Spanish Property Market Statistics

The Marketplace

• Some 47,000 Britons, equivalent to the entire population of a town the size of Kettering or Hereford, signed on as new residents at Spanish town halls in 2005*
• That brought the registered British population in Spain to 274,000 - equivalent to a city the size of Bradford or Leicester*
• Experts estimate that up to three times as many Britons, about 750,000 people spend a significant part of the year living in Spain*
• The population of Chiclana is 72,600, which includes some 2,500 are foreigners. 164 British people moved to the town in 2004 and 220 in 2005. (Diario Bahía de Cádiz, Jan 2005)
• According to the Spanish National Statistics Office, 16.4% of legal residents in Andalucia are British, and 70.4% of these live on the Costa del Sol.
• The number of holiday residences in Spain has doubled over the last few years and now totals around 3 million.
• Over a third of these are owned by foreigners, 30% of whom are British.
• According to the Spanish Ministry of Tourism, over a million foreigners will set up home on the Spanish coasts in the next six years, and it is likely that this figure will treble by 2025.
• The construction industry accounts for a higher proportion of GDP in Spain than in most other European countries. There are several reasons for this, including strong demand for tourist-related buildings and second homes, high levels of investment in infrastructure (reflecting the large size of the country) and a structural shortage of quality housing.
• Average house prices in El Puerto de Santa María: €369,000 (July 2006)
• Average house prices in Chiclana de la Frontera: €238.000 (July 2006)

Financial

• According to a report released by the Catalonian Savings Bank (Caixa Catalunya), the price of new houses in Spain will have risen by 16.2 percent by the end of 2005. This means that housing prices have risen at the same rate this year as 2003-2004, contrary to the expectations of some financial analysts at the beginning of the year who predicted a slowing down in the growth rate of Spanish property prices during 2005.
• Mortgage rates in Spain are low : the EURIBOR rate is currently 2.88%. The mortgage interest rate is between 1 –1.75% above EURIBOR in the first year, and thereafter 2 – 2.5% above. Spanish banks and savings banks (equivalent to our building societies ) are eager to lend to foreign buyers