The photograph of the housing market in Valencia, tense and on alert for months, is not complete without focusing well on the hundreds of advertisements that are published every month on real estate platforms. There are more than 200, according to the monitoring that the Real Estate Association of the Valencian Community (Asicval) has been monitoring the offer for some months.
And from what it has been observing, in December 2022 there were approximately 500 room ads and since then every month Asicval detects between 200 and 250 new room ads. “There are many investors who buy apartments and renovate them to rent rooms. And many families are coming to live in them,” explains Nora García Donet, president of Asicval, to La Vanguardia, who describes the current situation of the rental market in the city as a “drama.” They are second-hand homes, which with a facelift, go on the rental market, but when they are offered compartmentalized, they allow greater profitability for the owner.
There is, in parallel, a boom in the second-hand housing market, especially due to inheritances and changes of housing among older people, who prefer smaller spaces. After these operations, the president of Asicval observes above all a growth in small landlords' reluctance to rent. “The only thing the new Law has done is complicate everything a little more, and those who had already had bad experiences prefer not to rent again.”
That is why the sale of used housing is growing, he points out, and even temporary rentals have increased, since according to the latest report on the situation of the housing market in Valencia -prepared by the Housing Observatory Chair of the Polytechnic University of Valencia-, There has been an increase in supply in recent quarters due to the effect of the Housing Law on the decisions of apartment owners. The study, referring to the last quarter of 2023, confirms that, comparing the same period with 2019, the average rental price in the city of Valencia has increased by 63%. By area, 16 of the 19 districts increased their rental prices between 6% and 49%, except for Poblats Maritims, Pobles del Nord and Benimaclet, which fell between 5% and 24%.
Added to this photograph is the shortage of new housing. The Chair maintains, after analyzing the offer at the end of last year, that two out of every three Valencian neighborhoods do not have new apartments for sale. The situation could worsen in the second quarter of the year, when the drop in new housing supply of 23%, with which the year closed, grows much more.
"To the lack of new housing, which we have been warning about for some time, we must add the rental situation, compressed at the top by expatriates who arrive in the city, who can pay 'whatever is asked of them', which has an impact on the price. At the bottom are those who cannot pay, that is why entire families are entering shared apartments,” explains Fernando Cos-Gayón, director of the Chair.
The expert adds that “the option of renting housing per room is more lucrative” and, in fact, a look at any platform - at the time of writing these lines - shows an offer close to 2,000 rooms in Valencia city with prices that range from 175 euros per month to 1,800 euros. In very different neighborhoods, yes: from Cabanyal to the Pilar neighborhood.
This is, as García Donet explains and Cos-Gayón confirms, one of the “booms” that the Valencian real estate sector is experiencing. The other is the reformulation of commercial basements into tourist apartments, which is especially palpable at street level in neighborhoods such as Cabanyal-Canyamelar.
Visit València, tourism organization of the Valencia City Council, estimates the number of tourist apartments advertised online in Valencia at 6,880, with growth approaching 30%. In this case, Nora García Donet explains that “those who do business now are those who buy a bass that already has a tourist license, because now it is more difficult to get one.” In her opinion, it is not a bad idea that empty premises can be occupied by this type of business, as long as housing is released for residential use and more housing is built, both free and officially protected.
