The Málaga province housing market, in registry numbers

Most “market reports” on this coast are built from asking prices: the numbers sellers hope for, not the ones buyers paid. This page is built from the one dataset that records what actually happened: the property-transfer statistics that Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) compiles from land-registry records. It covers Málaga province, and we say that plainly because it matters: these figures include Málaga city and the whole coast, not Marbella alone. Municipality-level truth at this quality does not exist publicly, and we will not fake it.

Home sales in Málaga province, 2007–2025

Registered home purchases (compraventas de viviendas), full calendar years:

Year	Sales	Year	Sales
2007	42,386	2017	30,869
2008	28,754	2018	32,636
2009	23,287	2019	29,852
2010	21,990	2020	23,265
2011	19,211	2021	33,139
2012	17,822	2022	41,631
2013	19,540	2023	34,014
2014	22,236	2024	35,298
2015	24,553	2025	36,806
2016	26,648

Three things the long series shows without any commentary needed:

The 2022 peak nearly matched 2007. 41,631 registered sales against the pre-crisis 42,386, and unlike 2007, it was followed by a correction of about 18% (2023), not a collapse of 58% (2008–2012).

The market has settled onto a high plateau. 2023–2025 all sit in the 34,000–37,000 band: below the 2022 spike, well above every year from 2008 to 2021 except the spike’s shoulder.

2025 was the third-strongest year since 2007. Whatever headlines said about rates and cooling, the registry counted 36,806 completed purchases — up 4.3% on 2024.

The new-build shift

The same registry series splits sales into new and resale homes:

Year	New build	Resale	New-build share
2020	5,765	17,500	24.8%
2021	8,671	24,468	26.2%
2022	8,680	32,951	20.8%
2023	6,796	27,218	20.0%
2024	10,848	24,450	30.7%
2025	12,015	24,791	32.6%

The resale market has been broadly flat since 2023; the growth of 2024 and 2025 is a new-build story — the share of new homes in all registered sales rose from a fifth to nearly a third in two years. That matches what any buyer touring Estepona and the New Golden Mile sees on the ground, and it is why our Estepona guide spends so much of its length on new-build checks: bank guarantees on deposits, first-occupancy licences, the ten-year structural insurance.

What these numbers cannot tell you

Not prices. Transaction counts say nothing about what was paid. We do not publish price-per-square-metre averages for Marbella micro-areas, because reliable transaction-level price data does not exist publicly at that grain: an average built from asking prices is marketing, not measurement.

Not Marbella alone. Province-level data includes the capital and the whole coast. Directionally, the coastal municipalities dominate the province’s residential transactions, but a Marbella-only claim from this dataset would be manufactured precision.

Not nationality. These series do not split by buyer origin. Foreign-buyer shares are published elsewhere at lower frequency and different scope; we will add them only with the same sourcing discipline as this page.

Method

All figures come from INE’s Estadística de Transmisiones de Derechos de la Propiedad (ETDP), which counts transfers recorded in Spain’s land registries — series ETDP3519–ETDP3523 for Málaga province, retrieved from the INE Tempus3 API on 21 August 2026. “Sales” means compraventas of dwellings, all regimes (free and protected). Calendar-year totals as published by INE; registry recording lags notarisation by weeks to months, which smooths but does not distort annual figures. This page is re-checked against the source series on its stated review cycle, and the retrieval date above is updated whenever the numbers are.

Frequently asked questions

Where do these numbers come from?

From Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE), which compiles them from land-registry records — completed, recorded purchases, not listings or asking prices. The series codes and retrieval date are stated on this page.

Why province-level and not Marbella-only?

Because that is where the reliable public data ends. Municipality-level transaction statistics of comparable quality are not published; we would rather give you an honest province than an invented town.

Does this data include foreign buyers?

It includes them but does not identify them — the series does not split by nationality. We publish no foreign-buyer percentages here because this dataset cannot support them.

Why is there no price forecast?

Because we do not publish forecasts. The registry records the past; anyone selling you the future from this table is adding fiction to arithmetic.