Malaga housing market analysis: sales rise 4.27% as cash purchases lose steam
Despite a 12% rise in mortgages, Malaga's 4.27% sales growth lag highlights a real estate supply crisis. Second-hand transactions stagnate at 1.4% while new-build demand remains resilient
Malaga’s housing market is experiencing a significant cooldown driven by soaring prices and a chronic lack of inventory.
While the province remains the fifth busiest in Spain by sheer volume of sales, its growth rate plummeted to just 4.27% in 2025, making it the fourth slowest-growing province in the country.
According to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), 36,806 properties were sold in Malaga last year. In absolute terms, the province trails only Madrid, Barcelona, Alicante, and Valencia. Within the region, Malaga remains the dominant force, accounting for one out of every four homes sold in Andalucía.
The growth rate, however, is half the average in Spain, which registered 714,237 sales in 2025 (+11.5%). Some provinces recorded significant growth, such as Zamora and Almeria with 30%. In Albacete and Ciudad Real the increase in activity was around 25%.
The comparison between 2007, before the economic crisis, and 2025 reflects the slowdown in Malaga. The latest record that gets close to the 42,386 homes sold in 2007 is from 2022 (41,600), compared to the 36,806 last year.
Although the issue is more palpable in the province, there are also voices warning of a cooling in the Spanish market as a whole. "As was predictable, 2025 ended with well over 714,000 homes sold, placing it close to 2007 when only 61,000 more homes were sold.
Although this upward trend seems unstoppable, the growth rates have been slowing down since before the summer due to the lack of a sufficient volume of homes on the market and the significant price rises caused by this deficit," real estate platform Idealista spokesperson Francisco Iñareta warns.
Iñareta believes that the housing market will keep growing in 2026, but at a slower pace.
More mortgages than cash sales
It is always interesting to compare the behaviour of sales with that of mortgages. According to the Ine, mortgages in Malaga rose by 12% in 2025, three times more than cash sales.
This suggests that investor activity, particularly cash purchases, may be slowing, while transactions backed by bank financing are gaining ground.
39% of the houses sold in Malaga in 2025
were paid in cash, compared to 61% financed with mortgages
Of the total number of purchases in the province, banks financed 61%, while the rest (39%) were a product of cash payments. Just a year earlier, the weight was 57% versus 43%, respectively.
In any case, Malaga still surpasses the average in Spain in terms of cash payments. In 2025, mortgages made 70% of the purchases in Spain possible. The portion is even higher in Vizcaya, Seville Guipúzcoa and Madrid, where mortgages made 90% of purchases possible. At the same time, only 39% of sales happened through banks in Teruel.
In terms of the different real estate segments, performance in Malaga was very uneven last year. While overall sales and purchases grew by 4.3%, new property transactions rose by 10.75%, to over 12,000, while sales of second-hand flats barely increased by 1.4%, although they are still the most abundant offer (there were almost 24,800 in 2025).
The statistics on affordable housing are also alarming. In 2025, only 1,181 sold homes were subsidised, compared to 35,625 free-market homes.
