THE BRITISH BOUGHT 21% OF SPANISH PROPERTY IN 2015

The British, it seems, are totally in love with Spain’s climate, so much so, that British buyers accounted for 21% of all homes sold to foreigners in the country last year.

The analysis of the data also showed that 1/7th of all property transactions in Spain in 2015 featured non-Spaniards – the highest percentage yet recorded. This means, that roughly out of 46,000 properties sold 1 in 5 went to a British buyer. In terms of the 4th and final quarter of the year, that rate rose to 23.95%, which would suggest that the British interest for owning property in Spain is growing faster than that of any other nationality. During the last 3 months of 2015, British accounted for 3.44% of all sales nationwide, out of a total of 84,031 transactions.

French buyers were the next largest group of foreigners, responsible for 8.17% of homes bought, followed by Germany (7.79%), Swedes (6%), Belgians (5.66%) and Italians (4.19%).

Buyers from China are also represented with them coming in at seventh in the table, but according to South China Morning Post, these figures are rising sharply. Amongst the growing middle classes in China, Spanish property is currently turning heads, with one Hong-Kong based investment company recently reporting that Spain represents the best value for money in Europe when it comes to real estate. And whilst the Chinese have a long way to go to match the British in numbers, individually they are already the biggest-spending tourists in Spain, spending per head an average of 1,000 euros per visit.

Spain has doubled her efforts to lure more Chinese tourist and investors in recent months, with many leading hotels now teaching their staff basic Mandarin and the Government is introducing the so called ‘Golden-Visa’ which grants residency status to non EU nationals that invest more than 500,000 euros in Spanish property.