The provinces where foreigners already buy more than 30% of homes

Foreigners are regaining more and more weight in the Spanish housing market. According to data from the Property Registrars, in the second quarter of the year, they represented 14.94% of the purchases carried out in Spain, the second-highest result in the historical series.

After losing importance in the previous two quarters, foreign buyers are regaining market share thanks to the generalised fall in transactions and consolidating their position, as the registrars stress, "as a particularly relevant factor in maintaining outstanding amounts in home sales".

In the second quarter, foreign demand was strong on the Mediterranean coast and the islands, in line with the trend of recent years. So much so that in four provinces, foreign buyers accounted for at least 30% of all homes transacted in the period, doubling the national average. The provinces in question are Alicante, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Malaga and the Balearic Islands.

The Costa Blanca led the way, with almost 45% of transactions formalised by foreigners. Alicante is the only province where 40% of property transactions involve a foreign buyer. Next are Santa Cruz de Tenerife with 38.01%, Malaga with 32.02%, and the Balearic Islands with 30.38%.

In Girona, Murcia, Las Palmas, Almeria and Tarragona, foreigners also have a higher-than-average weight, accounting for between 29.2% and 15.8% of the sales recorded between April and June.

Already below the national average, although with a double-digit share, are Castellon, Valencia and Barcelona, while in the remaining 38 provinces, foreigners account for less than 10% of the market. In Granada and Zaragoza, for example, foreigners bought 7% of the homes in the spring, while their share in Madrid, Teruel and Guadalajara was 6%.

In 26 provinces, the weight of foreigners in home buying is less than 5%, with A Coruña, Albacete, Pontevedra, Palencia, Caceres, Cordoba and Zamora registering the lowest figures (less than 2% in all cases).

Home purchases by foreigners in each province [Data from the second quarter of 2023. Percentage of total transactions]

[Data from the second quarter of 2023. Percentage of total transactions] idealista

As for Autonomous Regions, the registrars' data show that only in the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands did buyers from other countries account for more than 30% of housing transactions in the second quarter. After the archipelagos, the most prominent regions are the Valencian Community (29.91%), Murcia (23.56%) and, much further behind, Catalonia (15.35%). Extremadura and Galicia close the ranking, with an approximate weight of 2%.

Foreigners gain market share in spring

In Spain as a whole, the weight of foreign home buyers has increased by 0.42 percentage points compared to the start of the year (after closing the first quarter of the year at 14.52%) and is less than one point from the record registered to date (15.92% in the third quarter of 2022).

The registrars' quarterly evolution showed that foreigners gained market share in 31 provinces while losing ground in another 19 and remaining stable in another.

Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the second highest in the ranking, is precisely where the weight of foreign buyers has increased the most, having risen by 3.6 percentage points in a single quarter. Murcia recorded the next highest value (2.12 percentage points), followed by a group of regions with increases of between one and two percentage points: Teruel, Alicante, Valencia, La Rioja, Soria, Leon, Baleares, Ourense and Guipuzcoa.

A dozen provinces, including Almeria, Badajoz, Toledo, Cadiz, Barcelona, Las Palmas, Madrid, A Coruña and Segovia, have seen more modest increases but higher than the national average. Among the most testimonial quarter-on-quarter rises are those of Huelva, Salamanca, Zaragoza, Alava and Cordoba.

Cantabria, on the other hand, is the only province where foreigners' weight remained stable in the second quarter, where it has decreased in other provinces such as Granada, Vizcaya, Seville, Asturias, Castellon, Tarragona, Caceres and Malaga. The largest decreases were recorded in Girona (-2.18%), Navarra (-2.37%) and Zamora (-3.64%).

The most important nationalities

With inflation still high in many countries, the current economic situation is leaving a new panorama in the distribution of property transactions among the different nationalities. The British continue to lead property purchases in Spain, with almost 2,000 transactions between April and June, but their relative weight has fallen for the first time from 9% of the total to 8.8%.

Historically, British citizens have been the most prominent nationality, reaching around 25% in 2015. However, since the end of 2020, when the residential market started to pick up again after the pandemic's worst had passed, they have barely exceeded 10% relative weight in four of the last ten quarters.

After the British (8.8%), the highest weights during the second quarter of 2023 were registered among Germans (7.25%), French (6.56%), Moroccans (5.37%), Italians (5.22%), Romanians (5.15%), Belgians (5.09%) and Dutch (4.61%), which translates into transactions in absolute terms above 1,000 houses purchased.

Although the rest of the nationalities have bought less than 1,000 houses in this period, their weight has increased compared to the beginning of the year, as is the case of Poles (3.92%), Russians (3.43%), Chinese (3.09%), Swedes (2.94%), Ukrainians (2.72%) or Irish (1.66%).