The Balearics was the Spanish autonomous community with the highest percentage of home purchases by foreigners in the first quarter of the year, at 28.9%, according to data published on Thursday by the Association of Land Registrars.
Across Spain as a whole, the average house price rose by 8.9% year-on-year in March, reaching €2,429 per square metre, marking another all-time high. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, prices rose by 3.2%. For resale homes (€2,366/m²), prices rose by 2.2%, and for new homes by 6.2%, reaching €2,655/m², again setting record prices for both categories.
As for the number of sales, this fell slightly by -0.1%, with 178,096 transactions, still at levels not seen since the third quarter of 2007. The year-on-year decline in sales was 1.9%, with 701,828 transactions.
New-build homes (39,473 sales) showed a quarterly increase of 7.2%, whilst second-hand homes reached 138,623 sales, with a quarterly decrease of 2%. Ten autonomous communities, as well as thirty provinces, recorded quarterly declines in the number of sales.
Furthermore, the registrars’ statistics indicate that foreign demand for housing has increased both in percentage and absolute terms during the first quarter of the year. The percentage of home purchases by foreigners stood at 13.92%, with just under 24,800 transactions. Of these, 58.31% were by European Union nationals and 16.82% by nationals from the rest of Europe.
By autonomous community, the highest percentages, above 20%, were recorded in the Balearics (28.89%), the Valencian Community (28.16%), the Canary Islands (22.78%) and Murcia (21.73%).
The autonomous communities with the highest average prices were the Community of Madrid (€4,407/m²), the Balearics (€4,173/m²), the Basque Country (€3,474/m²) and Catalonia (€2,852/m²).
The number of residential mortgages registered in the first quarter stood at 133,618, representing a quarterly increase of 0.9%, whilst year-on-year figures totalled 513,092, an increase of 15.2%. Seven autonomous communities recorded quarterly increases, with the largest increases in Andalusia (27,270 mortgages in the quarter), Catalonia (24,254), the Community of Madrid (20,379) and the Valencian Community (15,640).
Mortgage debt per square metre recorded its twelfth consecutive increase (2.6%), reaching an average of €1,808 per square metre, whilst per property it rose by 0.7%, marking the eighth consecutive quarterly increase, with an average amount of €172,430, setting a new record.