Spain Home Sales Drop 5.1% in July 2026 as Eleven Regions Contract
Spain registered 61,417 home sales in July 2026, down 5.1% year on year. Eleven of seventeen regions contracted while asking prices kept climbing.
Spain's National Statistics Institute registered 61,417 home sales in July 2026, 5.1% fewer than in July 2025, in the property-transmission statistics released on 25 September 2026. The figure sits inside a broader cooling: sales of property of every kind came to 117,538, down 3.8% on the year, and the January-to-July cumulative total for housing is now 3.0% below the same stretch of 2025. The numbers are provisional.
The monthly direction was the opposite of the annual one. Compared with June, July housing sales rose 3.6%. Activity did not stall during the month; it simply came in well under an unusually strong July 2025.
The decline sits almost entirely in existing homes
Of the 61,417 dwellings sold, 48,128 were existing homes and 13,289 were new build. Existing-home sales fell 6.1% year on year; new build gave up only 1.4%. New build is 21.6% of the market, so the segment that held up is also the segment that cannot expand quickly, and the one that carried the drop is where almost four in five Spanish transactions happen.
The sharper fall was in subsidised housing. Protected-regime sales came to 3,810, down 14.4%, against 57,607 free-market sales, down 4.4%. Subsidised stock is 6.2% of the total, so its collapse barely moves the headline, but it is the part of the market aimed at buyers priced out of the rest.
Coastal markets fell, the interior grew
Six regions grew and eleven fell. The gainers were Navarre at 26.4%, Galicia at 10.8%, Castile and Leon at 9.7%, Castile-La Mancha at 7.3%, Murcia at 2.6% and the Canary Islands at 2.1%. The steepest declines were Asturias at 15.2%, the Balearic Islands at 14.3%, the Basque Country at 12.4%, Aragon at 11.4% and Madrid at 11.3%, followed by Cantabria, La Rioja, Valencia, Catalonia, Extremadura and Andalusia.
That split cuts across the geography international buyers care about. The Balearics, Valencia and Catalonia, three of the markets with the highest foreign-purchase shares in Europe, all contracted. The interior regions that grew are thinly traded, so a modest absolute change produces a large percentage one: Navarre's 26.4% comes off a small base.
What our own Spain data shows alongside it
Our Spanish national row, in its 22 September 2026 snapshot, carries an asking price of 3,390 USD per square metre and an asking rent of 17.50 USD per square metre a month, both national August 2026 averages from a listings portal. On a twelve-month view the price trend is 12.8%, measured on the institute's own transaction-based house price index for the first quarter of 2026.
Those two things are not in conflict, and the reason is worth stating. The 5.1% is a count of deeds registered in July; the 12.8% is a price series, and the 3,390 figure is an asking price posted in August. Fewer sales at higher asking prices is a recognisable pattern for a market where sellers have not yet adjusted. Spain's transaction costs run to 15.3% of the purchase price, among the highest in Western Europe, and our bubble-risk reading of 61 out of 100 is in the elevated band. Non-resident landlords pay 19% on net rental income if they are tax-resident in the EU or EEA and 24% on gross rent if they are not.
Inheritances accounted for a further 43,840 property transmissions in July and donations for 4,806, a reminder that in Spain a large share of housing changes hands without a sale at all.
Sources: Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (INE), Estadistica de Transmisiones de Derechos de la Propiedad, July 2026, provisional data, published 25 September 2026 https://www.ine.es/dyngs/Prensa/ETDP0726.htm; Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (INE), ETDP July 2026 press note, PDF edition https://www.ine.es/dyngs/Prensa/ETDP0726.pdf