Home » Market snapshot: British market in Q2 2026 – going sideways

Author: Mark Stücklin
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British demand for property in Spain went sideways in the second quarter, whilst the wider foreign market powered ahead. The result was another decline in the UK’s share of foreign buyers, continuing a long-running trend.

British buyers purchased 1,876 Spanish homes in Q2 2026, almost exactly the same number as a year earlier, with growth of just 0.1%.

That might not look remarkable in isolation. What makes it interesting is what happened around it: total foreign purchases increased by 11.3% to 26,836, the highest Q2 figure in the ten-year series.

So British demand didn’t fall, but it lost significant ground relative to the foreign market as a whole.

As a consequence, UK buyers accounted for just 7% of foreign purchases (FMS) in Q2, down from 7.8% a year earlier, 9.8% in 2022 and almost 15% back in 2017.

The contrast is even clearer using an index starting at 100 in 2017. British demand now stands at 81, meaning Q2 sales were 19% lower than in 2017. The overall foreign market index has risen to 172, an increase of 72% over the same period.

A weaker first half

The first-half figures were less encouraging for British demand. UK buyers acquired 3,567 homes in H1 2026, down 10.5% compared to 3,984 in the same period last year.

Q2 therefore looks like an improvement on the first-quarter performance rather than another leg down. British purchases stabilised during the quarter, even as they continued to underperform the rapidly expanding foreign market.

Looking at the four-quarter rolling total helps smooth out the noise in individual quarterly figures and makes the underlying trend clearer. On that basis, British demand is still weakening: UK buyers were involved in 7,349 Spanish property purchases in the four quarters to the end of Q2 2026, down 10.7% compared with the equivalent 12-month total a year earlier. That reverses the modest recovery seen in 2025 and leaves rolling British demand at its lowest Q2 level since 2021.

The bigger picture is one of declining British weight rather than disappearing British demand. The UK remains an important source of buyers for Spanish property, particularly in some coastal markets, but other nationalities are increasingly responsible for the growth of Spain’s foreign-buyer market.