With the recent release of our Barcelona luxury property market report and similar reports for Ibiza and Costa Brava, we have been using a range of data sources to analyze the local market and present the latest findings. In our blog posts, we have also been drawing on a rich source of data to share analysis and understand factors that influence the local market, which have recently been reprinted by the Junar Daily, an online newspaper.

Data sources for Barcelona luxury property

At the Lucas Fox blog, we are often asked about the data sources we use and how reliable they are to analyze the Barcelona luxury property market. In this post, we summarize the available data sources you could use to do your own analysis of Barcelona real estate, and any issues we know of that may need to be taken into account. We also recommend you read over our blog post about data triangulation of luxury apartments Barcelona . In Spain especially, it is essential to draw from multiple data sources to double-check the figures and ensure that you are making a realistic guestimate.

 

Data item: Average prices of houses sold

Source: Idealista.es
Data considerations: These figures are presented by euros per m2 on a monthly and quarterly basis. The monthly reports also offer district-level data analysis, although we note that for Barcelona luxury property, the maximum sales prices presented don’t change each month (only each quarter) whereas the average prices are recalculated regularly. These figures are based on sales data collected by Idealista from houses advertised in their internet property listings.

Data item: Average prices of houses sold

Data source: Kyero.com
Data considerations: These figures are presented as averages for each quarter for whole areas like Barcelona, Sitges, Costa Brava, etc. The data is calculated using Kyero’s own property indice which it has developed with TINSA. There are also some figures presented for the size of property but this is based on number of rooms in the dwelling, not m2, but these are often missing a quarter or two and therefore can’t be used to show trends over time. This is a pity, as we could use this as a de-facto Barcelona luxury property indice if we looked at properties with larger numbers of rooms, for example. Kyero has recently improved its index formula as it had been relying on asking price for properties, rather than actual sales price; which can vary dramatically. The new formula is more realistic and aligns better with idealista and fotocasa figures.

Data item: Average prices of houses sold

Data source: fotocasa.es
Data considerations: We have recently begun using Fotocasa data on house sales prices in our blog posts, such as the recent article on Madrid real estate. Fotocasa uses sales data from houses advertised on their site, in a similar way to how Idealista presents data, but they have more flexible ways of sharing their data. We love the embedded graphs they produce and look forward to making more use of their data products.

Data item: Number of property sales transactions per month

Data source: National Institute of Statistics
Data considerations: We look at the number of merchanting transactions of urban properties in the monthly data provided by the Spanish government statistics office. Figures used are preliminary data, which is available about six weeks after each month of the year, whereas final data is released on a quarterly basis, about six months after a given month. For future data analysis, we may look at merchanting of rural properties for Ibiza and Costa Brava as well as the urban properties. This data shows us the number of sales transactions each month, and is available for wider areas. So, for example, we use Balearic Islands figures for Ibiza and Girona data which includes Costa Brava.

 

 

Data item: New housing constructions

Data source: Catalan Statistics Office
Data considerations: This government office is to be commended for their efforts to open data access. They have recently partnered with Google’s public data explorer service so that anyone can map and chart data using a combination of Catalan data sources and Google tools. Data is released monthly, about two months after each month has ended. We look at new housing constructions started and compare this with Spanish new housing constructions. We chose new constructions as a measure of future housing supply, but we are interested in your opinions as to whether you would prefer housing constructions completed which would more accurately represent the amount of housing ready to be released onto the market immediately following any given month. New housing constructions shows us the level of supply that can be expected in the future.

Next week, we will look at rental data sources for the Barcelona luxury property market, including how we measure indicators of short-term rental property demand. We also have a special tutorial coming up on how you can build your own Barcelona luxury property data dashboard using the Chilean online service, junar. Make sure to subscribe to the Lucas Fox blog to be kept informed of our forthcoming items including the tutorial.

What data do you want to use to assess the Barcelona luxury property market? Comment below or email us to share the statistics that are important to you when deciding to rent or buy Barcelona luxury property.