in the region fell less than the national average, which recorded a drop of 17.4%. Only in the Canaries were there more sales in 2013 than in 2012, and among the rest the regions of Catalunya, Madrid and Valencia were the best of a bad crop of performers, the number of sales there falling by 9.6%, 10.3% and 11.2% respectively. The least encouraging results were the sharp falls in the inland regions of Aragón, Castilla y León and Castilla-La Mancha, all of which were over 30%.
In the country’s fifty provinces there was an even wider spread of results, ranging from the 2.4% increase in Santa Cruz de Tenerife to the 52.4% fall in Álava. Other spectacular declines were registered in Cuenca (41.6%) and Toledo (39.8%), while the drop was minimal in the Mediterranean coastal provinces of Alicante (1.5%), Málaga (3.6%) and Tarragona (4.9%).
In the Comunitat Valenciana, practically the only positive sector within the property market was that of sales to non-Spaniards, which accounted for as much as 34.69% of all transactions registered. Much of this is down to the fact that in Alicante over half of all purchasers were foreign but in Valencia and Castellón the proportion was also around 16%.
Across the country one in six of all purchases was made by foreigners, with these sales being concentrated above all in the Mediterranean coastal area, the Balearics and the Canaries: this seems to represent a renewal of interest in second homes on the Spanish coast among those keen to take advantage of prices which have dropped by between 40% and 50% in the last six years or so.
Finally, bad news for those who are anticipating that the Comunitat Valenciana’s stock of completed but unsold new-build properties will soon be absorbed into the market. In the whole of 2013 only 6,967 sales of new properties were registered, just 14.5% of the annual total, a trend which more or less matches that of the whole country and which is even more extreme in the province of Alicante: here only 12.8% of sales concerned new-builds.
All Text and Images are Subject to Copyright
