Shorouk Express
Amid government attempts to restrict property purchases by some non-resident foreigners in Spain, new data reveals that non-Spanish nationals who don’t live in the country accounted for 8 percent of total property purchases in 2024.
Non-resident foreigners bought almost 8 percent of properties in Spain in 2024, new data from Spain’s Ministry of Housing has revealed.
Looking at the figures, almost three-quarters of a million homes (715,429 total) were sold in Spain last year, a 12 percent increase on 2023.
Of this number, 7.84 percent were homes bought by non-resident foreigners, who acquired 1,200 more properties than in the previous year.
Unfortunately, the ministry numbers do not differentiate between non-EU non-resident foreigners and EU non-resident foreigners, a key distinction given the Spanish government’s recent proposed crackdown on third-country buyers who don’t reside in Spain or have links to the country.
READ ALSO: How would Spain’s 100% tax on non-EU property buyers work?
Nonetheless, what is clear is that non-resident foreign buyers bought 56,139 homes in Spain in 2024, which is barely 2.2 percent more than the 54,917 they purchased in 2023. This stat therefore includes EU nationals such as Swedes, French or Dutch as well as non-EU nationals such as Brits, Americans or Chinese nationals.
This modest 2.2 percent increase contrasts with the 13 percent increase in transactions carried out by residents in Spain — both Spaniards and foreigners — who last year bought 654,905 homes between them in the midst of a housing crisis where access to housing for both for purchase and rent has been hit by skyrocketing property prices.
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Of the total number of property purchases in 2024, just over 128,600 were made by foreigners overall, both resident and non-resident, accounting for 18 percent of all sales. Compared to 2023, this represents a rise of 4.5 percent.
A total of 43.6 percent of those purchases made by foreigners were made by non-residents, 2.2 percent more than the previous year.
However, the market ‘weight’ of transactions carried out by non-resident foreigners as a proportion of the total fell slightly compared to 2023 by a little under one percentage point (-0.75 percent).
This comes amid a tightening of rules against non-residents in the Spanish property market, including the proposed 100 percent tax on non-EU non-resident buyers, or a possible complete ban on them buying Spanish property, and the confirmed scrapping of the Golden Visa scheme in April 3rd.
READ ALSO: Golden visa cancellation spells end of Spain’s ‘best’ residency option
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According to Housing Ministry data, the bulk of house purchases by non-resident foreigners in 2024 was concentrated mainly in the Málaga and Alicante areas.
These two provinces alone accounted for 53.5 percent of purchases (18.7 percent and 34.8 percent each) with 10,512 and 19,556 transactions respectively.
In no other province in Spain did non-resident foreigners exceed 5,000 acquisitions. In Madrid and Barcelona, for example, 1,229 and 1,874 were registered respectively, while in the archipelagos 3,934 were signed in the Balearic Islands and 4,916 in the Canary Islands.
In places like this, the long-established foreign populations in Spain – Britons, Belgians, Dutch, Swedes – continue to buy property even if they don’t have residency in Spain. In many cases these will be holiday homes.
The figures also reveal some interesting emerging nationalities entering the Spanish property market such as Poles and Czechs, as well as Latinos.
In addition, in recent years Spain and Madrid in particular has seen a surge in Latin American buyers. The capital, experts say, has become the “epicentre of luxury real estate” and “the world capital for Latin Americans leaving Latin America. Before it was Miami, but now the United States with Trump has become an unattractive country,” explains Gonzalo Bernardos, professor of Economics at the University of Barcelona.
