House sales in Spain fell by 25% in 2009

According to figures published by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) house sales fell by 24.9% in 2009 compared to 2008. Figures released by the INE show that there were a total of 414,811 house sales in 2009 – 53.2% for new housing and 46.8% for used housing.

In 2009, 220,663 new houses were sold – a fall of 20.6% compared to 194,178 for used houses which is a fall of 29.1%.

Out of the total number of sales 89.7% were for private housing although sales in this sector of the housing market also fell by 26% to 372,192 transactions while a total of 42,619 sales for government subsidised housing (VPO) were registered which is a fall of 13.6%.

The fall in house sales in 2009 was less than in 2008 when sales fell by 28.6% partly due to the fact that house sales picked up during the last few months of last year.

In December 2009, house sales fell by 0.3% compared to the same period in 2008 which is the smallest fall since records began.

In fact since records began house sales have fallen by less than 10% only four times – April 2008 (-7.1%), August 2009 (-9.9%), November 2009 (-2.6%) and in December 2009 (- 0.3%). Normally house sales have fallen above 20% with the maximum fall in sales registered in April 2009 (- 47.6%).

House sales fell by 7.7% in December compared to November 2009 which is in sharp contrast with the increase of 5% in sales registered in November.

In 2009, the highest number of house sales per 100,000 inhabitants was registered in La Rioja (1,840), Cantabria (1,653) and Murcia (1,580).

Out of all the house sales registered in 2009 57.3% were in Andalucía (86,916), the Valencian region (54,062), Madrid (51,302) and Catalonia (45,545).