Spanish home sales climbed 6.8% last year after two years of sharp declines caused by the collapse of the country's property market, official data showed today, in a boost for Spain's battered economy.
There were 441,386 transactions during the year, well below the peak of 775,300 in 2007, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said.
Homes sales plummeted 25.1% in 2009 and 28.8% in 2008, when the bursting of the property bubble helped plunge the Spanish economy into its worst recession in decades and sent the unemployment rate soaring to more than 20%.
The country emerged with tepid growth of just 0.1 percent in the first quarter of 2010 and 0.2 percent in the second but then stalled with zero growth in the third. The Bank of Spain last week estimated that the economy shrank by 0.1% in 2010.
The latest data on property sales will come as welcome news for the government, which is fighting to convince nervous investors that it will grow enough to bring its massive public deficit under control without resorting to a Greek or Irish style bail-out.
