“I am 33 years old, have a stable job and want to live alone” repeats Coral García in an attempt to convince herself that she is not asking for so much. When she told her partner that she was leaving her room in Madrid to go live alone, she planned to find a small apartment with one room and pay 600 euros a month at the most. "I've been looking for three weeks and between the low supply, the fact that apartments are flying and the requirements that are impossible to meet, I assume that I'm going to have to spend at least 700 euros for a studio without a single room," she explains resignedly.
Finding a flat for less than 600 euros in Madrid and Barcelona is practically an odyssey. These properties represent less than 1% of all Idealista listings in each city. The fact that this offer is so low means that a person with the average salary has very little chance of renting an apartment without allocating more than 30% of the salary, the maximum recommended by the experts to pay for the rest of the expenses such as food, energy or transportation.
This is also the case with Clàudia Custodio, who is 27 years old and is looking for a flat for herself in Barcelona. "My salary does not allow me to pay 700 euros for rent, nor can I access the apartments in the public housing registry because I do not have a permanent contract... I am assuming that I will have to share again", she complains.
The threshold of 600 euros represents approximately 30% of the average salary of a citizen, which ranges from 2,000 euros according to INE data for 2022. There is a broad consensus that a family should not invest more than 30% of their income in rent to get to cover with a minimum of comfort the rest of the expenses.
When this figure exceeds 40%, families are at risk of poverty. This is the case of Coral or Clàudia who, in order to find a flat for themselves, will have to spend up to 40% of their salary, which will also probably have deficiencies such as a lack of rooms, few square meters or a lack of natural light.
The sustained increase in rents, the high demand for housing and the pressure of tourism unleash a whirlwind that exacerbates housing stress, especially in cities such as Madrid and Barcelona. It is not just that the offer is limited and that only 26 and 5 apartments of up to 600 euros respectively are advertised. But, in addition, the conditions of these apartments are also precarious: studios with no rooms and 30 m², according to Idealista data analyzed by La Vanguardia.
If the price rises to 1,200 euros, the offer is extended with more than 800 advertisements in Barcelona and 1,000 in Madrid. These are flats that have an average of 60 square meters and two rooms. Even so, the offers in this price range represent 15 and 30% of all the properties offered in Barcelona and Madrid.
Outside of these two big cities the scenario changes, especially in comparison with Seville and Zaragoza. The offer is multiplied with more than 100 advertisements and with more benefits: for an amount of 600 euros you can get a flat of between 50 and 70 m² and up to 3 rooms. If the budget is increased to 1,200 euros, you can find 80 m² apartments and up to four rooms.
Halfway between the real estate scene of Seville and Zaragoza and that of Barcelona and Madrid, are Valencia and Bilbao and Malaga. These three towns have a much more limited and reduced offer than that of Seville, but without reaching the extreme of the two most populated cities in Spain. For an amount of up to 1,200 euros you can get apartments of up to 70 m² and between two and five rooms.
The offer is more generous and affordable because there is much less demand. Young people are moving to larger cities that can offer more competitive jobs. Coral is an example: despite being born and raised in Seville, she does not consider returning to her hometown because she believes that she will have a better job and professional projection in Madrid: "I want to live here because it has cost me a lot to get here and I like Madrid for all the life it has”.
