The sale and purchase of housing in the Canary Islands fell by 10.8 per cent in February to 1,937 transactions, according to the data published by the National Statistics Institute (INE) this week.
In Spain as a whole, the sale and purchase of housing in February also recorded a 6.6 percent drop compared to the same month last year, to a total of 50,186 transactions, in a context of higher interest rates to contain inflation.
With this year-on-year decline, housing sales and purchases return to negative rates after more than 56,300 transactions were recorded in January, 6.6% more than in the same month of 2022.
The fall in the number of home sales and purchases in February was due to the drop in both transactions involving pre-owned flats and those involving new homes.
Specifically, the sale and purchase of pre-owned homes fell by 5.5% in the second month of the year, to 40,479 transactions, while transactions on new flats fell by 11.1%, to 9,707 transactions.
In February, 92.2% of the dwellings transferred by sale and purchase were free dwellings and 7.8% were protected dwellings. In total, the sale and purchase of free housing fell by 6.5% year-on-year, to 46,255 transactions, while the sale and purchase of protected housing fell by 7.9%, to 3,931 transactions.
On a month-on-month basis (February over January), housing sales and purchases fell by 11%, its largest decline in a February in the last five years.
