Are there affordable rental homes? Yes, but according to experts, they are still insufficient to meet the significant demand.
The housing access problem is structural and has been deeply rooted in Spain for years. According to the “Affordable Housing Observatory“, conducted by Provivienda, only 2.8% of rentals are priced below the market. While some fortunate individuals have the opportunity to access the luxury residential market, for many, securing housing often becomes a real “mission impossible.”
The high cost of both owned and rented housing, especially in major cities, combined with low wages and job instability, significantly contribute to exacerbating this situation, especially among the younger population.
78,000 affordable rental homes
In Spain, nearly half of tenants allocate more than 30% of their income to rent, according to the Observatory’s data. This means that one in three households with rented housing makes an economic overexertion.
With the aim of addressing housing access issues, public administrations launched tenders in 2023 to build 78,000 affordable rental homes, according to “The Living Property Telescope” report by EY. The development of these projects, according to the consultancy, will involve an investment of around 5.5 billion euros.
Despite being very good news, these are not enough to tackle the housing deficit in Spain, representing only 10% of the 800,000 homes that make up the total new housing supply expected until 2033, concludes the report. Javier García Mateo, Managing Partner of the Real Estate sector at EY’s Strategy and Transactions area, emphasizes the need to adopt “additional measures to rehabilitate the existing housing stock and adapt it to the needs of the new generations,” as it is dominated by “outdated and obsolete” infrastructure.
Madrid and its commitment to affordable rent
The need to bring affordable rental products to the market in Spain is a widespread demand, leading to the implementation of public-private collaboration projects for the promotion of housing under this regime.
The Madrid City Council is one of the municipalities that is promoting this formula the most. Last November, through the Municipal Housing and Land Company, it awarded 150 apartments in 12 districts of the capital, with rents below 30% of the family unit’s income.
Of the 150 homes, 101 belong to San Francisco Javier VI, the new EMVS Madrid promotion in the “ecodistrict” of Puente de Vallecas (comprising 12 developments, nine of them completed and three under construction, totaling 1,200 homes), and whose rent will not exceed 461 euros per month.
Just a few days ago, the City Council of the capital started construction on 100 new affordable rental homes in the Villa de Vallecas district, with an investment of 13.6 million euros. Vallecas 62 is one of the nine promotions that EMVS Madrid has started in 2023, totaling 688 new homes. Last December, bids were also made for the projects of three new promotions with 126 apartments. In this district, EMVS Madrid has four promotions in various stages of execution with 310 affordable rental flats.
EMVS Madrid, with more than 10,500 homes for rent or in various construction phases, is the largest promoter of public housing in Spain. It currently has 8,000 affordable rental homes and around 2,700 new homes distributed in 32 developments under construction and bidding.
The Community of Madrid, on the other hand, announced at the end of 2023 the construction of around 4,000 homes under the Affordable Rent Vive Plan for this new year. The goal is to expand the stock of homes for affordable rent through public-private collaboration. The Community aims to build 25,000 flats over the next eight years with rents up to 50% below the market.
From other regions of Spain, work is underway along the same lines to increase the stock of accessible rental housing. This is the case with the Zaragoza City Council, which has just announced that it will contribute 376 affordable rental homes to the city’s real estate market. The municipal company Zaragoza Vivienda has agreed to award the three lots thanks to the capture of 15.5 million euros from the Next Generation European Funds.
In Catalonia, the Generalitat and the Barcelona City Council have recently signed an agreement to build 637 public affordable rental apartments in the next five years. The collaboration includes a second phase that will raise the figure to 1,700 social housing units on municipal land.
