MADRID, 17 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The sale of homes registered in 2022 an increase of 14.7% compared to the previous year, up to a total of 649,494 operations, the highest number of transactions since the year 2007, when more than 775,000 sales were made, as reported this Friday the National Statistics Institute (INE).

With this annual rebound, the sale of homes chains two years of consecutive increases after registering a record growth of 34.8% in 2021. Previously, in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, home sales plummeted 16.9%, much more than it did in 2019 (-2.4%). Between 2014 and 2018, home sales registered annual increases.

The advance in the purchase and sale of homes in 2022 has been due to the increase in both the operations on second-hand apartments and the increase in the purchase and sale of new homes.

Specifically, the purchase and sale of used homes increased by 17.7% last year, to a total of 532,459 operations, the highest since the beginning of the series, in 2007. For their part, transactions carried out on new apartments increased by 2.6% , up to 117,035 operations, its highest figure since 2014.

92.2% of the houses transferred by sale during the past year were free houses and 7.8%, protected. In total, the sale of private homes rose 15.6% in 2022, to 599,040 operations, while the sale of subsidized homes advanced 4.8%, reaching 50,454 transactions, its highest annual figure since 2010.

Despite the fact that 2022 was the best year for home sales since 2007, in the last month of 2022 home sales fell by 10.2% compared to December 2021, to a total of 43,370 operations. With this drop, 21 consecutive months of year-on-year increases come to an end.

Likewise, in a month-on-month rate (December 2022 compared to November of the same year), home sales fell by 21.3%, its biggest decline this month in at least five years.

(((WILL BE EXTENSION)))