Lowest fall in housing sales since crash in property market

House sales are still at very low levels compared to those registered before the crash in the property market at the end of 2007. According to figures published today by the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE) housing sales were down by 20.3% compared to the same month a year ago. However, this is the lowest fall since housing sales began to decline at the beginning of 2008. In addition over 37.000 transactions were registered, which is only the second time sales have reached this figure since January this year.

Out of all the 37.000 transactions registered 50.5% were for new housing and 49.5% were for used housing. As usual the biggest drop in sales has been registered in used housing with a fall of 20.5% compared to a year ago (18,351 transactions).
New housing sales have fallen by 20.1% to 18,688 transactions. This fall is higher than that registered in June when new housing sales fell by only 18.

1% compared to the same period last year.

When comparing figures for July with those for June it can be seen that housing sales have increased by 4.7% for the third month in a row while during the first 7 months of the year housing sales have fallen overall by 33.1%.

The figures for July are encouraging because only in April 2008 housing sales registered a fall of less than 20.3% as seen in July this year. However, this could also be down to the fact that the figures for April 2008 were based on comparing those for April 2007 which had fewer working days in the month due to the fact that it coincided with Easter week.