Notaries say that speculative home purchases are very low.

Barcelona"Speculative home purchases are very low." This was the emphatic statement made on Tuesday by José Alberto Marín, Dean of the College of Notaries of Catalonia, following the presentation of the New Statistical Portal for NotariesThis free online tool provides "reliable" information on the housing market, according to the dean, because "all sales go through a notary." For Marín, the housing problem in Catalonia stems from two fronts: a lack of supply—because there is no new construction—and a lack of efficiency in administrative procedures, especially delays in granting building permits by local councils. These grievances are compounded by public transportation problems, particularly with commuter rail, which makes it more difficult for people to move to the suburbs, where prices are much lower than in the city of Barcelona.

The tool launched by the College allows access to housing sales data and the price per square meter of transactions, as well as information on the buyer's age range, nationality (and, if foreign, whether they are a resident or not), whether the buyer is an individual or a legal entity, and whether mortgage financing is involved. This data can be requested for the entire country or downloaded by autonomous community, municipality, postal district, and even a specific section of a street.

At the portal's launch, the Director General of the Notary Technology Center, Albert Martínez Lacambra, presented a comprehensive study on the evolution of the housing market in Spain and Catalonia. This report shows that housing prices in Catalonia have almost recovered to 2007 levels – before the bubble burst – and that in Barcelona they have already done so: €4,587 per square meter in 2025, a record high, representing a 5.5% increase over 2007 and a 1% nominal increase. Even after adjusting for inflation, the price would still not have surpassed its peak.

More households than houses

However, notaries see the lack of supply as the main cause of the price increase, but they warn of a future problem: many more new households are being created than homes are entering the market. "Given the forecasts for new household creation from the Statistical Institute of Catalonia, to alleviate the demand we should substantially increase housing construction," said Martínez Lacambra.

The data on which the College of Notaries of Catalonia bases its argument against speculative buying is the breakdown of purchases by individuals and legal entities, as well as the percentage and origin of foreign buyers. Thus, across Spain, purchases by Spanish citizens accounted for 80.2%, while 19.8% of homes were bought by foreigners. Of all buyers, almost 90% were individuals and only 10% were legal entities. In Catalonia, 87.6% of buyers were individuals and just over 12% were legal entities; while 79.18% of buyers were Spanish and 20.82% were foreign. Of these, 12% were French, 11% Italian, 9.2% Moroccan, 6.4% Chinese, and 5.29% Romanian. According to Martínez Lacambra, this data shows that foreigners who buy homes in Catalonia, if they are non-residents, largely acquire properties as second homes, and if they are residents, they buy homes to live in. These statistics, however, show that the proportion of foreign buyers and legal entities purchasing homes is higher than in the city of Barcelona. Thus, last year 86.22% of homes were purchased by individuals and 13.78% by legal entities; and among the buyers, 67.86% were Spanish and 32.14% were foreign. That is, one in three apartments was bought by a non-Spanish person. Among buyers in the city of Barcelona, ​​the most numerous were Italians (19.16%), French (11.6%), Chinese (8.72%), Americans (5.13%), and Germans (5.02%).

The problem of young people

Another problem identified by notaries is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for young people to buy a home. Only 12.8% of home buyers in Catalonia are young people between 18 and 30 years old, a drop of nearly twelve percentage points since the peak of the housing bubble, when the percentage reached almost 25%, according to figures from the Notary Statistics Portal. "The real estate market is exclusionary for young people," stated Albert Martínez Lacambra, Director General of the Notary Technology Center. In the city of Barcelona, ​​the proportion of young people buying a home is even lower, at 12.4%, and for Spain as a whole, it is only 9.6%. The average age of home buyers is 48 in Spain, 46 in Catalonia, and 43 in the city of Barcelona. The Secretary of Territory of the Generalitat, Jordi Terrades, attended the launch of the portal. As he was about to address the attendees, he was interrupted by five people shouting "Stop evictions!" and protesting against Junts per Catalunya for not supporting the social shield decree.