Buying in Spain gets harder as house prices jump nearly 13%

If you’ve been putting off buying a home in Spain in the hope that prices might finally ease, the latest figures won’t make for encouraging reading.

House prices across the country rose by 12.9 per cent in the first three months of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to new data published by Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE). That’s exactly the same pace recorded at the end of 2025 and one of the strongest annual increases seen since the years before Spain’s property crash.

For anyone trying to get onto the property ladder, homes are still becoming more expensive, and they’re doing so at a speed that many analysts didn’t expect to continue this far into 2026.

Perhaps the most surprising detail isn’t the overall figure itself. It’s the fact that the strongest price increases are no longer coming from new developments.

Instead, buyers are increasingly competing for second hand homes, pushing prices higher at a record pace.

Why Spain’s second hand homes are suddenly attracting fierce competition

Walk into almost any estate agency today and you’ll hear a similar story.

Properties that would have sat on the market for months a few years ago are attracting interest much more quickly. In some areas, buyers are finding themselves competing against several other people for the same home.

That pressure is particularly visible in the second hand market.

According to the latest figures, prices for existing homes climbed by 13.5 per cent during the first quarter of the year. The INE says that’s the highest increase recorded since this statistical series began nearly two decades ago.

New homes are still becoming more expensive too, but the pace there appears slightly less dramatic.

Prices for newly built properties increased by 9.1 per cent compared with a year earlier. That’s still a substantial rise by any normal standard, but it was lower than the growth recorded during the previous quarter.

The difference tells its own story.

Spain continues to build new housing, but not enough to satisfy demand in many parts of the country. As a result, many buyers who can’t find what they want in new developments are turning towards the resale market instead.

The consequence is simple. More buyers are chasing the same properties.

A market that refuses to slow down

What makes the latest figures stand out is not simply the annual increase.

Spain has now recorded 48 consecutive quarters of house price growth. That’s twelve straight years of rising values.

Anyone who follows the housing market will remember that many experts expected growth to start slowing long before now. Higher prices, affordability concerns and economic uncertainty were all supposed to take some heat out of the market.

Instead, demand has remained remarkably resilient.

The first quarter of 2026 also saw prices rise by 3.5 per cent compared with the final quarter of 2025. That was the strongest quarterly increase since the middle of last year.

For homeowners, those figures may feel reassuring.For prospective buyers, they paint a different picture.

Many younger households already struggle to save for a deposit while dealing with rising rents and everyday living costs. Every additional increase in property prices pushes ownership a little further out of reach.

That reality is becoming increasingly familiar in many Spanish cities, where demand continues to outstrip supply.

Property portal pisos.com described the market as entering 2026 with little evidence of exhaustion. According to its analysis, housing prices have been climbing for more than a decade, with recent increases standing out because of their scale rather than simply their duration.

In many locations, prices are now comfortably above the peaks recorded during Spain’s property boom years.

Could anything finally slow the market down?

There is one factor that analysts continue to watch closely.

Interest rates.

For much of the recent housing boom, buyers have benefited from financing conditions that remained attractive despite broader economic pressures.

That situation may not last forever.

Some experts believe that renewed inflationary pressures across the eurozone could eventually lead to tighter monetary policy and more expensive borrowing.

If mortgages become less affordable, some buyers may simply have less purchasing power.

That doesn’t automatically mean prices will fall.

Most analysts agree that Spain’s biggest problem remains the shortage of available housing. As long as demand continues to exceed supply, significant price corrections appear unlikely.

What could happen, however, is a gradual moderation. Instead of double digit annual increases, the market may begin to move at a slower pace.

For now, though, there is little evidence that such a shift has started.

Every autonomous community recorded annual house price growth above 10 per cent during the first quarter of 2026.

Aragón and Murcia posted the largest increases, both reaching 15.6 per cent. Castilla y León and Ceuta followed close behind at 14.9 per cent. Even the regions with the smallest increases still recorded double digit growth. Catalonia and Navarra both rose by 10.5 per cent, while the Basque Country registered a 10.2 per cent increase.

For buyers hoping for lower prices, those numbers tell a consistent story.

Spain’s housing market may eventually cool. It just hasn’t happened yet.