Malaga mortgage mystery: why loan signatures doubled in January 2026 despite falling sales
A rise in 'mortgage splitting' has artificially inflated Malaga’s property stats, as multiple loans are now being attached to single property units
The mortgage statistics published by the INE (national institute of statistics) show a striking increase in Malaga province.
According to the January report, the mortgages signed that month reached 3,058, twice as many as the mortgages in January 2025 (1,591).
A similarly high figure in recent history can be traced all the way back to 2008, when there were just over 4,000 mortgages. The growth of 92 per cent in Malaga compares to a much more moderate 6.3 per cent in Spain as a whole.
Only the province of Lugo comes close, where the increase in mortgage activity was 77 per cent, but this is a much smaller market where the sale of a single development can imply a strong movement: in January, barely a couple of hundred loans were signed.
How come have mortgages in Malaga province doubled? There is a phenomenon that doesn't make sense at first glance: in January, there were more mortgages than direct sales (3,058 compared to 3,044). This is odd given that there are usually more sales than mortgages in Malaga province.
At the same time, while the number of mortgages has doubled compared to last year, the total amount of money lent has only increased by about 50 per cent, instead of 92 per cent. This means the average mortgage has actually fallen, from 194,700 euros in January last year to 157,500 euros this January.
That doesn’t make much sense, because house prices in Malaga are rising and reached record highs in 2025 after increasing by another 15 per cent.
According to the INE, the mystery lies in the splitting of properties across several mortgages. This artificially inflates the number of mortgages and must have occurred in a fair number of flats in the province. A simple analogy to reflect this would be dividing a winning lottery ticket among several people.
