The variation in Spanish property prices reaches the lowest level of the last 5 years, which is a sign that property prices in Spain are flattening or even start going down.
The last quarter of 2019 already showed that Spanish property prices are falling. The following data from the fourth quarter on the property price index is given by the Spanish National Statistics Institute.
The last quarter of 2019 was negative for the Spanish property market, compared with the slow down of the Q3/2019 in the Spanish property prices.
According to the data presented by the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE) on the house price index (HPI), the variation in prices at the end of 2019 was 3.6%. It is the lowest level since the first quarter of 2015. Spanish property prices falling may be steady or sharp in spring-summer 2020.
The fourth quarter of the last year had a negative percentage with a 0.6% fall in house prices. Also, a 0.2% decline in the price of new housing, and a 0.7% decline in the price of second-hand housing.
If we were to compare the inter-annual data from the fourth quarter, the fall is even larger.
Second-hand houses
Second-hand housing, which closed the year at 3.4%, declined 3 percentage points compared to the fourth trimester of 2018. New housing lost 2,7% points between the end of 2018 and of 2019, and is now at 5.3%.
Important markets such as Madrid and Catalonia have experienced larger interannual deceleration compared to 2018 and 2019 same periods. Madrid closed the year at 2.9%, declining 6.7 percentage points, while Catalonia stayed at 3.4% after declining 4.7 percentage points.
Nevertheless, there also has been interannual growth in house prices, for example in Asturias (0.9pp), Castilla y Leon (0.3 pp) or Murcia (0.1pp).
