Real estate agents in Mallorca are witnessing a surge in international demand for rural properties.
The Financial Times reported last week “Slow living and fast broadband help sell homes in rural Mallorca: international buyers appreciate the Balearic island’s rustic comforts mixed with modern infrastructure.”
According to Christina Deutsch of estate agent Engel & Völkers Mallorca: “The mix of modern convenience - superfast broadband and good road infrastructure - allied with an immersion in nature or slow living, is the “new luxury” people are after.
“People still want smart home tech, she says, but they are also looking for rustic comforts: their own well and olive grove, perhaps.
“Yesterday I met the vendors of a €9mn finca and the first things they wanted to show me were their homegrown grapefruit and lemons.”
The past three years have been the busiest in the past decade for the sale of rural properties across the Balearics, according to the INE, Spain’s statistics institute. In the prime market, the average house in the Central region - where many of the rural properties are located - had an asking price of nearly €1.7mn in 2023, with apartments at €1.114mn. That equates to a year-on-year increase of 7 per cent and 4 per cent respectively, according to analyst Casafari, the FT reported.
Another attraction is the fact that the new Balearic government scrapped inheritance tax in the Balearics earlier this year.
President Marga Prohens said in February: “I made a commitment to this during the election campaign and reiterated it at the time of the investiture. Within ten days it became a reality. More than 2,000 families have already benefited from the elimination of inheritance tax in the Balearics.”
Parliamentary spokesperson for the Partido Popular, Sebastiá Sagreras, highlighted the fact that beneficiaries have on average saved more than 16,000 euros.
“We are talking about 2,154 families who have saved an average of more than 16,000 euros that they would have paid under an Armengol government for the work and effort of a lifetime of their loved ones - their parents or grandparents. Marga Prohens is fulfilling everything she promised.”
Sagreras adds that “for things like this” the Balearic government will defend the fiscal and tax autonomy of the region against the “centralism” threatened by the government of Pedro Sánchez. “We will not allow Sánchez to make people pay for their inheritance.”
In 2023, foreigners accounted for 15% of total home purchases (compared to 13.8% in 2022), in Spain exceeding 87,300 transactions.
In 2022, with a lower percentage, they exceeded 88,800 transactions, in their best year in the historical series.
“This situation shows the current strength of foreign demand in the real estate context”, the Registrars highlight.
By nationalities, the British maintain their traditional leadership (9.5%), with more than 8,100 transactions.
They are followed by the Germans (7.3%), with more than 6,200, and the French (6.7%), with more than 5,700, maintaining the trio of leading nationalities.
“The good performance in the evolution of home purchases by foreigners in recent years has been due, in part, to the incorporation of new nationalities in the purchase of housing in Spain, with those that have traditionally done so leading the results, but with a wider and more heterogeneous distribution of weights”, emphasise the Registrars.