Positive property price contagion for more than 30 Spanish provinces

The positive price increases seen in the Costa del Sol property market have been welcomed by vendors and experts operating in the region, but such optimism had been slower to emerge in other parts of the country.

After all, the Costa del Sol is Spain’s most mature holiday and property market, and where it leads, others follow… eventually. But that time could be now according to data released this week by Spanish property valuation firm Tinsa, which has revealed that price rises are being recorded in more than 30 provinces across the country…

Provinces in Spain are smaller than the Autonomous Regions (think Andalucía, Catalonia etc) and thus are often a better measure of how certain markets are performing. For example, the province of Málaga covers the Costa del Sol – or rather the Costa del Sol is Málaga province – and thus has enjoyed the most robust recovery figures. But other, less-heralded provinces have now begun to register their own increases.

The Tinsa data shows that the overall national price for property in Spain has risen by 0.8% in the past 12 months. In and around Marbella, that figure is closer to a 6% increase, but broken down the Tinsa statistics show that 30 of Spain’s 50 provinces have now recorded average price increases since the second quarter of 2015.

The sharpest increase, according to the report, was recorded in La Rioja, which was actually one of the worst affected in the post-boom slump, so recent rises are actually a recovery of sorts. However, it is along the ever-popular Mediterranean coast where the trend for recovery is most robust, with all of the provinces that fringe the coastline – bar Murcia – posting year-over-year price increases.

Another trend highlighted by the data shows that Spain’s price recovery is now seeping into traditionally domestic-driven markets and beyond the popular regions of Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga and the Canaries, with even places such as Extremadura, Castilla La-Mancha and Castilla y León recording solid increases in property prices.

The Tinsa data is extrapolated over the entire past 12-month period, and as such builds upon recent EU data that showed how, in the previous quarter, property prices increased by an average of more than 4%.