Home sales in the Canary Islands fell by 20.7% in May compared to the same month in 2022, three times more than in the rest of the country, and the signing of mortgages to finance this type of operation plummeted by 42.6%, almost double the average, according to the advance data from the Association of Property Registrars of Spain.
In Spain as a whole, registered home sales decreased by 6.7% in May compared to the same month in 2022, while mortgages for purchase accentuated their fall to 24.2%. Specifically, in May, 54,063 home sales were recorded, 4,000 less than in the same period of the previous year.
Regarding housing mortgages, 32,043 operations were constituted in May, around 10,200 less than the previous year, in a context marked by the rise in interest rates to face inflation and the consequent increase in financing costs.
By autonomous communities, the largest decreases in home sales were recorded in La Rioja (37%); Canary Islands (20.7%); Madrid (20.6%); Basque Country (18.9%) or Balearic Islands (17.5%).
In the case of mortgages, the largest drops occurred in the Canary Islands (42.6%) and the Balearic Islands (36.8%), followed by Extremadura (32%); Galicia (31.5%) or Catalonia (30.9%).
With these data, in May the decrease in sales moderated, while the granting of mortgages accentuated its collapse compared to April.
Mortgages, as happened with sales, slowed down significantly since June of last year, showing in July the first annual decrease in total mortgages in almost a year and a half (2.9%), while mortgages on housing still maintained a slight annual growth (1.1%).
In the following months, more moderate growth was observed until December, when falls exceeding 8% occurred.
In May, following the trend of sales, with four consecutive months of progressive decreases, the two modalities, sales and mortgages, were in negative values, being more intense in mortgages, with a fall of 24.3% in those of housing, and 22.5% in total.
