Pending official statistics from the Ministry of Housing and the National Institute of Statistics, the tgrills and real estate portals They already have published their reports how much the price of housing in Spain has risen during the last year. According to Tinsa, houses revalued on average by 4.1% in 2023, while Gesvalt reduces this by half, to 2.1%. In the case of Idealista, it raises this figure to 8.15%, while Fotocasa reduces it to 7.4%.
The consensus of the entire market is that, after 2021 and 2022 of strong increases, the market is in a stabilization phase and low or normalized growth based on the historical series. In recent months, there has been a slowdown in the increases that, little by little, are trending toward zero.
Despite national statistics, the housing market in Spain is granular and responds to different realities, such as the tourist component of the location, the business dynamism or the size of the town. For example, in the last year, residential prices in coastal areas decelerated slower than the national average, with cities such as Valencia, Almería, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Málaga leading the increases.
What will happen in 2024?
Broadly speaking, the forecasts of the experts consulted are positive. “The employment centers and areas in which economic activity is concentrated have a residential supply that, in the short term, has not been able to satisfy the concentration of demand and this generates tension that sustains price levels even when demand decreases. is moderating,” explains Cristina Arias, director of Studies at Tinsa, who adds that “market segments with a buyer profile with high purchasing powersuch as new construction or vacation home”, are the more resilient.
The general director of Grupo Tecnitasa, José Antonio Muro, explains: “There is no doubt that, depending on the location, We locate areas where demand is very solid and areas where demand is much weaker. As an example, focusing on new construction, we could cite the notable differences between areas such as Madrid, Málaga or San Sebastián, in which the pressure on the new construction market is very high, with inland areas, for example, some provinces of Castilla. La Mancha, Castilla y León or Extremadura.
Along the same lines, Judit Montoriol, chief economist at CaixaBank Research, points out: “The consolidation of tourism and growing urbanization, which will continue to attract population to tourist areas and the most dynamic cities, indicate that these markets will continue to have an upward path.” Fotocasa spokesperson, María Matos, predicts that the “decreases will occur in less populated areas and inside, like Extremadura or Castilla La-Mancha“.
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On the opposite side, at least partially, is Germán Pérez Barrio, president of UVE Valoraciones, who considers that large cities, such as Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Saragossa and Basque Countrycharacterized by having high proportions of buyers with mortgages, have a “high probability of having stagnant or declining prices“, while predicting increases on the coast. “Here the majority of purchases are made in cash and the rise in interest rates does not affect the purchasing capacity, which is also mainly foreign. Prices will almost certainly rise in Malaga, Alicante, Girona, the Balearic Islands or the Canary Islands,” he adds. In the case of cities such as Valencia, Murcia, Granada or Castellón, with large city and tourism components, their evolution will be intermediate between the two. previous classes. Finally, it foresees that In the rest of Spain, prices will also stagnate or fall due to the “excess of empty homes”.
Juan Galo-Macià, CEO of Engel & Völkers in Spain, highlights a trend that will be consolidated over the next year: “There will continue to be a displacement of population towards areas with more competitive prices, both in the vicinity of large cities and in smaller urban areas. “This phenomenon will be uniform throughout Spain, evidencing a double movement: firstly towards individual homes a few kilometers from the center and secondly towards more affordable neighborhoods within the cities themselves.”