Real estate sales in Spain continue to decline

Real estate sales in Spain continue to decline

National Institute of Statistics of the Spanish kingdom has published data showing that home sales in the country continue to decline. In August 2013 only 23.5 thousand transactions were made, which is 15.4% less than a year before and 8.4% less than in July 2013, according to ee24.com citing kyero.com.

It is noteworthy that the primary housing market shrank in August much more than the secondary one - by 24.8% (to 10.5 thousand transactions) vs. 5.9% (to 13 thousand transactions).

According to the newspaper El Mundo, in August, most of residential properties in the equivalent of 100 thousand people were bought in La Rioja - "internal" province in the north of the country (112) and Valencia - the province in the east of the country, located on the Mediterranean coast (89). In absolute numbers Andalusia (5 thousand transactions), Catalonia (4 thousand), Valencia (3.6 thousand) and Madrid (2.5 thousand) are leading, while northern provinces of Cantabria and La Rioja (less than 300 transactions each) are dropping.

Nevertheless, the overall trend of the market remains positive, and sales for January-August 2013 even show an increase of 1.2% compared to the same period of the last year.