Málaga Will Need 6,000 New Homes Per Year To Meet Demand

5 April 2016 – La Opinión de Málaga

Indicators for the housing market are starting to recover after years of a complete slump in house sales, however high rates of unemployment and family indebtedness mean that most of Málaga’s population still has limited possibilities when it comes to buying a home.

Nevertheless, the Bank of Spain predicts in a report that the province of Málaga will require 84,812 primary homes between now and 2029 to meet the demand for new households that will be constituted during that period. The study predicts that in Málaga, in a scenario built on actual economic and population trends in recent years, more than 6,000 new households will be created each year, a figure that makes it the second most dynamic province after Madrid (where more than 21,000 households are expected to be created) and ahead of Sevilla (4,097), Murcia (3,564) and Granada (3,104). The figures are negative in 17 Spanish provinces because the population forecasts indicate that there will be fewer households overall. (…).

These calculations do not mean that all of those homes will have to be built from scratch. The report reminds its readers that one of the legacies of the crisis in the country has been the persistence of the stock of finished homes that have still not been sold. In fact, the Bank of Spain says that the potential demand reflected in the study “may be met through the construction of new properties, but also in the first instance, through the sale of homes that have already been built”. Besides, many new families may choose to rent or buy second-hand homes.

In Málaga, according to the most recent official figures from the Ministry of Development, the housing stock contained 12,672 homes at the end of 2014, although the Association of Construction Companies and Property Developers in Malaga (ACP) believes that this figure may have now been reduced to almost half. (…).

The rest of the country

At the national level, the report says that 63,000 households will be created each year in Spain, under the base case scenario and 238,000 households will be established in the most optimistic scenario, resulting in a potential housing volume for that period of between 900,000 and 3.3 million. According to the Ministry of Development, the stock of new homes pending sale in Spain comprised around 540,000 units at the end of 2014, having decreased gently since 2010. (…).

Original story: La Opinión de Málaga (by José Vicente Rodríguez)

Translation: Carmel Drake