Buying a home in full brick record: "I've never seen anything like it. If you like a house, either you close the purchase right away or you lose it"

• MARÍA HERNÁNDEZ |

  GABRIELA GALARZA (GRAPHICS)

  Madrid

Updated on Tuesday, 16November2021-02: 10

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• Market 1,780 houses sold per day: September marks the all-time high since the real estate boom of 2008

Matías

(35) and

(31) have just signed the earnest money for their future home in Moratalaz, the same neighborhood in Madrid where they have been renting for more than three years. "We started to notice a lot of movement in the market and we saw that prices were also starting to rise, so we thought this was the time to buy."

for a flat with three rooms and 90 square meters.

They activated the search filters last September and, despite the speed, reaching the earnest money has not been easy. "We found a first floor and when we were about to sign, the owners backed out. We think it was because they wanted to raise the price," he says in conversation with

. They looked again and this time it was the final one. "They managed it for us through an agency and after paying the costs, we have no money left for a reform that we wanted to do." They will have to wait, but they are satisfied.

Your transaction will become part of the statistics that reflect the

in Spain as a result of the confinements due to coronavirus. The residential market is experiencing a

in which the emergence is manifested in the form of continuous records. The last occurred last September, when sales reached a total of 53,410 operations, 40.6% more than the same month in 2020 (taking into account that at that time the market was still assimilating the impact of Covid- 19) and

It is the highest number of transactions carried out in any month since April 2008 (54,801), when Spain was rushing the previous

estate

.

And it is also the highest figure in a month of September since 2007. In addition, the number of transactions exceeds 50,000 for the second time this year and raises the annual calculation to 421,267.

"This assumes that citizens place a lot of value on housing and indicates that the interest in buying is still very latent in society," explains

, Director of Studies and Spokesperson for

.

From Madrid to Ibiza

José Luis

(45) and his partner are an example of this interest.

Residents of Madrid, just three weeks ago they signed the earnest money for their new home in

.

"We had been vacationing there for 14 years and we wanted to have our own house. We started looking before the pandemic and when the coronavirus arrived we thought it might be easier, because prices would drop and there would be less demand from foreign buyers." .

The reality, however, showed them the opposite.

"There are sellers who have withdrawn the houses from the market to ensure a second residence in case of new confinements and those that have not been removed from circulation, have skyrocketed in price," he tells this newspaper by telephone.

The Balearic Islands

, with a rise of 47.3%, is one of the regions where sales transactions grew the most last September, while prices have risen by 3.9% so far this year, according to the

corresponding to the second quarter of 2021.

"I have never seen anything like what is happening now. If you like a home, either you close the purchase right away or you lose it,"

describes José Luis.

What is happening now, according to their experience, is that the homes in the range they were looking at (between 1 million and 1.5 million euros) are not even advertised on the most well-known real estate portals because the agencies directly

the lists of clients who have previously contacted them. "There are more people willing to buy than people willing to sell. It is exaggerated," he says.

Hundreds of kilometers away,

experience

(43) is very similar.

Rafa and his partner closed the purchase of their home in

(Madrid)

two weeks ago

, a newly built independent villa that has cost them almost 1 million euros.

"As a result of the confinement, we wanted something bigger and with more space," he says in conversation with EL MUNDO.

He also says that it was difficult for them to find something that met their requirements.

"There is little supply and it has been difficult for us to find something that fits with what we wanted," he says.

They searched slowly but surely.

"Seeing the trend of accumulated savings during the pandemic, low rates and inflation, we were clear that the real estate market is the place to be," he explains.

Reasons

Housing continues to be the refuge for many investors and small savers in Spain and that explains much of the emergence of the residential market in the country as a result of the pandemic.

"The statistics show the good moment that the real estate sector is going through and how the appetite of buyers grew at the end of the summer season, supported by low interest rates and record savings of families," adds

, spokesperson for the Idealista real estate portal.

The communities where the sale of houses grew the most in September were Navarra (68.3%), the Basque Country (55.9%) and Andalusia (54.9%), regions where the IPV recorded increases of 3.2, 2, 1 and 2.8 points, respectively, so far this year.

The only Autonomous Community with a negative variation rate in sales is Extremadura (-2.4%), while the Principality of Asturias (1.4%) and the Region of Murcia (19.7%) registered the lowest increases.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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