Madrid, Barcelona, other markets are well on their way. But some markets are still crushed.
By Wolf Richter (and myself) and cross-posted from WOLF STREET
Spain’s last epic housing bubble, one of the biggest in living memory, propelled median home prices to €2,100 per square meter, at which point the bubble began to burst. The national median price eventually plunged 31%, according to government data, as Spain’s financial system began to collapse only to get bailed out by an international aid package. The long-drawn-out event wreaked all kinds of mayhem on the economy, workers, and the people. So where is the housing market now?
The median home price in Spain increased by 4.4% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2019, compared to the same period last year, to €1,636 per square meter (to convert € per square meter to $ per square foot, divide by 9.6), according to new data by Spain’s Ministry of Industry and Development. This pushed the national median price to its highest level since 2012, but it remains 22% below the crazy bubble peak:
Averaged out across the nation, across hot and cold housing markets, the current upswing in house prices has a ways to go before it comes even close to emulating the mind-watering dimensions of the last bubble. But in some markets, prices have been surging for four years, while in other markets, prices are now below where they’d been in Q1 2015, during the national low point. In these markets, prices have remained crushed (we’ll get to those in a moment). But the national median price throws all of them into the same bucket…
The bigger bubble in Spain is in the rental market, thanks to AirBed&Bug. Rentals in the city centre of Malaga have gone up some 50% since 2012. It means low paid in Malaga can no longer afford rents anywhere near the city centre. You need to cover this.
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