Spain's Foreign Home Purchases Fall 13 Percent in the First Half, the Sharpest Drop Since 2020

Foreign buyers signed for 62,327 private-sector homes in Spain in the first half of 2026, down 13 percent year on year and the sharpest first-half fall since 2020, according to transaction data from the Notarial Statistical Information Centre, known as CIEN, reported on 15 October. Non-resident buyers carried most of the decline: their purchases fell 18 percent to 22,940, the lowest half-year count since the first half of 2021.

What it means for a foreign buyer

If you are buying in Spain now, you are competing against fewer foreign bidders than at any point in five years, and it has bought you nothing on price. The average price paid by foreign buyers rose 9.4 percent to 2,644 euros per square metre over the same six months in which their numbers fell 13 percent. For non-residents specifically the average reached 3,493 euros per square metre, up 11.8 percent. Volume and price moved in opposite directions, which means the buyers who left were the ones at the bottom of the market, not the ones setting the clearing price in the coastal and island segments. Do not go into a negotiation this autumn expecting a softer seller because the headline says demand is falling.

If you already own and are thinking about exit, the number that matters is the 18 percent fall in non-resident purchases, because non-residents are the pool most likely to buy a holiday or investment unit from you. That pool is shrinking while the regions where it concentrates stay narrow: 40.3 percent of all non-resident purchases in the first half landed in the Valencian Community and 25.3 percent in Andalusia, against 6.4 percent in the Balearics and 1.5 percent in Madrid. Outside those two regions, the depth of foreign resale demand is thinner than the national figures suggest.

Price your resale against domestic buyers, not the foreign bid you paid.

What changed

The comparison base is the first half of 2025, when the notaries counted 71,155 foreign purchases. Foreign buyers accounted for 18.3 percent of private housing sales in the first half of 2026, down from the shares recorded in the two preceding years.

The decline splits unevenly between the two categories of foreign buyer. Resident foreigners, people living in Spain, bought 39,387 homes, down 9.7 percent, and made up 63.2 percent of foreign purchases. Non-residents bought 22,940, down 18 percent, for 36.8 percent of the total.

Prices rose in every category. Resident foreigners paid an average of 2,102 euros per square metre, up 9.8 percent. Spanish nationals paid 1,971 euros, up 8.7 percent. The gap between what non-residents and resident foreigners pay per square metre widened to 1,391 euros from 1,210 euros a year earlier.

Regionally, the steepest falls in foreign purchases were Cantabria at 20.5 percent, the Canary Islands at 20.3 percent and Madrid at 19.7 percent. The Balearics and the Valencian Community both fell 15.4 percent. Only two regions recorded increases: Castilla-La Mancha, up 4.4 percent, and Extremadura, up 3.3 percent.

By nationality, Moroccans were the largest single group at 4,960 purchases, or 8 percent, followed by the British at 4,541, Italians at 4,109, Romanians at 3,974 and Germans at 3,907. The sharpest declines came from Russia at 26.2 percent, China at 26.1 percent, the United States at 22 percent and the United Kingdom at 21 percent. Venezuelan buyers rose 10.2 percent and Colombians 7.4 percent. Americans paid the most per square metre at 3,948 euros, Moroccans the least at 801 euros.

The mechanism

This is a statistical release, not a rule change. The transaction counts come from CIEN, the notaries' statistical centre, which means they are built from deeds actually signed before a notary rather than from listings, asking prices or mortgage approvals. A Spanish sale is not a sale until it is signed as an escritura in front of a notary, so CIEN measures completions and lags the moment a buyer decided to walk away by the length of a conveyance.

Price figures in the release are attributed to the land registrars, a separate body that records title once the deed is lodged. The two datasets are drawn from different stages of the same transaction, which is why volume and price in one release can point in opposite directions without either being wrong. Because nothing here is a gazetted instrument, there is no commencement date and no transitional period.

Context

Spain has no national ban on foreign ownership, and non-EU buyers can purchase freehold residential property without a permit. What has changed around them is the policy layer: a proposed 100 percent transfer tax surcharge on non-EU buyers that has repeatedly been announced without being enacted, a set of housing decrees re-enacted in October extending a fund purchase ban to 2030, and a drafted decree law from the Canary Islands seeking authority to limit non-resident foreign home buying in the archipelago. The golden visa route closed in 2025, removing the residency incentive that underpinned a share of non-resident buying earlier in the decade.

Against that backdrop, the first-half numbers are the first hard evidence of how much foreign demand has actually moved rather than how much politicians have proposed to move it.