Why prices keep climbing while fewer sales get recorded

Something odd has been happening on both our coasts this year. Ask an agency for a valuation and you will hear about prices still climbing, sometimes briskly. Ask the same agency how many viewings turned into signed contracts last spring, and the answer softens. Both things are true at once, and understanding why matters more than either number on its own if you are starting to look seriously.

September tends to be when people who spent August thinking start actually looking. So it feels like the right moment to separate the two stories properly, rather than folding them into one tidy headline about a coast that is either booming or cooling. It is doing both, in different rooms of the same house.

Two numbers that do not quite agree

Spain's Ministry of Housing, which bases its figures on official appraisals rather than what a seller hopes to get, put Málaga province at an average of just under €3,000 per square metre earlier this year, a rise of around 14 per cent on twelve months before, enough to make it one of the five most expensive provinces in the country. Engel & Völkers, working from live portal listings, has the Costa del Sol higher still this summer, with houses averaging around €3,620 per square metre.

Neither figure is wrong. One is measuring completed transactions with a natural lag, the other is measuring what sellers are currently asking. The gap between them is worth remembering every time you read a headline percentage, because it tells you whether you are looking at what has already happened or what someone hopes will happen next.

The more telling number, to us, came from Spain's National Statistics Institute, which recorded a fall in Málaga province property transactions of over 9 per cent in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the same period the year before, with March down by more than 13 per cent. Prices rising while the number of actual sales falls is not a contradiction. It usually means fewer, better-resourced buyers competing for a still-thin supply of the right property, rather than a market losing its footing.

The Costa Blanca, moving to its own rhythm

On the Costa Blanca the pattern rhymes without repeating exactly. Engel & Völkers puts the average apartment there at around €2,786 per square metre this summer, up a little over 6 per cent on the year, with houses close behind. That is steadier growth than Málaga's, and the towns doing the heavy lifting are familiar ones: Calpe and Jávea at the premium end, Torrevieja and Villajoyosa holding a more accessible middle.

A report on the south of the coast from the research site Spanish Property Insight found something similar to Málaga's story in miniature. Sales slipped modestly through 2025, and foreign buyer activity eased more noticeably than the overall figure suggests, yet average transaction prices and mortgage lending both kept climbing regardless. Demand did not vanish. It simply became more selective about what it was willing to pay for.

Who is still buying, and who is pausing

British and Nordic buyers remain a steady presence on both coasts, but they are no longer the whole story. According to Spain's Colegio de Registradores, cited in a recent analysis by the consultancy Agnes Inversiones, Polish buyers alone purchased a little over four thousand homes across Spain in 2025, part of a wider pattern of Central and Eastern European buyers arriving in numbers that would have surprised anyone reading the coast a decade ago.

Meanwhile in Alicante province, foreign nationals accounted for a large share of all homes sold last year, according to figures reported by Euro Weekly News, a reminder that the Costa Blanca's international character runs deeper than any single nationality. What we notice on the ground is less a retreat by any one group than a broadening of who is doing the asking, which tends to make a market steadier rather than more volatile.

A market where prices rise but transactions slow is not necessarily a market cooling. It is often a market becoming more particular.

What this means if you are starting your search now

The practical lesson from all this is simple, even if the data behind it is not. Do not anchor to an asking price you saw on a portal without asking your agent what similar homes have actually sold for in the last few months, ideally with reference to the official appraisal figures rather than listing averages alone. The gap between the two tells you how much room there genuinely is to negotiate.

On financing, conditions for non-residents have not loosened much this year. Expect a loan-to-value ceiling well below what a Spanish resident would be offered, and build your budget around that rather than hoping rates soften before completion. A slower transaction market, of the kind both coasts are showing this year, tends to reward buyers who have their financing arranged early and can move calmly when the right property appears, rather than those trying to compete on speed alone.

None of this points to urgency. If anything, a market with fewer transactions and more considered buyers is a reasonable one to enter without rushing. Take the time to see a place across more than one season if you can, ask for the sold prices rather than the asking ones, and let the numbers that actually matter to your decision guide it rather than the ones that make the best headline.

If you would like to talk through what any of this looks like for a specific stretch of coast, or simply want an honest read on an area you have your eye on, we are always glad to help. Get in touch with us at Penrose Bay and we will point you towards people locally who know the ground better than any spreadsheet can.