Housing crisis
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Cristina Vallejo
Malaga
Saturday, 21 September 2024, 07:24
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Andalucía accounts for almost one in four homes undergoing foreclosure in Spain. These proceedings refer to those homes whose owners are threatened with eviction, not squatters. These also only refer to private homeowners - individuals, not businesses. So, in the second quarter of this year, the number of proceedings that could lead to eviction due to non-payment of mortgage amounted to 2,727 throughout Spain, of which 629 were in Andalucía, just over 23% of the total. There is only one other region that exceeds it in potential foreclosures, namely Catalonia with 639 for the same quarter.
In any case, these figures are lower than those of one year ago. In the second quarter of 2023 some 3,291 eviction proceedings had been actioned across Spain, which means that they have fallen by 17% year-on-year. In Andalucía the fall was steeper at 24%, when 828 cases kicked off in the second quarter of last year. There are regions in which the fall has been greater, particularly La Rioja (-64%, from 28 to 10), Extremadura (-38% from 47 to 29 from one year to the next) and Valencia, where they have fallen by 30% from 668 to 467. In contrast, in Catalonia the fall amounts to just 8%.
It should also be noted that the figure for the second quarter of this year is the lowest number of foreclosures started since 2020, the year of the pandemic. Covid halted all types of foreclosure proceedings and there were just 279 in the region. The following year (2021) saw their number rebound strongly: up to 1,022 between April and June. From then on, however, they began to fall relentlessly (953 in 2022 and 828 in 2023).
This development suggests that the rise in interest rates recorded in recent years due to, firstly, the rise in inflation caused by both the pandemic in the form of cutbacks in supplies and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, then the consequent rise in mortgage repayments, has not inflated the eviction risk statistics. That is surprising, considering that the Euribor ended 2021 in the negative at -0.5% and then reached over 4.15% in October 2023.
Since then, as the pace of price rises slowed down and the first interest rate cuts by central banks were seen, the Euribor has been easing off too and in its daily rates has already fallen below the 3% mark on some days. Now, therefore, the monthly payments linked to mortgages have begun to fall: the August economic review resulted in an annual saving of 1,000 euros for the average mortgage loan signed for in Malaga.
So the most recent figures for housing foreclosure processes kicking off in the second quarter of this year are far from the peak levels of a decade ago when the fallout from the 2008 economic crisis was still raging. As such, between April and June 2014, some 12,429 eviction processes were started up in Spain, a figure that is 4.5 times that of the same period this year. As far as Andalucía is concerned, the worst second quarter of the last decade was not that of 2014, but that of 2015 when 2,760 possible evictions started up - that figure is 3.5 times higher than the latest figure. All data have been released by the Spain's INE national statistics institute.
If Andalucía is the region with the second highest number of potential evictions of private individuals from their homes in the second quarter of this year, making up almost one in four of the total for Spain, does the scenario change when we look at the first six months of the year? The picture is more bleak, as Andalucía jumps into first place, with 1,252 homes facing foreclosure proceedings here ahead of the 1,206 in Catalonia. The other region with more than 1,000 foreclosure proceedings in place is Valencia at 1,016.
The total of eviction cases under way in Andalucía between January and June of this year for privately-owned homes represents 22.5% of the total for Spain, which amounts to 5,558. If we group Andalucía, Catalonia and Valencia together, they account for over 60% of all those registered in Spain.
The number of proceedings that could lead to repossession due to mortgage default started during the first half of the year fell by 14% in Spain compared to the figures for the same period in 2023. In Andalucía, the fall is 21%.
Of the last few years, 2024 is the year with the lowest number of eviction proceedings taken up since 2020, the year of the pandemic, when just under 3,500 were counted in Spain between January and June, and just over 800 in Andalucía.
Once again the figures for the first half of 2024 contrast with those of 10 years ago, when in Spain there were more than 24,500 eviction proceedings started, that is four times more than now, while in Andalucía there were 4,470 cases in progress, 3.5 times more than now. The key difference is that, back in 2014, Andalucía was not the region with the highest number of individuals threatened with eviction - that 'honour' fell to Catalonia.
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