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Two out of every ten homes are purchased by foreigners in Spain

The analysis of Euroval's Institute of Real Estate Analysis (INSTAI) confirmed that the purchase of housing by foreigners, a key factor in the stability and growth of the tourist-residential market in Spain, "is already close to the level of transactions it had before the outbreak of the pandemic". According to Euroval data, in 2021 foreigners bought 15.3% of the houses sold in Spain. According to the study this is a slightly higher percentage than in 2020 (14.7%) and slightly lower than in 2019 (16.9%). These percentages should be analyzed together with the total number of operations carried out in these three years.

In relative terms, the percentage of foreign purchases over the national total was lower than in 2019 (15.3% and 16.9%). But the same is not true when compared in absolute values. While in 2019 84,263 homes were sold to foreigners (16.9% of the 501,085 sales that year according to the INE), in 2021 the number reached 86,524 (15.3% of the 565,523 homes sold that year). This means 3% more sales to foreigners.

In addition, in 2020, foreign purchases amounted to 61,114, 14.7% of the total homes sold that year (415,748).

According to Euroval's analysis, the purchase of homes by foreigners (new and used) has grown in the last decade from percentages below 10% to close to 20% in 2015, and currently 15.3% of total home sales and purchases. This means that the demand for housing by foreigners has been maintained even in low times of the market, having also an increase in recent years, despite the pandemic and other situations that have occurred at the country level in the last ten years.

Four autonomous communities exceed the 2019 percentages in 2021: Aragón (9.9% vs. 9.6%), Principado de Asturias (5.5% vs. 5.2%), Balearic Islands (39.5% vs. 35.5%) and Canary Islands (30.8% and 30.4%).

The Valencian Community, Andalusia and Catalonia are communities with a higher percentage of purchases by foreigners over the national total. In the Valencian Community it is 27.4%, although lower than in 2015 when it was 28.6%. In the case of Andalusia this percentage is 20.7%, even higher than 2019 (18.2%). In Catalonia it was 14.9% of the total, slightly lower than the percentage prior to the pandemic (15.3%).

These three communities alone account for 63% of home sales to foreigners in our country.