Blog · Market data

Record house prices in Spain: what each official series measures

§ 1The release with no euro in it

Open the statistics office's release for the second quarter of 2026 and look for a price. There is none. That is less odd than it sounds, because the release reports rates: an annual rise of 12.2% for all dwellings, 7.4% for new ones and 12.9% for second-hand ones, with a quarterly rise of 3.4%. It came out on 7 September 2026, and the base year of the index is 2025. The tables on the statistics office's database do hold index levels, and we left them alone: the table we opened for 2025 was still on the old base, and the office says its published indices and their history moved to the new base from the first quarter of 2026. A level on one base cannot be set beside a level on the other.

This is the índice de precios de vivienda (IPV), the house price index. The release says it measures the sales price of private dwellings and adjusts for changes in the composition and quality of the dwellings acquired in different periods, and that it draws on around 95% of the sales made in the quarter. The wording matters. The index asks what a home of constant type and quality cost this quarter against last, which is a different question from what the homes that happened to sell this quarter fetched. If the quarter's sales lean towards larger flats on the coast, the average price in euros climbs and a quality-adjusted index is built to stay put.

The texts we read describe the price source in three ways. The release's own method table says "administrative records". The database page for the index says it uses notarial sale records. An older methodology paper, whose worked examples are for 2007 and 2008, names the notaries’ general council as its source and limits the population to purchases by natural persons. We treat the paper as a lead to ask about, because it may predate the base-2025 series. The note on how to read an annual rate against a quarterly one covers the mechanics that the next section relies on.

§ 2Six quarters in one band

The annual rate has stayed between 12.2% and 12.9% in each of the six quarters from the first quarter of 2025 to the second quarter of 2026. It stood at 12.9% in the first quarter of 2026 and 12.2% in the second, so the annual figure eased while prices kept rising. The quarterly rises show how: 2.9%, 1.8%, 3.5% and 3.4% in the four quarters to June 2026.

Stack those four. Our sum is 1.029 x 1.018 x 1.035 x 1.034 = 1.121, a rise of 12.1%, which matches the published annual rate within rounding. An annual rate is four quarters piled on one another, and when a strong quarter drops out of the pile the annual figure can fall without any quarter showing a fall. In the latest quarter new homes rose 1.0% and second-hand homes 3.7%, so the headline follows the resale market, and the gap between the two is the first thing to look at in any release.

§ 3The registrars: an average and an index

The average declared price

The property registrars publish their own quarterly statistic, dated August 2026. Its price table is headed Precio declarado por m² de viviendas registradas, in English a declared price per m² of registered homes: the price stated in the deed, per square metre, for homes that reached the registry in the quarter. For the second quarter the average was €2,487 per m², which the report calls a historical maximum. It was 2.4% above the €2,429 per m² of the first quarter and 9.2% above a year earlier.

Set that beside the statistics office. Between the first and second quarters of 2026 the office's annual rate eased from 12.9% to 12.2%, while the registrars' annual rate for their average edged up from 8.9% to 9.2%. For new homes the two sources even point in different directions on the quarter. The registrars' average for new homes was €2,636 per m², down 0.7% on the quarter and up 7.7% on the year, while the office's index for new dwellings rose 1.0%. For second-hand homes the registrars give €2,448 per m², up 3.5% on the quarter and 9.8% on the year.

Neither source has made a mistake. An average of declared prices moves with the mix of homes that sold: the new-home average can fall if more of the new homes registered in a quarter are in cheaper places. An index that holds quality constant is built to ignore that. The registrars also give an annual average at the close of the quarter, €2,392 per m². The quarter's €2,487 per m² sits about 4% above it (our division, 2,487 / 2,392 = 1.040), which is what a rising series looks like when you compare its last quarter with its last year.

Volume tells a different story from price. The registrars recorded 167,934 home sales in the quarter, 2.3% fewer than a year earlier, and 698,684 over the last twelve months. A price series can reach a maximum in a quarter when the count of sales is lower than a year before, and the overview of the market sets the quarter's sales and foreign-buyer figures beside the prices if you want the whole quarter in one place.

The repeat-sales index

The same report carries a second price measure, the índice de precio de la vivienda de ventas repetidas (IPVVR). The report names its method as repeat sales and gives the average of four methodologies: a rise of 3.14% on the quarter and 16.7% on the year, with the level 39.31% above the maximum of the previous upswing, reached in the third quarter of 2007. The text we read does not say whether that index is nominal or real, and we could not read the report's methodology section, so how the four methods differ is outside what we can describe.

§ 4The Bank of Spain reads it in real terms

The Bank of Spain builds its price charts from other bodies' data. Its spring 2026 stability report puts average nominal growth in house prices at 12.7% for 2025 and real growth, which removes general price rises, at 9.7%. Divide one by the other and you can see what was removed: 1.127 / 1.097 = 1.027, or 2.7%. That is our division of two published rates, and we did not read which price index the bank used to deflate.

The bank's price charts cite the statistics office and the transport ministry among their sources, and the note on its provincial chart says the prices there are appraisal values of free-market housing. The text does not say which series sits under the headline growth rates, so we do not say either. The same chapter reports that differences between provinces in real prices continued to widen in the last year. In the chapter we read it gives no explicit house price forecast, and it reports its indicator of price against income and interest rates at 10% to 15% in December 2025 against an average of 24% at the end of 2007. Those are the bank's indicators and the bank's words, and we leave the reading of them to the bank. The note on the bubble question sets them beside the bank's figures for credit and building.

§ 5The appraisal series we could not open

The housing ministry publishes a fourth kind of number, the average valor de tasación, the value a valuer puts on a home in an appraisal report. Its methodology paper says the figure is the average value in euros per square metre of built area, taken from the reports of the appraisal firms in the national valuers' association, whose activity the paper puts at more than 85% of the sector's appraisals. The value excludes taxes and selling costs. The ministry publishes tables by municipality, among them one for municipalities of more than 25,000 inhabitants, and the paper warns that the homes valued each quarter are generally different from the previous quarter's, so the average moves with the sample.

An appraisal is an opinion of market value written for a purpose, such as a loan, and a sale is a transaction. The two may differ, and the series cannot tell you by how much. The ministry's calendar lists 17 September 2026 for the second-quarter figures and 19 November 2026 for the third quarter.

The ministry published the second-quarter figure on 17 September 2026, and press reports of it describe a new record for a series that starts in 1995. We could not read the figure ourselves, because the ministry page links to a spreadsheet held on a server our tools cannot reach, so we print no appraisal figure, and the table below says so. Open the ministry's page on the day you rely on it, note the quarter, and compare like with like.

§ 6The four side by side

Three official bodies, one quarter and three annual rises, all described as house prices. The chapter on Spanish property prices keeps the section's own dated readings of these releases. To see what the spread means in euros, take an invented flat that cost €200,000 a year earlier and apply each rate. At 12.2% it becomes €224,400, at 9.2% it becomes €218,400, and at 16.7% it becomes €233,400. The distance between the lowest and highest is €15,000. It comes from what each series counts, and every one of those lines is arithmetic on a published rate: none is a valuation of any home or an expectation for next year.

§ 7What "record" means in each series

The registrars use the words "historical maximum" for their average price and for the second-hand average. The statistics office release states no record, and the bank compares real prices with a peak from 2007. The report gives no earlier peak for the average price, so the maximum is a maximum within the registrars' own series.

Now the arithmetic across the two. Put the registrars' repeat-sales index at 100 in the third quarter of 2007. The report says it now stands 39.31% above that level, so it reads 139.31. The bank says the real price level at the end of 2025 was 14.7% below its peak, which was also in the third quarter of 2007. Put that peak at 100 and the real level reads 85.3. One series is in euros of the day and rises above its old high. The other is in euros adjusted for general price rises and sits under its old high. The units differ, the sources differ and the dates differ by a quarter, so neither statement contradicts the other. A sentence that says prices are at a record, or below the last peak, is incomplete until it says which of these it means.

§ 8What none of them can tell you

• The price of your street. The statistics office's regional annual rates for the second quarter run from 9.5% in Navarre to 15.2% in Ceuta, and each is an average over a whole region.
• Asking prices, discounts and negotiation. These series record sales that were completed or, for appraisals, valuers' opinions.
• The state of a building, a legal charge on a property or a debt attached to it. A price statistic has no column for them.
• The cost of the money, because none of the series includes a loan.
• What comes next, since they report sales that already happened.

If you borrow, the chapter on rates and repayment covers fixed, variable and mixed loans. If you plan to let the home, the chapter on investor risks lists what an index never will, such as vacancy, a slow sale and changes to the rules.

None of this says whether to buy now or later, and we do not say it. The chapter on timing a purchase sets out what depends on the calendar and what does not, and it does not try to time the market. Rules also sit outside every series. The chapter on which housing rules are in force and which are proposals keeps the two apart, which no price statistic does.

§ 9Dates and lags

We read all four sources on 26 October 2026. The statistics office published the second-quarter index on 7 September 2026, which is 69 days after 30 June by our count. The ministry's calendar puts its second-quarter appraisal figures on 17 September 2026, 79 days after the quarter closed. The registrars' report is dated August 2026. The bank's chapter describes the end of 2025. Today, the most recent reading of any of these covers April to June, and the bank's covers December.

The next date we could confirm is the ministry's 19 November 2026 for the third quarter. The pages we read for the statistics office and the registrars did not give a date for their next releases. Save a copy of each release you use, with the date you read it. A figure quoted from memory a month later may belong to a quarter that has since been replaced.

§ 10Questions to put to the professional

Take these to the lawyer who acts for you alone, and to a registered valuer if you commission one. No series answers them.

• Which series and which period does the figure you are quoting come from, and is it a price, a declared price, an index or an appraisal?
• Is it nominal or adjusted for general price rises?
• Which registered or notarised sale prices exist for comparable homes in the same street, and for what dates?
• If a lender values the home, what value did the valuer give, on what date and on what basis, and how does it compare with the price in the contract?
• What do the registry extract and the building checks say about this home, since no price statistic covers them?

A price series describes a market that has already moved. The home you are about to buy has its own deed, its own debts and its own walls, and those are checked one property at a time, before you sign.

Dotted underline marks an illustrative figure. It shows how a calculation works and is not a quote, a rate or a forecast.

General information only. This is not legal, tax or financial advice. Check your own situation with a qualified adviser.