Although there are more transactions, the house prices are still flat.

We have just received the latest data from the Ministry of Housing on the home pric-es for Marbella and Estepona that shows that, as can be seen on the attached chart, the prices are not going up for Marbella, that is they keep the same tendency ob-served in the last two years, and recovered a little bit in Estepona where we will see if that is a change of tendency or just, as previously shown, a temporary situation.

What is true is that the number of transactions is going up steadily but the prices are not except, maybe, for prime locations where the good opportunities have left al-ready the market. The sense of a better market is already general and is bringing two effects: the first one is that, as I have already commented in some of my previous newsletters, the stock of for sale properties keeps on growing and, the second one, that owners are increasing their asking prices.

That second effect can be observed in the index of prices provided by the real estate web portal Fotocasa, one of the best in Spain, and shown on the chart attached that shows that increase from September 2014. The market is improving but it is still a buyer’s market with an increasing in-ventory where closing transactions is not an easy task. Sellers are already thinking on increasing the prices while buyers are still not prepared for that increase.