What proportion of high-value residences change hands without ever meeting a portal is a figure the market quotes freely and nobody can source — Spain publishes no record of completed sales at property level. What we can report is our own register: roughly three hundred residences held off the published catalogue, against the catalogued stock alongside it.
There are several reasons. Discretion is one. Price discovery is another — owners selling above ten million euros increasingly prefer to test the market quietly before committing to a public listing.
For a buyer, this means that the portals show a shrinking share of what is actually available. For an advisor, it means relationships matter more than they used to.