The house price index rose 7% in the first quarter from a year earlier and 33,077 homes were sold, representing a decline of 4.1%, the National Institute of Statistics (INE) said on Friday.
According to the Index of House Prices (IPHab), between January and March, “the annual rate of change of IPHab was 7.0%, down 0.8 percentage points from the previous quarter, consistent with less dramatic price growth since the first quarter 2021.”
During the period under review, prices for existing homes “increased at a faster rate than new homes, at 7.6% and 5.5% respectively.” Thus, prices for existing homes rose 1.9 percentage points more than for new ones.
Compared to the previous quarter, “IPHab grew by 0.6% (1.3% in the previous quarter).”
By category, prices for existing housing “increased by 1.1%, and for new housing the change was -0.8%.”
In the first quarter, “33,077 homes were sold, representing a decrease of 4.1% compared to the same quarter in the previous year and a decrease of 3.1% compared to the previous quarter.”
The value of homes sold between January and March was €6.7 billion, down 1.8% on the same period in 2023.
In this quarter, “residential purchases by buyers belonging to the institutional family sector amounted to 28,283 units (85.5% of the total) for a total value of €5.7 billion (84.2% of the total).”
Buyers with a tax domicile outside the national territory accounted for 6.2% of the total number of transactions (2,067 houses), corresponding to 10.4% of the total transaction value.