While the Catalonian political unrest continues, the Barcelona property market remains in robust health thanks to high local demand and foreign buyers returning, after a quiet 2017.
“Local demand is keeping the market growing,” commented Mark Stucklin in Spanish Property Insight magazine. However, he believes that foreign buyers are now coming back to the market, as they discount any negative effects from the political standoff.
Sales in the Spanish second city rose by 23 per cent in 2017, and foreign buyers have constituted 50 per cent of demand in the city centre since 2011, according to Stucklin.
Total real estate investment in Spain in 2017 rose to €9 billion, a 9 per cent increase over 2016, according to data published in late March 2018. This is above the European average and the majority (65 per cent) came from outside the country.
Of the non-Spanish investment, almost half (47 per cent) came from other European countries, with 41 per cent coming from the United States (a 31 per cent rise on 2016) and small but increasingly important percentages came from Asia and the Middle East.
