Peak investment in Spanish hotels

LAST year was a spectacular one for Spain’s booming hotel industry as the residential property market shed the last relics of recession.

Total investment in Spanish hotels reached an astronomical €2.15 billion in 2016, the second highest year of the decade after 2015. 

International investors interested in new and ever more luxurious hotel complexes across Spain are behind the financing surge. Four and five-star hotels are specifically desirable for foreign companies which are expected to increase their Spanish investment portfolios in 2017. 

On the residential property front the number of so-called ‘unsellable homes’ is rapidly dwindling. These are homes that were built during the boom years pre-2007 and have been incredibly difficult to sell off since, due to the recession but also often their location and style. 

Yet from a peak of 650,000 unsaleable homes in 2009, there are now just over 300,000. In 2016 the number fell by 20 per cent and that feat is expected to be repeated this year. 

Huge swathes of the country, particularly around the Costas, now no longer have any unsellable homes, while they once seemed destined to be permanently inked on the landscape. 

The good news comes as the total number of homes sold in 2016 rose by over a quarter to around 445,000. The volume is expected to top the magic half million mark this year.