The city of Alicante and Vega Baja, especially Torrevieja and Orihuela, once again led the real estate market in the province in 2021, a year in which the sector released the dammed up demand during the pandemic to grow more than 8 points compared to last pre-covid exercise, 2019. According to statistics from the Ministry of Housing, the three cities accounted for a third of the 46,000 home sales registered in the province last year, although they did so with notable differences in their behavior.
Therefore, the city of Alicante leads the ranking with 6,619 sales in the last year, which represents an increase of just 0.9% compared to the figures for 2019, when 6,561 homes were sold. However, Torrevieja, the second city in number of operations during 2021, experienced a decrease compared to the pre-Covid year: 5,018 homes were sold, 5% less than in 2019 (5,282 transactions). Orihuela follows, which managed to improve the figures of two years ago, although also in a testimonial way: 3,833 homes were sold, 1.7% more.
These three localities concentrate together a total of 15,470 sales, that is, 33% of the total operations registered in the province. They are followed in number of transactions by Elche and Denia, which close the ‘top 5’ and, in this case, with significant growth compared to the pre-pandemic year. Thus, the city of Elche registered 3,397 sales, 20% more than two years ago. And the capital of the Marina Alta carried out 1,873 operations, 22% more.
Below is Benidorm, with 1,752 sales during 2021, a volume that hardly changes compared to 2019, when 1,744 transactions were closed. Santa Pola is another of the municipalities where, on the contrary, the market grew in volume, and a lot in Xàbia, with 1,135 homes sold, 22.5% more than the last year without covid.
The ‘top 10’ of sales in the province during 2021 is closed by Pilar de la Horadada, again in Vega Baja, and Alcoy, the only city in the interior of the province that is among those with the most housing transactions. In the case of Pilar, there were 1,100 homes sold, practically at the levels recorded by the last city in the south of the Valencian Community in 2019, when there were 1,066 operations. And the city of bridges closed the year with 1,016 purchases and the highest growth of the group, almost 40%.
Alicante Plaza published the extraordinary fourth quarter of the year, allowing the province to improve slightly (although less than the other two in the Community) the figures for the real estate market in 2019. Specifically, with a growth of 8.6% in the number of operations and a turnover of 6,590 million euros, 21.6% more (1,174 million additional euros).
The second hand reached almost 90% of the weight of the market, five points more than usual since the last crisis, and the average price stood at 143,000 euros, almost 20,000 euros more than before the pandemic.
