Spain property deals fell by 7.7 per cent in July: Balearics suffers one of the sharpest declines

Registered house sales saw their decline accelerate in July to 7.7 per cent year-on-year – the sharpest year-on-year fall in more than two years – with a total of 60,448 transactions, according to preliminary figures published on Monday by the Association of Land Registrars.

Based on data covering 94.9 per cent of the registers analysed, the land registrars note that, with the exception of June, every month of 2026 has seen a fall in transactions. By autonomous community, the majority recorded double-digit declines in house sales.

The sharpest declines were seen in Cantabria (-17.6 per cent); the Balearics (-15.6 per cent); and Asturias and Melilla (-15.5 per cent in both cases). Among the major markets, transactions fell by 10.9 per cent in Madrid and by 7.9 per cent in Catalonia.

The only increases were recorded in Navarre (26.4 per cent), Castile and León (6.2 per cent) and Castile-La Mancha (2.4 per cent). Looking at the total number of property sales recorded – not just residential properties – provisional figures show that there were almost 118,000 property sales in July, representing a 4.7 per cent decrease compared with July 2025.

All this is taking place against a backdrop marked by a shortage of available housing on the market, which is unable to meet current demand and is pushing prices upwards; and by geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and their potential impact on inflation and the Euribor.

Mortgages for the purchase of a home fell by 4.2 per cent in July to 43,269. This stronger performance of mortgages relative to property sales meant that, in the case of residential property, the number of mortgages exceeded 70 per cent of sales over the last seven months, reaching 71.6 per cent in July.

As regards residential mortgages, increases were recorded in six regions, whilst they fell in thirteen.
The most significant falls were recorded in Cantabria (-32.3 per cent), the Canary Islands (-23.7 per cent), Aragon (-22.1 per cent) and La Rioja (-21.4 per cent). In Madrid, they fell by 3.8 per cent, whilst in Catalonia they rose by 2.9 per cent.

Among the largest increases, the Balearics stood out (24.9 per cent), followed at some distance by Castile and León (9.2 per cent) and Asturias (7.1 per cent). For mortgages as a whole – not just those on residential properties – the year-on-year decline moderated to 0.6 per cent, down to 57,413.