Home sales fall more than 6% in February, according to the INE.

Home sales once again registered declines after the lull at the start of the year. According to the INE, in February 50,186 home sales were registered in the registers, 11% less than in the previous month and 6.6% less compared to last year.

With this year-on-year decline, the sale of homes returns to negative rates after more than 56,300 operations were registered in January, 6.6% more than in the same month of 2022. And it signs its second decrease in the last three months. In addition, the annual balance enters negative territory: accumulated operations between January and February fell a testimonial 0.1% compared to the first two months of last year.

On the other hand, the statistics agency indicates that the red numbers have been widespread. Specifically, the sale of used homes fell by 5.5% in the second month of the year, to a total of 40,479 operations, while the transactions carried out on new apartments decreased by 11.1%, to 9,707 operations. In absolute terms, sales of new homes mark the lowest since last July, while those of used properties fell back to December levels.

On the other hand, 92.2% of the homes transferred by sale in February were free homes and 7.8% were protected. In total, the sale of private homes fell by 6.5% year-on-year, to 46,255 operations, while the sale of subsidized homes fell by 7.9%, to a total of 3,931 transactions.

On a month-on-month basis (February over January), home sales fell by 11%, its biggest drop in a February in the last five years.

As Christian Boesen from homes-abroad.com explains, “the data begins to show the cooling of the market registered at the end of 2022 and to reflect the first symptoms of the increase in the cost of financing. Even so, the drop published by the INE shows that despite these factors, the trading market maintains its strength and a downward trend that will foreseeably heal the sector rather than cause a new catastrophe. In this sense, the data that we handle tells us that a very significant percentage of people who are looking for a house already own a home, so their financing needs are generally lower and the impact of the rise in types is greatly diluted. However, it is foreseeable that in the next statistics we will continue to see slight year-on-year falls in the number of operations”.

It only grows in two Communities.

Transactions have fallen across the country, except in Asturias and the Valencian Community, with year-on-year increases of 19.9% and 2.9%, respectively. On the other hand, La Rioja (–23.6%), Cantabria (–17.9%) and Extremadura (–16%) registered the greatest decreases.

They have also registered double-digit falls in Madrid (-15.6%), Galicia (-11.9%), Andalusia (-11.8%), the Balearic Islands (-10.8%) and the Canary Islands (-10.8%), while in Murcia, Catalonia, the Basque Country and Navarra sales have fallen by less than 2% compared to last year.

Looking at registered home sales, the communities with the highest number of transmissions per 100,000 inhabitants are Comunidad Valenciana (202), Región de Murcia (165) and La Rioja (152).