Foreigners are looking for more houses to rent than to buy in almost all of Spain

Foreigners are increasingly looking for properties to rent in Spain. According to idealista/data, at the end of last year 14.9% of the demand to rent a property came from another country. The figure is not only the highest in the historical series that began in 2019, but also exceeds the demand to buy (14.5%).

In November, searches from abroad to buy a property broke records, reaching 15.2% of the total, compared to 14.7% for renting, while one month later the trend has been reversed.

And it has done so in the vast majority of the country. Proof of this is that all provincial capitals registered more interest in renting than buying at the end of December 2022, except for four specific cases: the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, Girona and Toledo.

The Spanish cities with the highest foreign demand to rent and buy

Alicante is the provincial capital where searches from abroad have the most weight, accounting for almost 26% of the total demand to rent a property. The next most important cities on the list are Barcelona, Valencia, Palma de Mallorca and Malaga, which move in a range of between 22.2% and 24.8%.

Santa Cruz de Tenerife is in sixth position, with 19.7%, followed by Tarragona (17.5%), Girona (15.3%) and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (15%). Also above double digits are Cádiz, Granada, Madrid, Castellón de la Plana, Almería, San Sebastián, Seville, Jaén, Salamanca, Santander and the autonomous city of Melilla.

On the other hand, in more than half of the provinces, the weight of foreigners in rental demand is below 10%, with a total of 32 large cities. In this case, Soria, Guadalajara, Zamora and Huesca are the capitals where foreigners are looking for less housing to rent, accounting for less than 4% of the market.

In the case of sales, Alicante once again occupies the first position in the national ranking, as up to 25.8% of the demand comes from other countries (one tenth less than in the case of renting). The next most prominent capitals are Palma de Mallorca (22.9%), Barcelona (20.2%), Valencia (20%) Málaga (18.5%), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (17.4%), Girona (15.3%) and Melilla (15%), while in Tarragona, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Cádiz, Ceuta, Castellón de la Plana and Granada, more than 10% of searches to purchase a property come from outside Spain. In the rest of the country, the demand from abroad to buy is already below double-digit figures with respect to total demand, as in the case of Madrid (7.8%) or San Sebastian (6.7%).

In a total of 11 provincial capitals, interest in buying a property from a foreign country accounts for less than 3% of the market, including Pamplona, Zaragoza, Valladolid, Vitoria, Guadalajara, Zamora, Albacete, Huesca and Palencia, which closes the list with a meagre 1.8%.

The Spanish cities with the greatest difference in demand

Ceuta, Melilla, Girona and Toledo are the only cities where demand from abroad for renting homes does not exceed that for buying. In Ceuta, for example, searches from outside Spain to purchase a home account for 11.7% of overall searches, compared to 7.5% for renting; while in Melilla the weight of foreign demand for buying reaches 15%, compared to 11.1% for renting.

Girona and Toledo are experiencing a different scenario: at the end of last year, both capitals registered the same demand for renting as for buying, with 15.3% and 5.4% of the total, respectively.

In the case of the cities where the demand to rent is farther apart than the demand to buy, the figures for Jaén, Salamanca, Madrid, Bilbao, San Sebastián, Barcelona, Valencia, Santander and Seville stand out. In all of them, interest in renting exceeds that of buying a property by at least four points. In contrast, in Palma de Mallorca, Lugo, A Coruña and Alicante the figures are much closer (with a 'gap' of less than one percentage point).

Where the demand for renting and buying comes from

The countries which the most searches to rent or buy a house come from are very varied: from Latin America or the USA, to different parts of Europe or North Africa.

In 20 provinces, the demand comes from the same countries. For example, in cities such as Girona, Bilbao, A Coruña, Pamplona, Madrid, Tarragona, Granada and Valencia, the interest in looking for properties in Spain both to buy and to rent comes mainly from the USA, while in San Sebastián the country of reference in both cases is France, as well as in Palencia and Santander.

In Palma de Mallorca, searches from Germany stand out, while in Ceuta and Melilla, those coming from Morocco. In Badajoz, on the other hand, the main demand comes from Portugal.In the rest of the country, the interest in renting or buying comes from different countries. In Barcelona, for example, the demand to rent comes from France and the demand to buy comes from the USA, just the opposite of Alicante. In the case of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Italy leads the searches for renting and Germany is number one in the case of buying a property. And in Malaga, the countries from which most demand comes for renting and buying are the USA and the UK, respectively.

• Property for sale in Spain
• Long-term rentals in Spain