INE’s real estate transaction data for the month of August reflect a year-on-year increase in home purchases of 16%, reflecting the good performance of the sector.

“The residential market is giving clear signs of growth thanks to the good progress of the economy, the consolidation of mortgage credit and the return of confidence in a sector that has been reviled for years and now again arouses interest.

This higher demand is moving to prices which, according to the latest data from Fotocasa, grow at a rate of 4.8% compared to last year. This is the highest increase recorded by our history since May 2007, when prices rose 5.4%.

From August data, Toribio highlights the advance of new housing, which grew 21.3% year-on-year compared to 14.9% for second-hand housing. “The reactivation of the real estate market has brought an increase of the purchase on flat and of the activity promoter, which will serve to alleviate the shortage of new housing offer, which becomes more evident in the big cities,” he adds. “In 2017 the new housing will recover part of the protagonism lost during nine years of consecutive falls”.

There is already almost unanimity in the sector that will end the year with more than 500,000 operations of purchase and sale, a fact that would confirm the improvement of the real estate market” but “is still far from the levels of activity of the years of the boom, when they were closed to the month around 108,000 operations compared to the 40,000 that are now realized.