Russian citizens are accelerating the sale of real estate in Spain to provide financial liquidity after the blockage of banks.

After the war started, we are seeing more and more Russian owners putting their villas up for sale to have funds as the bank lockout situation puts them in a difficult position." These are the words of Manuel Alarcón, CEO of Libehomes and senior partner of the Association of Spanish Personal Shopper in Real Estate (Aepsi).

This situation was already foreseen by this magazine in the month starting the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. At the time, Gerard Marcet, partner and co-founder of Laborde Marcet, indicated that "the conflict is leading to an acceleration of operations that we have already started, due to the fear of possible bank closures in Russia, basically." Thus it is confirmed that some of the sanctions imposed by the EU against Russia have an impact on real estate. "Since the Crimea crisis in 2014, the Russian customer has stopped buying en masse. So it is still active, but only for luxury real estate," Alarcon points out.

The gradual decline

In the first quarter of 2022, according to statistics from the College of Registrars, residential real estate purchase and sale transactions made by Russian citizens in Spain amounted to 2.06% of the total. This is thus far less than the 12.03% British, 9.47% Germans, 7.05% French, 5.80% Moroccans, 5.76% Swedes, 5.67% Belgians and 5.04% Dutch. In the case of Ukraine, this value amounted to 1.13%.

Therefore, neither Russians nor Ukrainians represent a significant share of the total number of transactions in the real estate market in Spain. However, they tend to concentrate in tourist areas and major capital cities: the Balearic Islands, Costa Brava, Costa del Sol, Madrid and Barcelona, mainly. They are looking for luxury properties with a high price tag.

Russian citizens spent 273 million euros buying homes in Spain in the months before the invasion

If we look back, this percentage of transactions has gradually declined over the last five years. Thus, in the case of Russian citizens, it decreased from 3.07% in the first quarter of 2018 to 3.32% in the same period of 2019. In 2020 it was 2.75%, in 2021 it dropped to 2.26%, and in 2022 to the already mentioned 2.06%. The trend is similar in the case of Ukrainian citizens. It decreased from 1.67% in the first quarter of 2018 to 1.71% in the same period of 2019. In 2020 it drops to 1.52%, in 2021 to 1.15%, and in 2022 to the already named 1.13%.

Price based on statistics

General Notariat, Russian citizens carried out in Spain a total of 1,306 transactions in the real estate market in the second half of 2021. The number of transactions exceeds the 1,112 transactions of the first half of the year.

In the case of Ukrainians, the number of transactions amounted to 714 and 771 in the first and second half of 2021, respectively. This is an increase of 23.3% and 30.9% compared to the same periods of the previous year. The average price per square meter was 1,441 euros in the second half of 2021. To give an example with a 100 square meter house, they would pay more than 144,000 euros. Multiplied by 771 transactions, the total would be about 111 million euros. With these data, they do not return to pre-pandemic 2019 levels. We are talking about data that was current around 2016. And Russians spend more than Ukrainians, about twice as much.