Are Tenerife Property Prices, in 2024, going up or down?

Are property prices in Tenerife going up or down right now, in 2024? How has the market been affected by Coronavirus? How has Brexit affected prices in Tenerife? (Updated October 2024.)

The short answer is – property prices in the popular resorts of Los Cristianos, Playa de Las Americas, Costa Adeje etc – the South of Tenerife, have been rising over recent years and are up around 30% since 2020 and this year – 2024, they have shown no signs of falling.

The long answer is below where I share my thoughts on what is happening with the property market and prices here, taking into account Coronavirus and the pandemic, travel restrictions and Brexit and the 90 day rule for British buyers, the conflict in Ukraine etc, recessions in various economies etc:

The property price bom in Tenerife really began aftet the Covid lockdowns began to lift. Demand really started to surge from all of the traditional markets. Demand increased further with the onset of the war in Ukraine, when lots of Eastern European buyers began to look for save havens to park their money. Tenerife is about as far away, in Europe, as you can be from the conflict zones and as such we have seen a large amount of buyers emanating from Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and the Czech Republic.

As a result of this increase in demand, supply has dwindled and prices have inevitably squeezed higher and higher. Late into 2024, we are now receiving properties from owners looking to sell over the Winter months, into the busiest time of the year which is between January and April.

So, there is still a shortage of good quality properties for sale at what I would call “reasonable” prices. Hundreds of new agents are plying their trade with little to no experience and in order to “get the listing” from the owners they speak with, they are often tempted to be very optimistic with their valuations. Inevitably, many owners will go with the agent promising them the highest price and then later find their property has received little to no interest and they have missed the best months of the year to sell. For example, I have seen 1 beds on complexes in Los Cristianos, which I would value at 250,000€, but which are listed at 300,000€ or 320,000€. Many of the smaller villas which I would value at 600,000€ for example, atre listed at 900,000€ and so on. 6 months into the selling process, reductions are made but they are nowhere near what is required to generate interest and so many of this properties sit on websites and do nothing.

It is a fantastic time for owners if they are looking to sell, prices are higher than ever, but when they are 30%, they have little to no chance of achieving a sale. The situation worsens when other owners, thinking about selling their property in Tenerife see these prices, automatically assume that must be the going rate and demand the same or more for their property which is “much nicer and in a better position than that one…”

It´s not the first time we have found ourselves in this ambitious valuation loop! As the gap between sellers expectations and buyers budgets widens, transactions will slow. Properties that are correctly valued and correctly priced will sell, the rest will continue to stagnate and sit on the market with little to no interest.

This would explain a great deal of the drop in transactions being reported. So headlines such as “Property Sales in Tenerife down 16%!” fail to convey that PRICES have not dropped 16% – they have not dropped at all, only the number of sales which can be explained, for the most part by the lack of good properties actually available to purchase.

To give some idea, the average 1 bed apartment which was 160,000€-ish a few years back, may achieve 230,000€ or 240,000€ now. The best 1 beds on the market, can sell for more than 300,000€ (front-line positions and a few of the more sought-after complexes for example.) Townhouses that were 300,000€ are nof often listed closer to 500,000€ – many are not moving though….

At the higher end, it is not uncommon for villas in the South, good positions to be listed in excess of 2 Million Euros, this is no longer the huge budget it used to be. And the highest sales prices we have seen in the past few years have been the villas around Costa Adeje Golf where 5,000,000€ to 6,000,000€ is a common price point now.

Who has been buying?

I work in all markets across Europe. I sell to lots of Brits and lots of non-Brits. From the huge number of sales we have had between  2021 and 2024, there were a total of 21 different nationalities. 31% of our sales were to British, 8% were to Spanish, 7% to each of Belgian, German and Irish and 40% were across the rest, which were Czech, Italian, Irish, Swedish, French, Swiss, Romanian, Polish, Slovenian, Russian, Dutch, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Slovakian, Icelandic and Norweigan. The number of buyers from these countries is rising and this is a market we are paying a lot of attention to.

So the British market is still our largest but has fallen as an overall percentage of our sales:

What kind of offers are people making and accepting for property in Tenerife?

In 2021, the accepted offer was 97% of asking price over all of our sales.

In 2022 the average accepted was idential at 97% of asking price.

In 2023 / 2024, it is closer to 96% of asking price. 

The large number of nationalities show why it is more important than ever to be targeting buyers from the rest of Europe, as well as the UK. Countries like Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Poland are very active, as are the Baltic states. I massively increased our marketing budget in 2020 as the Covid restrictions kicked in and that paid off for me and for my clients who wanted to sell. Especially when many agencies pulled back and reduced their marketing spend (some to zero.) To this day many agents here market only on one or two Spanish portals, neglecting the 10 to 15 international portals where a lot of the buyers are coming from – they do not have the marketing budget to fully exploit all of the marketing channels now available.

Has Brexit affected property prices in Tenerife?:

The 90/180 rule does not appear to be affecting demand – owners can still spend up to 6 months a year here. Looking at buyers from the UK, most of them tend to be of working age and generally looking to spend 2 or 3 weeks at a time here so aren´t really affected.

This is the same for all of the other buyers we have from outside the EU, from Russia and the US for example. Plenty of Brits have bought in Florida and manage perfectly well there without unlimited access, for example.

One effect Brexit may be having is that Brits now have to choose when to take their holidays here as many were used to arriving in October / November and staying right the way through until Easter. This is no longer possible and many will now forgo October, November and December and opt to arrive in January for 3 months.  In 2022 and 2023, it did seem to quieten in October and November when it would normally be increasing. And then things really took off for me just before Christmas and have been busy since then. This is likely because this Winter crowd do account for a large volume of sales around the 220,000€ to 250,000€ price range for 1 bed apartments and make up a large proportion of our sellers, which I will cover in more detail in the next section.

Brexit may also have increased the volume of sales in excess of 500,000€, as many buyers opted to apply for Golden Visas after spending more than 500,000€  – giving them more access year round to the Schengen Zone. We have already had sales this year driven very much by this 500,000€ threshold.

Sellers expectations on prices:

So far as sellers, since 2008 ish, 95% of my sales have been to cash buyers so most sellers I deal with don´t have mortgages – many have been paid off and those buying since 2008 didn´t take one.

This is very different to how it was pre-financial crisis when most bought with Spanish mortgages at high LTV (80% – 100% of price.)

A lot of the sellers I deal with are well into their 70´s. They are retired, own outright, have pension income and are under little to no pressure to sell other than they think it’s about the right time for them. There is rarely any real pressure on sellers to find a buyer quickly.

There may be people of working age who need to sell (cash flow issues with business back home etc) but I haven´t seen and am not seeing much of this at all. If priced correctly, properties will sell close to asking price.

Are prices falling in Tenerife?

So far, definitely not! They have been increasing overall as supply has tightened. The market is very buoyant and the lack of properties for sale combined with enormous demand from buyers has means those sitting on their hands waiting for a crash in 2020, have been very much left behind. Inflation across Europe has been another driver of property sales, better to hold a property worth 200,000€ and have it increase to 220,000€, than have 200,000€ in the bank which will be eroded by inflation to the tune of 20,000€ in terms of spending power!

Will we see huge price drops on properties in Tenerife?

I really don´t think so. I just don´t see much of anything driving prices down. Given the demand at the moment, most properties that are priced sensibly will attract interest and very likely sell, so the impetus to drop prices further is simply not there. We are now 4 years into Covid, lockdowns, travel restrictions etc, an ongoing cost of living crisis, 3 years of war in Ukraine and rising inflation, and prices have not fallen, demand is higher than ever and sales are continuing.

Advice for buyers:

If you want to buy a well-priced property, find one that is for sale at a price you are happy with, that makes sense in the current market and make a sensible offer on it. You may well have to pay more for it now than you would have last year or the year before, perhaps quite  a lot more. But if prices keep going up the way they have been, then now is the best time for you to buy.

And if the property is affordable, dont lose it because they wouldn’t accept your offer – think about whether for the difference between between the asking price and your offer, is it worth losing and having to start all over with your search and then maybe not being able to find another?

Low ball offers:

We have all heard stories of how a friend’s brother´s mate got such and such for a bargain price after putting in a “cheeky offer” – blah, blah, blah…

As such, there are many would-be buyers who believe they must start really low – insultingly low “just in case…” I receive offers like this via email on a regular basis and in most cases I either just delete them or send them a link to this information about prices. There is simply no justification or reason to email a daft offer to me on a property that they haven’t even visited – and I won´t take it seriously, or bother the owner with it.

Keep in mind, if you see a property that looks a decent price at say 250,000€ – don´t waste yours and the seller’s time offering 190,000€. If they were going to be happy with 190,000€ and they were “desperate to sell” for some reason, it is very unlikely it would be listed at 250,000€…! It can really annoy the owner and if you are genuinely interested, its a really bad way to open negotiations.

If you still want that 250,000€ property for 190,000€ – the only way you may possibly get it is by waiting several years for prices to fall that low (which is very unlikely) or be in the right place at the right time when there is a desperate seller looking for a quick sale – but most of the time these will be snapped up by people who live here / are involved in property or who have very good relationships with the agents here who get them – it doesn’t happen often.

Take-away from all of this:

I wrote this paragraph almost three years ago after flights had restarted and sales really ramped up again and it has turned out to be very accurate:

If you have a good budget and know what you want and it comes up for sale – buy it. Because if you don´t, someone else will, especially if it is in a popular area and well priced.

That’s how I see the market, that’s what I have seen last year and so far, this year.

If you are selling a property in Tenerife and want clear advice on the best strategy, drop me an email or fill in the form below. What I am doing right now is very effective, it works and it is getting excellent results. I have a very different approach to most other agencies here – not going to go into details on how we have become so effective at selling as obviously, other agents read this website but if you would like a chat about how I can help you market and sell your property in Tenerife, contact me now and I will show you what we do.