Average Spanish mortgage passes €178,000 for the first time

The average new mortgage in Spain has broken €178,000 for the first time on record, according to figures published by the National Statistics Institute (INE) on 26 August. It is the clearest sign yet that the cost of buying — and of financing that purchase — is climbing in step: house prices rose 15.2% in the year to the second quarter, and now the typical loan buyers are taking out to cover that cost has hit a new high alongside it.

The record amount arrived alongside a record in activity too. Spain signed 45,907 mortgages on homes in June — the strongest June since 2010, up 10.8% on the same month last year. That took the first half of 2026 to 259,681 new mortgages, 7% more than the same period in 2025 and the highest first-half total in 16 years. The capital lent by banks over that period rose even faster, up 17.5% year on year, reflecting both more mortgages and larger ones.

 Source: INE, Estadística de Hipotecas, monthly releases, January–June 2026

Interest rates are, for now, doing little to slow any of this down. The average rate on new mortgages has stayed below 3% through the first half of the year, keeping monthly repayments more manageable than the size of the loans alone would suggest — though a buyer borrowing today still needs a larger deposit and a bigger income to qualify than they would have a year or two ago, simply because both the properties and the mortgages against them cost more.

The growth was not even across Spain. Canarias (+31.4%), Castilla-La Mancha (+23.2%), and the Comunitat Valenciana (+16.1%) recorded the sharpest annual increases in mortgage numbers in June, while Baleares (-10.4%), Cantabria (-9.1%), and Galicia (-7.3%) went the other way. By sheer volume, Andalucía, Cataluña, Madrid, and the Comunitat Valenciana signed the most mortgages of any region.

For anyone planning a purchase, the practical read is straightforward: financing is still available and rates remain historically low, but the amount needed — both to borrow and to put down as a deposit — keeps rising, and shows no sign of levelling off yet. Our guide to financing an overseas property in Spain covers how non-resident buyers approach a Spanish mortgage in practice.