The sale and purchase of homes falls again in July and reaches the lowest figure recorded since 2020. In total, 48,303 operations have been carried out, 10.5% less than those recorded in the same month last year, according to data from recisos this Wednesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
The increase in interest rates that the European Central Bank has been applying for months has contributed to this decline in property sales, which has now been showing downward year-on-year data for six months. The decrease in this last month, however, exceeds by more than four percentage points the negative rate of 6.4% registered in June of this year.
The decrease in the total of home purchase and sale operations has been due to both a drop in the number of sales of second-hand apartments and the also negative figure of the rate that compares the sales of new homes this July with the same months of last year.
The purchase of new homes falls by 7.4%
Specifically, the sale and purchase of used homes fell by 11.2% in the seventh month of the year, totaling 40,036 operations, while transactions carried out on new apartments decreased by 7.4%, to 8,267 operations.
92.7% of the homes transferred by sale in July were free homes and 7.3% were protected. In total, the purchase and sale of free homes fell by 10% year-on-year, to 44,766 transactions, while the purchase and sale of subsidized homes fell by 16.5%, to a total of 3,537 transactions.
On a month-on-month basis (July over June), home sales contracted 10.5%, its biggest drop in a month of July in at least five years.
