With thousands and thousands of people snapping up excellent Spanish homes, it is little wonder that their values have risen above the EU average last year.

With thousands and thousands of people snapping up excellent Spanish homes, it is little wonder that their values have risen above the EU average last year.

New property valuation data from the European Union’s official statistics bureau Eurostat has revealed that Spanish home values increased above the EU average in 2017

According to Eurostat, the average price increase of a home in the EU last year was 4.2%, but for Spain that figure was 7.2% – one of the highest of the 28 EU member states.

The EU’s figure for Spain is actually higher than other recent pricing data gleaned from Spanish property valuation website Tinsa, but does reflect the trend seen across the nation’s real estate sector the past few years; namely, home values are increasing at an encouraging and steady rate year-on-year.

This 7.2% annual increase is the steepest ‘official’ annual rise in average Spanish home values for a decade, and is only beaten in the EU by Ireland (11.8%), Portugal (10.5%) and Slovenia (10%).

Italy, meanwhile, saw home values decrease 0.3% in 2017, whereas most other nations registered a slight increase of between two and three per cent.

Spain’s official EU data shows a 0.9% increase in home values in the final quarter of 2017, while so far in 2018 Tinsa’s data reveals a 3.8 per cent year-on-year first quarter increase in home values across the country.

Such a strong start to the year could well mean that Spain ends 2018 having boosted its property prices by similar – or even higher – amounts as those seen last year.