House prices in Spain will increase by 6.3 per cent in 2016, according to the real estate company Servihabitat which is owned by the Catalan bank La Caixa and Texas Pacific Group.
More moderate forecasts from other financial institutions are predicting an increase of between three and five percent. However it is emphasized that the variations in the market are huge. It is expected that prices will increase more where demand is greatest, primarily in the popular resort towns and in big cities like Madrid and Barcelona.
Despite disagreement about how large the inflation will be, it seems that everybody in the real estate sector in Spain agree on one thing: The fall in house prices during recent years is definitely over. Average prices rose modestly last year. Meanwhile sales increased by over 11 percent, a trend expected to continue in both 2016 and 2017.
Here are the places with the highest price increase during the past year:
- Torroella de Montgri (Girona) + 22.9 percent
- Santa Eularia des Riu (Ibiza) + 21.1 percent
- Campos (Mallorca) + 20.9 percent.
According to Caixa it has also become more common to rent a home in recent years. Today it is estimated that 85 percent of houses in Spain are inhabited by the house owner.
Related article: More properties are being sold