Real estate boom in Barcelona: more houses are being bought now than during the bubble.

BarcelonaThe Catalan housing market is experiencing its best year since 2007, and this October it took another step forward: surpassing 11,000 transactions, a figure not seen for 18 years. This number, which represents the fourth highest in the entire historical record for Catalonia, is particularly significant in the Barcelona area, where 7,165 transactions in October make it the first market to exceed the figures from the real estate bubble. More homes are being bought now than in 2007.

From January to October, 62,630 transactions were completed in the Barcelona area, exceeding the 60,264 sales recorded during the same period in 2007, the year with the highest real estate activity since records began. This trend is unique to this area, as the number of transactions remains lower in the Community of Madrid, as it is in Catalonia overall and in Spain as a whole, according to data published this Tuesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

Catalonia, ahead of Spain

The market situation across Spain is somewhat different from that in Catalonia: while the number of transactions in Catalonia has grown by 3% compared to October 2024, home sales across Spain fell by 2.5%, marking the second slowdown in three months, following a 3% decline in August. In Catalonia, the August slowdown was much smaller (-0.6%), a true exception since June 2024, the last month in which sales declined (-12.11%). With 11,083 home sales in October, Catalonia is still far from the peak of the housing bubble, which reached 14,030 transactions in January 2007. For a decade, sales averaged around 5,000 transactions. During the pandemic, they suffered a sharp slowdown, but since then they have been increasing every year, reaching an average of 9,500 this year.

"This October is one of the strongest Octobers in the entire historical series, especially in Catalonia and the Barcelona area. At the national level, October of last year was better," notes Òscar Gorgues, manager of the Barcelona Chamber of Urban Property. Looking at the cumulative total up to October, it reaches 95,610 transactions, below the more than 99,000 of 2007. In Spain, this gap is even more pronounced.

The effect on prices

This sustained growth in the number of transactions explains why housing prices have continued to rise in recent years and are, even in 2025, surpassing the peaks of the 2000s housing bubble. This year, the homes that have seen the greatest price increases are resale properties, which account for 80% of all purchases that have fallen short of the 2007 price peak. The total price of all homes—both resale and new builds—has already exceeded the average price of 18 years ago, and new builds, in particular, have also risen faster than the accumulated inflation, measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), since then. Among the factors explaining this real estate boom in Catalonia, and to a lesser extent, in Spain as a whole, is the lack of housing supply. In fact, according to the Sectoral Territorial Housing Plan (PTSH), 355,000 new households will be formed in Catalonia between 2023 and 2037, that is, about 25,000 each year, almost double the 13,000 homes per year that the country currently builds.

Why is it growing so much in Barcelona?

"Beyond the supply, we have, on the one hand, a supply leaving the rental market and, on the other, a very dynamic and solvent demand that has benefited from very favorable financial conditions in the first 10 months; they were better in October than they are now," explains Gorgues. Regarding supply, this expert believes that all of this is particularly noticeable in the Barcelona area, where there are more investors and where rental price regulation has had the greatest impact. "It's where the shift from renting to buying is most evident, and where there is no new construction," he adds. And this difficulty in finding affordable rentals is what, on the demand side, is pushing people from renting to buying through savings and family support.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the number of transactions slowed down in the last months of 2007, suggesting that the Barcelona area will end the year above its 2007 levels, and that this could even be the case for Catalonia as a whole. "The Barcelona area is more active than Madrid. If we are 3% above 2007 levels here, they are 6% below," he adds.