Lifetime donations soar to historic highs in Catalonia in a context of crisis in access to the real estate market, as a way to help family members. In 2025 they increased by 22%, with almost 23,000, ten points above the Spanish average. In the first quarter of 2026 this trend continues, with increases of 20% and 6,188 signed. “Today we talk about problems accessing housing, obtaining resources… With parents who have accumulated savings, the option of donation is increasingly present” as a solution, explains Raquel Iglesias, vice dean of the Col·legi Notarial de Catalunya.
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With these maneuvers, such as donations from parents to children, the entry into the residential market is covered, with prices impossible for many. Donations “respond largely to the desire to help children or relatives who want to acquire a home and are having a problem, both with money and the home itself. The evolution is clear, we are at historic highs,” Iglesias reiterated at the presentation of the V Observatori Notarial de Catalunya, presented this Wednesday by the Col·legi Notarial de Catalunya.
Although the detail is not broken down, donations are usually mostly money. But a scenario that notaries are increasingly encountering is the transfer of homes inherited by parents to their children. “The current generation of parents has saved a lot, and is inheriting homes from their parents at 50 or 60 years old. These are becoming objects of donation to the children. They transfer what for them is a second home to a young person who wants to buy,” Iglesias reviews.
The dynamism in donations is greater than in the rest of Spain because more available legal avenues are explored, especially due to the context of greater tax pressure. Carme Elena, speaker of the tax commission of the Col·legi Oficial de Gestors Administratius de Catalunya, explains that “in a money donation you pay donation tax, with a possibility of reductions if the child uses it to buy their first main home. In principle, it has more advantages than donating a property.” Because “if you donate a property, you have to be careful because you pay two taxes, the donation tax and the IRPF on income as if you sold it, it is assimilated to a sale, people don’t know that,” she explains. In old properties, with a low original purchase value and a high current reference value, which is taken as a base for the income calculation, the tax bill can be high, which requires planning the form of transfer.
Renunciations to inheritances stabilize
In the dilemma of making a donation or waiting for the inheritance, it is pointed out that the situation must be seen and calculated. Notaries point out for now that inheritances are in a normalization framework after covid: they fall by 2%, to 60,300. They are far from the almost 67,000 seen in 2021, just after the pandemic. Renunciations to inheritances remain stable in 2025, at 9,711. The main reason for doing so is the liability of the inheritance – debts -, followed by tax settlement. Again, Catalonia is one of the autonomous communities where it is most taxed. In 2021 or 2023, in inheritances linked to the pandemic, renunciations exceeded 10,000, although the withdrawal rate usually hovers around 16% of total inheritances, more or less.
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Another effect of the housing price crisis is seen in the sales market. The notaries’ report details a slowdown in real estate in the first part of the year, breaking with the strong increases of 2025, when more than 158,000 sales were registered, 9% more and the highest in five years. Now, until March there are about 37,000 sales, 4% less, while nationally it advances above 30%. Purchases by foreigners also fall by 14% in these first months, with 4,820 operations.
Slowdown in the real estate market at the start of the year, but not in prices
“What does not decrease is the price,” highlights Iglesias. Values continue to rise, with a 9% increase in the last year, up to 2,289 euros per m². There are 46% of purchases made without a mortgage: here come into play money donations, personal loans or those who sell their current home to buy a new one.
On another front, Catalonia remains one of the most active autonomous communities in the formalization of wills, with one in five made in Spain. 144,140 were formalized in 2025, 3% more, although in this first quarter of the year there is a slight decrease of 3%.
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