MADRID, 20 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The purchase and sale of homes registered a decrease of 6.6% in February compared to the same month last year, up to a total of 50,186 operations, in a context of higher interest rates to contain inflation, as reported on Thursday by the National Statistics Institute (INE).

With this year-on-year decline, the sale of homes returns to negative rates after more than 56,300 operations were registered in January, 6.6% more than in the same month of 2022.

The decline in the sale of homes in February was due to the drop in both second-hand flats and new homes.

Specifically, the sale of used homes fell by 5.5% in the second month of the year, to a total of 40,479 operations, while the transactions carried out on new apartments decreased by 11.1%, to 9,707 operations.

92.2% of the homes transferred by sale in February were free homes and 7.8% were protected. In total, the sale of private homes fell by 6.5% year-on-year, to 46,255 operations, while the sale of subsidized homes fell by 7.9%, to a total of 3,931 transactions.

On a month-on-month basis (February over January), home sales fell by 11%, its biggest drop in a February in the last five years.