The crisis caused by the pandemic has put an end to six years of consecutive increases in housing starts in Spain. Over that period, the average for the sector reached 22%, nearly equalled by the decline last year.
Last year, construction began on some 75,800 homes in Spain, a fall of 21.3% compared to the figure recorded in 2019, according to data from the appraiser Euroval and its Institute of Real Estate Analysis (INSTAI), as reported by Cinco Días.
This decline, which is similar to that which occurred in the years following the 2008 crisis, deepens the downward trend occurring since 2015 when there was a year-on-year increase of 39% compared to the previous year. Since then, gains have been increasingly moderate, from 32% in 2016 to 5% in 2019.
In particular, between January and March last year, when there was an 18% decline compared to the same period in 2019, the impact of the coronavirus on housing production was already apparent during the state of alarm and subsequent months.
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