EPTOn April 08 2025 10:22 Acrofales wrote:
As someone who noticed that first-hand, it's definitely true and obviously a problem. I was pretty lucky. I moved away in 2012 and back in 2016. When we rented in 2011, we got a pretty good flat in the center of a very well-to-do satellite town of Barcelona for 900 €. When we got back in 2016 we got an inadequate and bedbug infested flat for roughly that. We were able to get out of the rent and find something else, but not for under 1200 € for a smaller flat than we had had before. We were looking at rent prices and potential mortgages, and renting was a financial trap, but having no credit history for 4 years meant the banks weren't going to give us a mortgage. In 2020, we bought a home, and instead of paying 1300/month in rent, went to 700/month for a mortgage of a far bigger flat. Not quite as popular a location (but better for us). Right now, our neighbour (same building, slightly larger flat) rents for 1800/month. It's a two-bedroom flat, so kinda okay, but cramped for a family with 2 kids.the median wage is roughly 2000/month in Spain (slightly higher in Barcelona region). The cost of renting in "popular" places is absurd.
As for doing stuff, the federal government wants to, but not a lot they can do. In the case of Barcelona, the rent caps are horrendously backfiring. I have colleagues complaining they can't get a normal rental, and have to accept a "seasonal" rental contract. Seasonal rental contracts are anything under 1 year, so they set them up for 11 months. They are also not covered by the rent cap law, so a rather massive loophole.
The flip side, is of course, that Spain has vast regions where housing is dirt cheap. You want to live in Teruel or Soria or so? Rental for a nice town house is probably about 600/month. But there's no work. And these are pleasant, small cities with all facilities (but no airport). A friend is an avid surfer and we can work remote. He's now renting a (small) house on the beach in Cantabria and he's paying less for the house than he did for a *room* in Barcelona.
Airbnb is a part of it, but tourist rental is not the whole problem. I can't tell you what all the issues are, but I'd say the barrier to being able to buy is not helping either. I compare myself to my brother, who bought a flat in 2006 (things were temporarily harder, but I heard they're now back to being like this again) with his then-girlfriend, in the center of Amsterdam. They were both recently done studying and had decent jobs. They got a mortgage for 100% the value of their flat, and a mortgage insurance to cover the case where the value of the flat dropped and they were forced to sell. They could also deduct interest payments from their taxes (since then this has been reduced). In Spain it's highly unusual to get more than 80% of the value, there's no such thing as an insurance, and no tax benefits (there used to be some). This means as an individual, you need more cash, and run a higher risk. Interest payments are similar, because they're all pegged to the Euribor regardless. Part of this is historic and part of it is because 2008 hit Spain exceptionally hard, but it means someone starting a new job *cannot* buy a home. They first need to save up 20-30% of the value of a home. Someone living paycheck to paycheck will therefore *never* be able to buy a home. Now comparing the housing market of Spain and the Netherlands is difficult. The Netherlands is notoriously overheated (at least in the Randstad part). But another thing that is somewhat available in the Netherlands is social housing, which puts some downward pressure on rent prices. It's insufficient, with long LONG waiting lists, but, impossibly, much much better than in Spain.
Finally, and anecdotally, I've noticed a serious uptick in foreigners (like me) who seem to live here. I was talking to some friends the other day, and we hypothesised that they're digital nomads (unlike me). Those 11-month rental contracts are perfect for them. They move here for a while, and then when their rental contract is up, move on to Italy... or Indonesia. If there's generally speaking as many around the whole area as there are in my town, that's another group putting pressure on the rental market.
As someone who noticed that first-hand, it's definitely true and obviously a problem. I was pretty lucky. I moved away in 2012 and back in 2016. When we rented in 2011, we got a pretty good flat in the center of a very well-to-do satellite town of Barcelona for 900 €. When we got back in 2016 we got an inadequate and bedbug infested flat for roughly that. We were able to get out of the rent and find something else, but not for under 1200 € for a smaller flat than we had had before. We were looking at rent prices and potential mortgages, and renting was a financial trap, but having no credit history for 4 years meant the banks weren't going to give us a mortgage. In 2020, we bought a home, and instead of paying 1300/month in rent, went to 700/month for a mortgage of a far bigger flat. Not quite as popular a location (but better for us). Right now, our neighbour (same building, slightly larger flat) rents for 1800/month. It's a two-bedroom flat, so kinda okay, but cramped for a family with 2 kids.the median wage is roughly 2000/month in Spain (slightly higher in Barcelona region). The cost of renting in "popular" places is absurd.
As for doing stuff, the federal government wants to, but not a lot they can do. In the case of Barcelona, the rent caps are horrendously backfiring. I have colleagues complaining they can't get a normal rental, and have to accept a "seasonal" rental contract. Seasonal rental contracts are anything under 1 year, so they set them up for 11 months. They are also not covered by the rent cap law, so a rather massive loophole.
The flip side, is of course, that Spain has vast regions where housing is dirt cheap. You want to live in Teruel or Soria or so? Rental for a nice town house is probably about 600/month. But there's no work. And these are pleasant, small cities with all facilities (but no airport). A friend is an avid surfer and we can work remote. He's now renting a (small) house on the beach in Cantabria and he's paying less for the house than he did for a *room* in Barcelona.
Airbnb is a part of it, but tourist rental is not the whole problem. I can't tell you what all the issues are, but I'd say the barrier to being able to buy is not helping either. I compare myself to my brother, who bought a flat in 2006 (things were temporarily harder, but I heard they're now back to being like this again) with his then-girlfriend, in the center of Amsterdam. They were both recently done studying and had decent jobs. They got a mortgage for 100% the value of their flat, and a mortgage insurance to cover the case where the value of the flat dropped and they were forced to sell. They could also deduct interest payments from their taxes (since then this has been reduced). In Spain it's highly unusual to get more than 80% of the value, there's no such thing as an insurance, and no tax benefits (there used to be some). This means as an individual, you need more cash, and run a higher risk. Interest payments are similar, because they're all pegged to the Euribor regardless. Part of this is historic and part of it is because 2008 hit Spain exceptionally hard, but it means someone starting a new job *cannot* buy a home. They first need to save up 20-30% of the value of a home. Someone living paycheck to paycheck will therefore *never* be able to buy a home. Now comparing the housing market of Spain and the Netherlands is difficult. The Netherlands is notoriously overheated (at least in the Randstad part). But another thing that is somewhat available in the Netherlands is social housing, which puts some downward pressure on rent prices. It's insufficient, with long LONG waiting lists, but, impossibly, much much better than in Spain.
Finally, and anecdotally, I've noticed a serious uptick in foreigners (like me) who seem to live here. I was talking to some friends the other day, and we hypothesised that they're digital nomads (unlike me). Those 11-month rental contracts are perfect for them. They move here for a while, and then when their rental contract is up, move on to Italy... or Indonesia. If there's generally speaking as many around the whole area as there are in my town, that's another group putting pressure on the rental market.
Cheers for the comprehensive response! Are you foreign to Spain? I’d just always assumed you were a Spanish native!
Thanks for the comprehensive response and yeah it’s just fucking complicated to actually fix. Plus the actual problems will differ from locale to locale, often quite considerably.
Dublin you’re seeing these problems for sure. Technically GDP per capita is through the roof, but a lot of that is from folks working in various tech companies or whatever, and some of them are somewhat temporarily living there.
One practice that seems to be quite common, in many places is the combination of property capital gradually buying out standard rental housing and converting it to AirBnBs, but rather than service the tourist types, basically just using it as standard rental property without any of the regulatory oversight.
The overall problem is a gigantic fucker. I think there’s pretty simple solutions really, but not ones that are remotely political palatable
You can close that loophole though, 100%, it just takes a bit of agitation and some balls.
Uber exists here over in Northern Ireland but alongside traditional taxi companies and hasn’t loss-lead to dominate the sector subsequently simply because they were subject to the same rules rather than ‘technically it’s a ride sharing operation consisting of independent contractors’ or whatever
