The arithmetic behind the boom
INE publishes two quantities per territory: the number of registered mortgages and the capital granted. The average loan is not a series of its own, it appears only on division — and that is where the story is. If capital rises by 17.90 percent and the count by 0.32 percent, the average must have risen by 17.52 percent: 1.1790 divided by 1.0032 gives 1.1752. In absolute terms 241.35 million euros more entered the market; the 33 additional loans account for 4.35 million of that, and the remaining 237 million is explained by each loan being larger.
The Canaries and Spain: same direction, different mix
Spain-wide the volume is growing at a similar pace, but out of different material: 15.8 percent more capital against 5.4 percent more loans. About a third of the Spanish increase comes from additional borrowers; in the Canaries that share is effectively nil. The Canary average loan was still 15.7 percent below the Spanish one in 2025 and only 11.4 percent below in 2026. The two provinces move in opposite directions: in Las Palmas the count rose by 4.5 percent and the average to 144,590 euros; in Santa Cruz de Tenerife the count fell by 5.2 percent while the average jumped by 22.5 percent to 169,959 euros (table 76317). INE does not break the data down by island.
Not a one-month stumble
July on its own looks dramatic, down 18.4 percent, and that is how it was reported on Monday, for instance by eldiario.es/Canarias Ahora, Atlántico Hoy and RTVC. Over twelve months the drama disappears and the pattern holds: from August 2025 to July 2026 the Canaries count 3.4 percent more loans and 19.5 percent more money. What is striking about July is something else: the number of loans collapsed by almost a fifth while the capital stayed almost unchanged.
Against which incomes
What matters to a buyer is not the market volume but their own loan against their own income. Here the official record is thin: there is no Canary income figure for 2026. The most recent comes from the Encuesta de Condiciones de Vida 2025 — 14,222 euros net per person against 15,620 euros in Spain. That income rose by 6.4 percent, the average loan by 17.5 percent, almost three times as fast. The closest official measure of the burden comes from the Colegio de Registradores: a monthly instalment of 787.90 euros in the second quarter of 2026, 40.2 percent of wage costs, the third-highest level after the Balearics and Madrid, against a Spanish average of 34.3 percent. The instalment itself is below the Spanish average; what is smaller are the wages it is paid out of.
What exactly is 23.2 percent below 2007
The comparison with 2007 is a favourite line in property press releases and is routinely muddled. It applies to one quantity only: the average loan, and only after adjusting for inflation. The Canary peak of 2007 was 126,296 euros; using the annual averages of the consumer price index (INE table 76144: 2007 = 70.105, 2025 = 100.0) that equals 180,153 euros in 2025 prices. The definitive 138,315 euros of 2025 are 23.2 percent below that — and 9.5 percent above it in nominal terms. The count and the capital peaked in 2006 instead: 66,987 mortgages and 7.88 billion euros; 2025 is 74.6 percent and 70.1 percent away from those.
The other reading: cycle change and foreign buyers
Others read the same series differently. Juan Villén, managing director of idealista/hipotecas, said on Monday of the national figures that the fall in the volume registered in July clearly shows "the change of cycle we have been observing in recent months", a consequence of high prices and rising interest rates. The Colegio de Registradores speaks of "a fresh deterioration" in accessibility. A third explanation is the composition of demand: in the second quarter of 2026, according to the registrars, 29.33 percent of Canary home purchases were made by foreigners, 6.55 points more than in the previous quarter. The notaries reported in November 2025 that the share of Canary buyers aged 18 to 30 had fallen from 21.6 percent in 2007 to 6.5 percent.