The difficulty of accessing a home also affects those who are looking for a room to live for a while, especially in large cities. Sharing a flat is 10% more expensive than a year ago in Spain, where the average price amounts to 383 euros, but the outlay in large capitals is much higher, reaching more than 500 euros in Barcelona, the city with the highest prices .
As can be seen in the map below, drawn from data provided by the real estate portal Pisos.com, the second most expensive provincial capital to share a flat is Madrid, where the price of a room reaches 499 euros on average, followed by from Vitoria, where it costs 445 euros. On the contrary, the cheapest places to rent a bedroom are Ciudad Real, Badajoz and Zamora, cities in which the average price is below 200 euros.
Another relevant aspect of the study is that the lack of supply pushes up the price of rooms in traditionally more affordable areas. Proof of this is that in Cuenca, the provincial capital that registered the greatest increase, renting a room costs 33% more than a year ago, with the average rent going from 210 to 270 euros.
Likewise, the cities with the most prohibitive prices, Barcelona and Madrid, accumulate double-digit year-on-year increases: in the county capital a room was paid for an average of 579 euros in March, 19% more than a year earlier, while in the capital of the country, you could access a shared flat for 499 euros on average. An amount very close to that which was rented in the same month for a 55-square-meter flat in Spain, where the price per meter stood at 10.61 euros.
"The demand for shared flats is on the rise," says Ferran Font. The director of Studies and spokesperson for Pisos.com. explains that the applicant profile is changing. It's not just college students anymore, but also "younger generations who can't afford rental housing on their own, and people experiencing financial hardship." The lack of supply of flats for rent and the late emancipation of young people in Spain are the main reasons behind this change.
There is another determining factor, as pointed out by the professor of Civil Law and founder of the UNESCO Chair of Housing, Sergio Nasarre: "The rental of rooms is not regulated by the Law of Urban Leases (LAU), therefore it is a type of lease much more flexible without the tenant protection of being able to require a five-year lease.” And he adds: "Therefore, it can be an escape route for many landlords", who can avoid applying limitations such as the 2% in the annual review of the CPI decreed for this year. Likewise, the expert considers that the increase in demand for room rentals is one more symptom of "the total precariousness of housing." “It is always disguised as coliving or cohousing, but when it is forced it is homelessness,” he concludes.
