Q1 residential sales along Spanish coast fall, but worse expected

Economic uncertainty in Spain has undercut the residential real estate sector, with agents warning that the upbeat mood of the market prior to the pandemic may be gone for the forseeable future. Coastal properties have been the hardest hit and recovery might not begin until 2021 at the earliest.

The latest data from the Real Estate Registry Statistics (ERI) for the first quarter of this year suggested that the total figure of 127,357 sales was down slightly (4.86 percent) compared to Q1 2019, but marked at 8.49 percent improvement over Q4 2019. Roughly 12 percent of all Q1 residential purchases were made by foreigners, down from 12.7 percent in Q4 2019.