House prices rise 12.2% in the second quarter and notch up 45 consecutive quarters of increases: new builds ease to 7.4%

09/09/2026 – ⏱ 6 min · By Realty Investor Editorial Team

This article is for informational purposes only and does not, under any circumstances, constitute investment advice or a recommendation.

The National Statistics Institute published on 7 September the House Price Index (IPV) for the second quarter of 2026. The headline figure is a year-on-year rise of 12.2%, the forty-fifth consecutive positive reading and the sixth in a row above the 12% threshold. The figure eases by seven tenths of a point from the 12.9% of the first quarter, but the underlying picture barely changes: prices continue to grow at double-digit rates, well above general inflation and average wage growth. What does introduce a new nuance is the gap that has opened up between second-hand and new-build housing.

Second-hand and new-build housing part ways

The index breaks down performance by type of housing, and that is where the most significant figure of the quarter appears. Second-hand homes became 12.9% more expensive year on year between April and June, the fourth consecutive reading at around or above 13%. New homes, by contrast, eased to 7.4%, their lowest rate since the first quarter of 2023. The gap between the two segments now exceeds five percentage points, a spread that had not been seen for several years.

The quarter-on-quarter reading reinforces the same pattern. Compared with the first quarter of 2026, the overall price rose 3.4%; second-hand homes rose 3.7%, their largest quarterly increase in a year, while new builds stayed at 1%. So far in 2026, prices have accumulated a rise of 7%, split between 7.4% for the second-hand market and 4.6% for new construction.

All autonomous communities rise and only one stays below 10%

The regional map leaves no territory in negative ground. The largest year-on-year increases were in Ceuta (15.2%), Asturias (15%), Castilla y León (14.8%), Aragón (14.6%) and La Rioja and Murcia, both at 14.4%. Also above the national average were Melilla (13.8%), the Balearic Islands (13.7%), Cantabria (13.5%), the Valencian Community (13%), the Community of Madrid and Galicia (12.9% each) and Extremadura (12.8%).

Below the average were Andalusia (11.9%), Castilla-La Mancha (11.7%), the Canary Islands (11%), Catalonia (10.1%) and the Basque Country (10%). Navarra, at 9.5%, is the only autonomous community that does not reach double digits. That distribution has an implication worth highlighting: the regions at the top of the ranking are not the ones with the highest absolute prices, but medium-sized markets where the available stock is smaller and a moderate change in demand translates into large percentage movements. It is the same shift towards secondary markets that rental and sales indicators have been showing over recent quarters.

A change of base year that affects comparisons

Since the first quarter of 2026, the base year of this INE statistic has been 2025, replacing the previous reference. The change responds to the ten-yearly rebasing required by European regulations on harmonised house price indices, so that the Spanish series remains aligned with the EU harmonised index. The effect on year-on-year rates of change is neutral—the INE recalculates the entire series—but it does alter the absolute values of the index. Anyone comparing levels published before and after the change must make sure they are using the same base; percentage rates, by contrast, remain comparable.

Other sources point in the same direction with different magnitudes

The INE's IPV is not the only measurement available for the second quarter, and the figures do not coincide with one another. The valuation firm Tinsa put the rise in house prices over that same period at 15.2% year on year, the biggest increase in its series since mid-2006. For its part, the Real Estate Registry Statistics of the Association of Property Registrars put the average price at an all-time high with an increase of 9.2%. The divergence does not mean that any of the sources is incorrect: each index measures different things. The INE starts from the transfer prices recorded in deeds and adjusts for the characteristics of the property; Tinsa works with valuation figures; and the registrars count registered transactions. Read together, the three agree on the direction and intensity of the cycle, even if they differ on the decimal point.

The context: fewer transactions, more expensive financing

The acceleration in prices coexists with a cooling in volume. According to the registry advance release, home sales fell 7.7% year on year in July, the biggest drop of the year, and home mortgages fell 4.2%. At the same time, the twelve-month Euribor closed August at around 2.95%, its highest level in two years, making both new mortgages and the reviews of variable-rate loans already signed more expensive.

The combination is characteristic of a market with restricted supply: when credit becomes more expensive, the first thing to adjust is the number of transactions, not the price, because those who cannot buy do not lower their offer but leave the market and move into renting. The result is a lower volume of transactions on a scarce stock, with prices that hold up. The accumulated housing deficit estimated by the Bank of Spain—around 750,000 units for the 2021-2025 period, according to its latest publications—describes the structural origin of that imbalance.

Why this matters to the real-estate investor

The figure has two readings of interest for those analysing the market from the investment side. The first concerns rental yield: when sale prices rise faster than rents, the gross yield is mechanically compressed. With the IPV advancing at 12.2% and average rents growing at around 5.8% year on year according to property portal indices, the spread works against the gross yield of buy-to-let strategies, especially in markets with higher entry prices. Any return estimate used in this context is subject to investment risk and is not guaranteed.

The second reading has to do with the moderation in new builds. The fact that new-build product has become only 7.4% more expensive while second-hand homes are up 12.9% can be interpreted in two ways that are not mutually exclusive: on the one hand, a composition of new supply shifted towards developments in less stressed locations; on the other, a sale-price ceiling that is starting to collide with the ability to pay of solvent demand. For the developer and for those who finance development—which is the underlying asset of a large share of real-estate crowdfunding projects—that moderation matters, because the expected sale price is the variable that determines the project's margin and, with it, the ability to service the debt. A continued rise in construction and financing costs, combined with exit prices growing at less than half the pace of second-hand housing, squeezes that margin.

Reading for the investor

These figures should be handled with the caution they require. The IPV is a quality-adjusted index of prices of transfers executed by deed, not an arithmetic average of sale prices, and its second-quarter results may be revised in subsequent releases. The double-digit rates recorded by small autonomous communities are based on a small number of transactions, which amplifies variability. And the change of base year limits the comparison of levels with series prior to 2026. None of this invalidates the figure, but it suggests reading it as a measure of trend and not as a reference value for valuing a specific asset. Past results are no guide to future ones, and any real-estate investment carries risks of illiquidity, delays in execution timelines, default and total or partial loss of capital.

In a cycle of rising prices, falling volumes and more expensive financing, some private capital has in earlier periods explored ways of gaining exposure to real estate other than the direct acquisition of a property, including regulated crowdfunding formats. This is an observed dynamic, not a recommendation. At European level, the activity of crowdfunding platforms is governed by Regulation (EU) 2020/1503 and, in Spain, by the implementing and supervisory rules of the CNMV.

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