Figures produced by the València Notary School reports a drop of 6% in sales of Spanish property to foreigners in the province in the first quarter of the year with Swedes, Norwegians and Belgians buying fewer properties while, rather surprisingly, purchases made by Britons are very much the same.
After years of practically uninterrupted growth, the sale of homes fell from 5,565 operations registered between January and March 2018 to 5,246 this year.
These are figures that corroborate what the statistics of the Ministry of Public Works have already anticipated.
The logical thing would be to think that the uncertainty generated by Brexit would be behind the drop but the truth is, as the notaries’ data point out that, at least in the case of the Costa Blanca , the inability of the British Parliament to agree on a negotiated exit from the EU does not seem to have affected the interest of its citizens to search the available property for sale in Spain and buy a second residence in the province, beyond the fall that occurred in 2016, immediately after the results of the referendum were known. Indeed, during the first quarter of this year, the number of operations has remained practically stable, with 1,021 purchases, just three more than during the same period last year.
It is a slightly different story though throughout the rest of the European markets, with Sweden (-35.6%), Norway (-19.6%) and Belgium (-16.9%) leading the way, but also Germany (-13.4%), France (-12.2%) and even the Netherlands (-7.3%).
For the vice-dean of the Notarial College, Delfin Martinez, this situation is logical if one takes into account that the sales of houses to foreigners have been growing almost continuously since 2011. “What we see is that the market is now settling which is quite normal after climbing a lot. At some point there is a plateau,” he says.
Alicante is still the province where foreigners buy more homes in Spain, with 21.73% of the total, that is, more than one in five.
