Housing crisis
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There is now a complete and official reckoning on the performance of the property market on the Costa del Sol and across Malaga province for the whole of 2024. The main headline is that the sharp rise in prices did not slow down either property sales or mortgage contracts being signed. Still, let's look in turn at how the different parameters evolved in Malaga.
Spain's Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda in Madrid ratified this week what other statistics had been anticipating: Malaga was at the head of the price rises for buying a roof over our heads in Spain. In 2024 the price per square metre in the province rose by 11% to 2,522.20 euros, surpassed only by the Balearic Islands, where the rise was 12.1%. Although Malaga is in second place for growth, in value per square metre it sits in sixth place behind Madrid (3,370.50 euros), the Balearic Islands (3,316.70 euros), Guipúzcoa (2,986.30 euros), Barcelona (2,766.9 euros) and Vizcaya (2,552.10 euros). The average price per square metre nationwide stood at 1,972.10 euros at the end of 2024, which implied an annual increase of 7%. Malaga, therefore, exceeds the average in both price per square metre and rate of increase.
Furthermore, within Malaga province, of the 12 municipalities with more than 25,000 inhabitants, which are those analysed in the breakdown provided by the Ministry of Housing, only in two of them was the price rise less than 10%: Antequera (up 7.4% to 1,184.20 euros per square metre) and Ronda (up 9.76% to 1,214.40 euros per m2).
In the other ten municipalities rises were well over 10%. The largest increase was in Estepona with a rise of 20.4% to 2,347.50 euros per square metre. The rises were between 18% and 19% in Benalmádena, Fuengirola, Marbella, Mijas, Vélez-Málaga and Torremolinos, between 16% and 17% for Malaga city and Rincón de la Victoria and then 13.7% for Alhaurín de la Torre. Within this upward trend in general Marbella continues to be the most expensive town in the province to buy a house, with the price per square metre averaging 3,037 euros. The cheapest is Antequera, with an average price of 1,184.20 euros, followed by Ronda (1,214.40 euros).
So Malaga is the second province in Spain with the highest price increases and the sixth most expensive for homebuying. Yet last year there were 35,385 sales and purchases in Malaga, up 4% on 2023, when the volume of property deals was just over 34,000. This growth is, in any case, lower than that recorded in Spain with nearly 642,000 deals done across the country, almost 10% more than in 2023. In Andalucía there were over 126,000 sales and purchases, which represents a growth of 6.84% year-on-year. A good portion of that is due to Malaga, as the real estate activity in the province accounts for almost 30% of that total for Andalucía. Moreover, Malaga was the fifth province in Spain in terms of property transactions, only behind Madrid, Barcelona, Alicante and Valencia. In Malaga alone there were more property sales and purchases last year than in entire regions such as Castilla y León and Castilla-La Mancha.
Moreover, the growth in sales and purchases picked up speed in December, by which time the bulk of the year's price increases had been applied, and yet in that last month of 2024 there were 3,072 housing transactions, 44% more than a year earlier.
Data from Spain's INE national statistics institute specifies how many of the purchases are of new homes and how many are for pre-owned property. In Malaga, as already announced by the Spanish association for property registrars, purchases of brand new flats grew by 58% year-on-year to more than 10,700, in what has been its best figure since 2011. In contrast there was a 9% fall in sales of pre-owned homes to 24,657. That said, the used housing market still outweighs new developments by more than double the volume of deals done.
In Spain as a whole sales of new homes also grew more than pre-owned, setting new highs, at least since 2013. In the opinion of María Matos, research director at property portal Fotocasa, new housing is experiencing a "very intense moment" due to the "strong" interest in buying brand new homes, but she warns: "We may find ourselves with a serious problem of rising prices if demand continues like this." This is because this situation comes up against the difficulty for developers to find land they can finance, then to deal with the rising cost of materials and the slowdown in some developments due to bureaucracy.
Francisco Iñareta, spokesman for property portal Idealista, also points out the risk of price tensions "continuing or even accelerating" given that "buyer appetite is occurring in an environment of increasingly reduced supply." In any case, experts believe that last year's booming figures were supported by the fall in interest rates and the resilience of the labour market.
The intensity of sales and purchases in December was also reflected in mortgage activity. In that month, 1,957 home loans were signed in Malaga, 62.4% more than a year earlier. This was also the highest figure for the month of December since 2007. Thanks to this last push, Malaga managed to close 2024 with growth in mortgage signings. In the year as a whole, 20,070 loans were taken out, 2.2% more than in 2023. As of November, the cumulative number of mortgages was 18,113, a decrease of 1.75% compared to the same time a year earlier.
Looking at the 20,070 mortgages signed last year in the province alongside the more than 35,000 sales and purchases that took place across Malaga, it can be deduced that there are many houses that are paid for in cash. Still, what can we learn from the data about those that are paid for with a bank loan? For example, how much is the average mortgage requested: at the end of 2024, in Malaga it stood at 186,717 euros, 5.5% lower than that requested on the same dates in 2023. Even so, Malaga's average mortgage amount was the third highest in Spain after the Balearic Islands (almost 290,000 euros) and Madrid (almost 236,000 euros). According to INE figures, the average loan requested in Spain to finance a home is around 152,000 euros.
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