Spain needs to have 2.4 million additional rental homes before 2033 to meet the accommodation demands of its population, according to the study “The Living Property Telescope” prepared by the consulting firm EY.
Javier García-Mateo, director of the consultancy's real estate area, recalled that currently there is already a pent-up rental demand for 800,000 homes, from people who cannot emancipate themselves or are forced to share a flat, to which 1.7 million will be added. of more homes, due to pure demographic growth: it is expected that 2.2 million homes will be created in these years, largely due to immigration, of which 76% will be rentals. Not only will the country gain population but “the composition of society has changed, and there are more elderly people who live alone, more single-parent households and smaller families, so we need more homes,” García-Mateo recalled. Added to this is the difficulty of facing the down payment, which today is equivalent to 12 years of average family savings.
The EY study indicates that in the next decade the construction of 800,000 homes is planned in Spain, but only 78,000 of them are projects promoted by public administrations to build affordable rental homes, in collaboration with the private sector. “It is barely 10% of the new housing supply and it is not going to solve the problem that Spain has, which is a chronic shortage of affordable rental housing,” since according to the study data, 39% of tenants pay rent. that exceed 30% of their income.
García-Mateo pointed out that the administrations have available land “that they could make available to private developers, with formulas such as administrative concession or the transfer of surface rights, so that they could build affordable rental housing and manage it for a long period. of about 75 years, from which ownership and management would revert to the administration.”
In his opinion, this formula would allow administrations to create an affordable rental housing stock without public investment, while for private developers “it is profitable, because even though they rent housing at low prices, 30% lower than those in the area , they do not have to bear the cost of purchasing the land and high occupancy is guaranteed", so "it is a useful and equitable formula."
The EY study also highlights that a large part of the housing stock in large cities is outdated and obsolete and will have to be rehabilitated and transformed to adapt to the needs of today's families. Thus, EY points out, half of Spanish homes are more than 40 years old, and the consulting firm has identified 508,000 in cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Malaga that would need to be “repositioned.”
In central areas, such as the Eixample or the Salamanca neighborhood “we often find homes of more than 120 m2, which do not adapt to current families, which are smaller, and would need fewer meters for their own use and more spaces. shared.” And they can't pay them.
García-Mateo explained that the same phenomenon is occurring in other countries, and that for example in the United States, communities of owners are choosing to do without the doorman and convert their home and the storage area into common spaces such as gyms or coworking, while The owners divide their homes.
In his opinion, there are various formulas to create housing but “administrations need to look for realistic, not populist, solutions.”
