MADRID, March 16 (Xinhua) -- House sales rose by 31 percent in Spain in January this year compared to the same month in 2021, according to data published by the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE) on Wednesday.
The INE reported that 52,684 homes were sold in Spain during the first month of the year, which is the best January performance since January 2008, indicating that Spain has seen 11 consecutive months of rising sales.
The sales of new homes rose by 17.2 percent with 9,992 operations, while there were 42,692 sales of homes that had previously been lived in, although it should be pointed out that health restrictions in place in January 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic may have pushed sales down a year ago.
The biggest increases in sales were in the region of La Rioja in northern Spain as well as the Balearic and Canary Islands. These regions saw increases of 71.4 percent, 53.2 percent and 40.5 percent respectively, while Navarra in northern Spain was the only part of Spain that saw a reduction in transactions.
This data is published just five days after the INE informed that house prices rose by 3.7 percent during 2021, with the cost of new buildings climbing by 4.6 percent and prices for second-hand homes going up by 3.6 percent. ■