The latest housing price index published by the National Statistics Institute (INE) shows that the price of homes in the Balearics rose by 8.4% in the second quarter of the year, the comparison being with April to June 2017.
Prices have gone up for eighteen consecutive quarters, with the accumulated increase being 31.2% since 2014. At the same time, based on INE figures, the average monthly salary has risen by only 2.15%. The second quarter figure was 1,753 euros; in the second quarter of 2014 it was 1,716 euros. The price of housing has therefore increased by fifteen times more than the average salary has risen.
Only the Madrid region and Catalonia have recorded higher increases in house prices over the past four years - respectively 40% and 33%. The number of quarters in which Balearic prices have gone up is now reaching the number of quarters when they fell during the recession. The fall in prices was first evident in the third quarter of 2008, and the downward trend continued until the end of 2013.
The recovery was slow, and it was only in the second quarter of 2015 that the price increase reached five per cent. To give an indication of how prices differ between regions, in Castile-La Mancha, house prices have gone up by just 4.2% since the last quarter of 2014.
Representatives of property websites say that prices will continue to rise in the Balearics but not dramatically. They also highlight the disparity with prices depending on location, e.g. if properties are in tourism areas.
