Price per m² lies unless you ask what it measures

A square metre in Spain has two prices, and both are official. Which one you are reading decides whether a town looks expensive or cheap.

The first is the appraised value, valor tasado: published quarterly by the Ministry of Housing from appraisers' data, for municipalities above 25,000 residents. The second is the asking price: what sellers want on portals like idealista. The second is systematically higher, because it carries room for haggling, seller optimism and the fact that a listing can sit for a year.

While the numbers sit on separate pages the difference is harmless. It becomes a trap the moment two towns are compared.

The pair that shows it

In our own base this surfaced on Marbella and Barcelona. While Marbella carried an asking price it looked nearly half again as expensive as Barcelona, and the conclusion «the Costa del Sol is pricier than Catalonia» wrote itself. On a single basis the two sit side by side: Marbella 4 292 €/m², Barcelona 4 675 €/m².

How we handle it

The basis is printed next to every figure, not in a footnote. Right now 72 places are shown as appraised value and 60 as asking price; the latter exist because the Ministry bulletin skips municipalities under 25,000 residents — and those are exactly the towns people look for.

Where the appraised value comes from

Valor tasado is neither a transaction price nor a listing price but the output of a licensed appraiser: they look at comparable properties, the state of the building, the floor, the year of construction, and produce the value a bank will lend against. The ministry collects these appraisals and publishes municipal averages quarterly.

Two properties follow. First, the appraisal is conservative by design — a bank has no interest in inflating its collateral, and in a rising market it lags transactions by a quarter or two. Second, it is averaged across the whole housing stock of the municipality, including old flats inland, whereas the listings you see are usually what sits near the sea and in decent shape.

So the correct reading is this: the appraised value answers «what does housing in this town cost at all», while the asking price answers «what are they asking for what is on the market now». Two different questions, and worth keeping apart even within one town.

Why the asking price is always higher

A listing price carries three things at once. Negotiation: on the coast the discount from asking averages five to ten per cent, more on a slow property. Time on market: a listing that has sat for nine months still shows a price the seller gave up on long ago. And optimism: a seller looks at the neighbour who sold well, not at the one who cut the price and left.

None of those three reaches the appraisal. The gap between bases is therefore neither an error nor two methods measuring the same thing: it is the difference between what something is worth and what is wanted for it.

The 25,000-resident line

The bulletin covers municipalities from 25,000 residents up. That is exactly why 60 places in the base carry an asking price: they are the very towns people look to the coast for — quiet, small, cheaper than a city. No official figure exists for them, and no source substitutes for one.

The practical consequence is awkward: you cannot compare a small town with its larger neighbour by price per m² directly, even if they are half an hour apart. Their difference mixes a real market gap with a difference of bases, and we have nothing to separate the two.

Price growth pushes the bases further apart

In a hot market the appraisal lags harder: transactions run ahead while the appraiser leans on closed ones. The base holds 51 places growing at 8% a year or more — that is where the gap between appraisal and listing is widest, and where a mixed-basis comparison lies loudest. By contrast 0 places grow below 4% a year, and their figures are steadier.

The average appraised value in fast-growing places is 2 661 €/m², in calm ones 0 €/m². Expensive grows faster than cheap, which is one more reason to watch the growth rate and not just today's figure.

Cheapest by appraised value

Only places on a single basis, so comparing them is legitimate. The north-west holds the top rows: Galicia is half the price of the Mediterranean, and that is not a data error.

And the priciest

What to do with this

First: before comparing two towns, check what each figure rests on. We print it right under the price; other sources almost never do, and then assume asking — portals catch the eye more often than a ministry bulletin.

Second: for an actual deal take your figure from two sources at once — listings in your specific neighbourhood and the bank's appraisal, which you will get anyway with a mortgage. The gap between them is your room to negotiate.

Third: do not treat a fifteen per cent gap between towns as meaningful when the bases differ. It can consist entirely of methodology, and Marbella against Barcelona shows what that looks like.

Of 132 places in the base, 90 have a price confirmed against a primary source. The rest are estimates, and they are labelled — each place page shows what is verified and what is not.

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