Mallorca’s residential market continues to combine strong international demand with a limited supply of housing, particularly in the parts of the island where buyers compete for coastal homes and high-end properties. Property values remain among the highest in Spain.
Foreign buyers have an unusually large presence in these areas, while Spanish purchasers still account for most transactions across the island’s wider residential market. That difference matters. The market increasingly behaves as several markets at once, with nationality, budget, location and property type affecting both the homes people buy and the prices they are prepared to pay.
A resilient market: fewer transactions, yet continued price growth
The first half of 2026 followed a pattern that has become familiar in Mallorca: demand remained strong while the supply of available housing stayed relatively tight, particularly in the most sought-after locations.
When looking at these figures, it helps to separate price from value. The price is what a buyer ultimately pays for a property. Its value depends on a broader set of circumstances, with supply and demand having a particularly strong influence over time.
For purchases by nationality, the quarterly statistics published by the Spanish Land Registrars cover the Balearic Islands as a whole and do not provide a complete breakdown for Mallorca alone. Even with that limitation, they offer the most reliable regional reference available.
The Registrars recorded 3,643 residential transactions during the first quarter of 2026 and 3,167 during the second, around 6,810 purchases over the first six months of the year. Transaction numbers fell by 13.1% from one quarter to the next, but prices moved in the opposite direction. The average registered residential price rose from about €4,173 per square metre to €4,311 per square metre. In Palma, the figure stood at roughly €4,291 per square metre.
That contrast is perhaps the most telling part of the data. Fewer homes changed hands, yet buyers continued to pay more for them.
Foreign and Spanish purchasers
International demand remains unusually important in the Balearic Islands. Foreign buyers accounted for about 28.9% of residential purchases in the first quarter of 2026 and 32.3% in the second. By the second quarter, the Balearics had the highest proportion of foreign residential buyers of any autonomous community in Spain.
Across the first half of the year, foreigners therefore accounted for approximately 30.5% of purchases, compared with 69.5% made by Spanish buyers. Applied to the 6,810 transactions registered during those six months, that works out at roughly 2,074 purchases by foreigners and 4,736 by Spanish purchasers.
The change between the two quarters deserves some attention. The overall number of transactions fell, but the proportion involving foreign buyers increased. International demand appears to have held up better during that slowdown than domestic demand.
Previous official figures also show that the foreign presence becomes much stronger as property prices rise. Foreign buyers may account for roughly three out of every ten purchases across the Balearic market as a whole, but their weight has been considerably greater among homes priced above €500,000.
What do foreign and Spanish buyers purchase?
Most residential transactions in the Balearic Islands still involve resale homes. During the first half of 2026, around four out of every five purchases concerned existing properties rather than newly built housing.
In the first quarter, buyers purchased 2,816 resale homes and 827 new properties. During the second quarter, those figures stood at 2,558 and 609 respectively.
Public data do not yet allow a reliable Mallorca-only comparison that combines the buyer’s nationality, the type of property purchased and the final transaction price. Drawing very precise conclusions about what Spanish and foreign buyers purchase would therefore go further than the statistics allow.
Even so, the broader division in the market is difficult to ignore. Spanish buyers still make most residential purchases and have a particularly large presence in the conventional housing market, where resale properties dominate. Foreign buyers appear much more frequently in higher-priced parts of the market, especially in coastal areas, second-home locations and places with a large concentration of luxury housing.
South-west Mallorca offers one of the clearest examples. Andratx and Calvià rank among the Spanish municipalities with the highest average residential transaction values, with average purchase prices approaching or exceeding €1 million in some segments. In the most expensive areas, individual sales can run into several million euros.
How much do foreign and Spanish buyers spend?
Spending patterns make the division between the two groups clearer still. The latest notarial figures available before the period analysed here showed foreign buyers in the Balearic Islands paying an average of more than €5,000 per square metre.
The same difference appears across Spain. Non-resident foreign buyers have repeatedly paid considerably more per square metre than resident foreign purchasers or Spanish buyers.
That does not place every international purchaser in the luxury market, just as Spanish buyers are by no means absent from Mallorca’s most expensive locations. What the figures do show is a sizeable difference in average spending power and in the parts of the market where each group has the greatest weight.
Foreign demand has much more influence in Mallorca’s upper price ranges. Spanish demand, meanwhile, supports the much larger residential market where most transactions actually take place.
Outlook for Mallorca
The first six months of 2026 leave Mallorca with a residential market that looks increasingly divided by price, location and buyer profile. Spanish purchasers still make up the clear majority in numerical terms, while foreign buyers retain a remarkably large share by Spanish standards and have far more weight at the expensive end of the market.
The fall in transaction numbers has not brought prices down with it. For the moment, restricted supply and continued buyer demand are keeping residential values high even as fewer properties change hands.
Mallorca therefore remains an unusual case within the Spanish housing market. International buyers have a much stronger presence than in most of the country, but their influence is far from evenly distributed across the island. Beneath the headline figures sit two very different realities: a broad residential market still driven mainly by Spanish purchasers and a much smaller, much more expensive segment where foreign capital carries considerably more weight.
Sources: Colegio de Registradores de España, Consejo General del Notariado, Ministerio de Vivienda y Agenda Urbana (Observatorio de Vivienda y Suelo), El País, Europa Press.