Spaniard Delight

Foreign investors are returning to Spain’s real-estate market after a decade long slump that caused prices to plummet as much as 40%. But in some popular tourist destinations such as Marbella, a past corruption scandal and illegal building are undermining development.

Spanish residential-property sales last year rose 10.6% from 2017, while prices were up 6.5% from the previous year. Overseas buyers are driving much of those sales, and most of them want new construction property.

Following a universal slump in all parts of Spain it appears that a ceiling may have been reached in the level of activity in the market nationwide, but in Murcia, data shows a moderate increase of 3.1 per cent to 1,548 sales.

At the same time the running 12-monthly total of transactions registered in the Costs Calida stands at 16,617, meaning that there has been an increase of as much as 78 per cent since the market bottomed out in August 2014.