Foreign buyers of Spanish real estate: where do they come from?

Foreign buyers are more interested than ever by the Spanish real estate market.

British buyers (15%), French buyers (9%), German buyers (8%), Belgian buyers (6%) lead the way. Swedish buyers (6%), Italian buyers (5%), Romanian buyers (5%) and Chinese buyers (4%) are also important. Together they represent the top 8 nationalities of foreign buyers in Spain.

However the Spanish real estate does not attract buyers from only these 8 countries.

Indeed, foreign buyers come from over 50 countries. Precisely, 42% of the foreign buyers in Spain come from countries that are not France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Italy, Romania, China. They come from many other countries in Europe, Latin America, North America, Africa, Asia.

Foreign buyers of Spanish real estate: where do they buy?

Foreign buyers bought over 61.000 properties in Spain last year (2017), an absolute record. This represented 13% of the total transactions.

What’s more, the figures we have for 2018 confirm this trend. An astonishing 16.500 properties were bought by foreign buyers in Spain between January and March.

Where do foreign buyers decide to purchase Spanish properties?

Foreign buyers mostly buy in the coastal regions of Spain.

Indeed, they represent more than 1 in 5 buyers in many Spanish provinces. Alicante, Tenerife, Baleares, Las Palmas, Malaga, Girona, Almeria, Melilla, Murcia, Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Cadiz, in most southern provinces as well as in the capital the foreign buyers buy many Spanish properties.

Even if the figures above date from Q1 2017, they reveal how important foreign buyers are in Spain. In Valencia (Comunitat Valenciana) foreign buyers now represent 26% of the buyers, which is the double of the national average (13%). In 5 years, the number of sales to foreign buyers has been multiplied by 4 in the Valencian Region (source).

In the first 3 months of 2018 alone, foreign buyers purchased 1583 properties in the area of Valencia.

“International buyers purchase luxury properties”: WRONG !!!!

Foreign buyers don’t buy exclusively luxury properties. In Valencia for example, the average property bought by a  foreign buyer was at 89.034 euros, which is less than the 96.127 spend by Spanish buyers (source).

I personally bought a property in Valencia capital recently for 75.000 euros, a 85 square meters flat that we are going to renovate, as a rental investment. If you are looking to do the same, feel free to get in touch!