Why 29.1 per cent is a high new-build share

Almost everywhere, the great majority of housing purchases are resales: across Spain the new-build share in 2025 was 21.69 per cent, 154,332 of 711,543 sales. In the Canaries it was 7,388 of 25,368 — 29.12 per cent, the second-highest of the 19 territories, with only Navarra above on 29.85 per cent. That is high only by the standard of the past decade: in 2022 the share stood at 18.92 per cent, and in the boom year of 2008 at 57.33 per cent.

A share has two sides: it rises with more new-build sales, and it rises with fewer second-hand sales too. In 2025 both happened. The Canaries were the only one of the 19 territories with falling second-hand sales, while Spain gained 10.11 per cent. Had the Canary second-hand market grown at the same rate, the new-build share would have come to 27.08 per cent rather than 29.12: about two of the 7.4 points of distance from the Spanish share come not from new build but from a stalled second-hand market. Our own calculation from table 6155.

What gets built — and where the statistics stop

On the supply side the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda keeps a series of dwellings started and completed, mirrored in ISTAC cube E25004A_000001, as of 26 June 2026. In the Canaries in 2025, 3,152 dwellings were completed and 5,045 started, after 2,889 and 4,088 in 2024.

Against those 3,152 completions stand 7,388 homes sold as new build. The two figures cannot be netted off — the INE counts first transmissions entered in the property registers whatever year the dwelling was finished, the ministry counts works completions — but the gap shows that "new-build sale" here does not mean "newly built"; the comparison is our own. For 2026 the supply series ends in March: 518 completions in the first quarter against 516 a year earlier, with starts down from 1,372 to 1,214. For the months in which new-build sales fell hardest, then, no Canary completion figure is published.

The 2026 fall, counted in homes

Monthly table 6150 gives the Canaries 3,886 new-build sales from January to July 2026 against 4,363 in the same months of 2025: 477 homes fewer, down 10.93 per cent. Second-hand was almost unchanged at 10,672 against 10,735, and the market as a whole lost 540 sales.

The months show why caution is warranted with a series this size. Canary new-build sales in 2026, with the same month of 2025 in brackets: January 554 (745), February 587 (461), March 573 (855), April 506 (488), May 568 (575), June 485 (622), July 613 (617). January and March alone account for 473 of the 477 missing sales; the other five months together come to four. At an average of 555 sales a month, two months shift the rate by ten points — the order of magnitude of a handful of developments reaching the register, or not.

Across the territories it is the fifth-steepest fall of the 19: Cantabria −20.63, Madrid −16.97, La Rioja −13.55, the Balearics −11.02, then the Canaries. In absolute terms it is the third-largest loss, behind Madrid (1,923) and the Comunitat Valenciana (935). Our own count.

What cuts against "the market is collapsing"

The Spanish market is turning down in 2026 as well: from January to July table 6150 counts 408,881 housing sales nationally against 421,386, down 2.97 per cent. The Canary market as a whole, down 3.58 per cent, is falling only a little faster.

What is unusual is not the size of the fall but its composition. Across Spain second-hand gave way more than new build, down 3.08 against 2.58 per cent; in the Canaries it is the other way round, and markedly so. The same second-hand market that was the only one of the 19 territories to shrink in 2025 is the steadiest part of the Canary market in 2026. And the new-build share stays high: 26.69 against 21.97 per cent nationally, the fourth-highest of the 19.

Rising prices, falling new-build sales

The house price index IPV of the INE, table 79563, puts the Canary annual rate for the second quarter of 2026 at 11.0 per cent overall and 11.9 per cent for new build; Spain comes to 12.2 per cent and, for new build, only 7.4 per cent. The IPV works from prices in notarial deeds, not from asking prices in listings.

Double-digit increases in new-build prices alongside new-build sales down by a tenth fit poorly with weakening demand, which would press on price first. The pattern fits a tight supply better — a reading of this data pattern and not a finding of the INE, the ISTAC or the ministry, none of which interprets these series. Two qualifications go with it: the IPV describes April to June, the sales figures January to July. And definitive annual figures for 2026 are about a year away.