Home sales fall 6.4% in May, with collapses in Madrid and the Islands

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Although 29% more homes were sold in May than in April, due to the effect of Easter, the real estate market is already fully suffering the impact of the rise in interest rates. As Paolo Boarni, CEO of the Tecnocasa real estate network, explains, “the rise in rates has raised the average payment of an average mortgage by 46% if subscribed at a variable rate or 28% if subscribed at a fixed rate.” fact that “thousands of buyers have been left out of the market: 17.8% of the potential demand in a city like Barcelona, ​​​​because the quota would exceed 35% of family income, which is the limit of effort that banks accept to grant a mortgage. read also pink savior The drop in sales, therefore, has hit markets where housing is more expensive and, within them, homes whose potential buyers have less purchasing power and depend more on a mortgage.

Thus, according to data from the INE, in May the purchase of new homes increased by 4.1% compared to May 2022, while that of used homes decreased by 8.6%. More impact on VPO For the same reason, the number Job Function Email Database of free homes transferred by purchase and sale decreased by 5.8%, while the number of subsidized homes fell even more, by 13.4%, because potential buyers now have more difficulties in obtaining a mortgage. In 38,536 transactions, both buyer and seller were natural persons, 7.0% less than in the same month of 2022. Home sales are holding up especially well in the autonomous communities of northern Spain, where family incomes are quite high and prices have not skyrocketed in recent years.



This has been the case in May in Cantabria, where sales have increased by 21.1%, Principality of Asturias (8.6%) and Castilla y León (7.9%) and Navarra (3.7%). In Catalonia, 9,000 homes were sold in May, 5% less than the previous year. In the first five months of 2023, 261,784 homes have been sold, 4.1% less than in 2022 and with only one month, January, with more activity than the previous year. The new construction market registered a drop of 2.4%, less than the 3.3% drop in sales of second-hand homes. At pre-pandemic levels María Matos, director of studies at the Fotocasa portal, highlighted that May is the fifth month of decline in sales “after 21 consecutive months of very large increases” due to the boom that occurred after the pandemic, so in her opinion the Current sales should be compared with 2019, before covid, and are  higher.