Investment approach
How many Barcelona sales top 1 M€: what the statistics leave out
Public statistics do not give the number of home sales above 1 M€ in Barcelona: registries and notaries publish total volume and average prices. I go through what exists and what you can estimate.
How many home sales above 1 M€ close in Barcelona each year, public statistics do not say. The sources I opened on 13 October 2026 have no such breakdown: the Colegio de Registradores (the Spanish property registrars) publishes total volume and average prices, INE (the national statistics office) calculates an index and a transaction count without splitting by price, and the notaries' portal gives the average price and the number of sales. For the province of Barcelona, the registries counted 17 653 home sales in Q2 2026 (ERI, Q2 2026), but the report does not say how many crossed 1 M€. Here, a sale above 1 M€ means a home sale with a price in the escritura (the notarial deed of sale) above 1 M€.
What does each source show?
A table of what I checked in the publications themselves, not in second-hand summaries.
| Source | What it publishes | Breakdown for prices above 1 M€ |
|---|---|---|
| Colegio de Registradores, ERI Q2 2026 | Number of transactions, average price per m², new-build and resale, flats and houses, floor area, buyer nationality, mortgage | No |
| INE, housing price index and ETDP | Index based on transactions from administrative registries (over 95% of sales), number of registered transactions | No |
| Notaries' portal penotariado.com | Average price per m², average floor area, average value, number of sales; levels from country to postcode | Not in the portal's description |
| Open Data BCN, notarial deeds | Number of transactions by quarter, Barcelona neighbourhood (barris) and type of use | No, the dataset has no price |
| Idealista | Contacts per listing by price band | Yes, but it is demand, not transactions |
Sources: INE, index methodology, notaries' portal, Open Data BCN. On the notaries' portal: I found no breakdown by price band in its description, but I did not test the interface behind registration.
What does the one nearby figure, demand by price band, show?
Idealista tracks how the number of contacts per listing changes across five price bands. In Q1 2026, in Spain only the segment above 1 M€ grew, by 3%, while in Barcelona contacts per listing in that segment fell by 14%, whereas in the 600 000–1 M€ band they rose by 2% (Idealista, 23.06.2026). This is interest in listings on a single portal. The number of transactions and the prices at which they closed cannot be derived from it.
What can you calculate yourself from open data?
The denominator. Open Data BCN (the dataset notaris_compravendes_trans_tip_us) publishes the number of notarial transactions by quarter, city neighbourhood and type of use, geolocated ones only, without price. I summed the “Residencial” rows for 2025: 16 645 transactions in the city, 1 392 in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, 680 in Les Corts, 580 in Dreta de l'Eixample and 126 in Pedralbes. Small values are hidden in the dataset, so this is a lower estimate, and “housing” includes flats and houses at any price.
Worked example, not a forecast and not market statistics. Suppose the share of sales above 1 M€ in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi is 10%, 20% or 30%: that is 139, 278 or 418 sales a year. A threefold spread on the same notarial base. Any material that quotes a specific number of such sales without a price source is putting someone's guess into the formula.
What do we not know publicly?
- The number and share of home sales above 1 M€ in the city and by district.
- The distribution across bands of 1–3, 3–5, 5–10 M€ and above.
- The share of non-resident buyers in those bands: the ERI splits purchases by nationality, but not by price.
- Time on market for expensive properties: registries and notaries do not have the listing date.
- The gap between the listing price and the escritura price by segment.
Each item can be closed by a request to the Colegio de Registradores or the Consejo General del Notariado, or by your own sample of closed deals. Whether they would release such a breakdown, I do not know.
How do you assess the liquidity of the segment without this figure?
Work from indirect signs and call them indirect: total transaction volume in the district, demand trends by price band, the gap between asking price and registry price, the project term in scenarios. Total market volume, with caveats, is covered in the article on transaction statistics in Barcelona, and prices by district in the analyses of Sarrià-Sant Gervasi and Les Corts and Pedralbes. How to measure liquidity is explained in the article on real estate liquidity.
Who is this estimate not for?
Anyone who needs a figure for an investment committee presentation: an approximate estimate looks like a fact there, and it is more honest to write “no public statistics exist”. Anyone who wants to judge demand in the upper segment by total volume: the overall trend and the trend for expensive properties diverge, as Idealista's listing demand in Q1 2026 shows: in Spain contacts per listing in the segment above 1 M€ rose by 3%, while in the 600 000–1 M€ band they fell by 6%. And anyone who expects the sources to agree: registries and notaries count transactions at different moments, and the numbers differ.
Your own entry and exit assumptions are easy to put together in the calculator, and the way we work with projects from 1 M€ is described on the residential property page.
Questions and answers
How many homes above 1 M€ sell in Barcelona each year?
There is no official figure. Registries and notaries publish total volume and average prices, but not the number of sales by price band. According to the notarial deeds in Open Data BCN, there were at least 16 645 home sales at all prices in the city in 2025.
Where can I find statistics on expensive sales in Catalonia?
In the ERI of the Colegio de Registradores, on the notaries' portal penotariado.com, at INE and in Open Data BCN. None of them, as far as I checked in their descriptions and reports, gives a breakdown above 1 M€. What remains is a request to the organisations or a sample of your own.
Is demand for homes above 1 M€ growing?
In Spain, in Q1 2026, contacts per listing in this segment rose by 3% according to Idealista, and in Barcelona they fell by 14%. This is a measure of interest on a single portal, not of sales.
Why can't I take the number of expensive sales from agency news?
Agencies do not see the whole market, and their counting method is usually not disclosed. If a piece has no date, period, price source or definition of the threshold, the figure cannot be verified.
How do I size the market if there is no price breakdown?
From total volume in the district, demand trends, the gap between asking and closing prices, and the timelines of past projects. Present the conclusions as an estimate, not as statistics.
