The limitation of the price of rental contracts in 140 municipalities in Catalonia, including Barcelona, has encountered a last-minute obstacle. The central government and the Generalitat have not yet reached an agreement on the reference price index that tenants must adhere to when offering their homes on the market.
The Government established February as the deadline for the agreement on the rental price index in Catalonia, but there are eight days left until the end of the month and the agreement is resisting. “Yes or yes, the index will come out in February,” say sources from the Ministry of Housing. “We are working to make it that way,” they add. That is, they remember that the department led by Isabel Rodríguez has the option of being able to set the price reference unilaterally, although it is not the desired option. Sources from the Generalitat confirm that “there is no agreement yet”, although they show their willingness to reach it in the coming days.
Catalunya will be the first community, and for now the only one, that will limit rental housing prices in certain areas. The road is not being easy. Added to the vicissitudes of the last legislature to approve the first state Housing law are the more technical negotiations with the Generalitat that have not yet been resolved. At this time, both governments continue to adjust the ranges to which rents must be adapted in those 140 municipalities considered stressed areas. 6.2 million citizens live there, just over 80% of Catalonia.
Both parties, the central government and the Generalitat, agree on the lower price range of the index and also on the intermediate one, but in the upper range there are still discrepancies, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.
Specifically, the Generalitat's approach for the upper limit is higher than what the Ministry of Housing has put on the table. This difference has an explanation. The price limit set by the Government is based on the data obtained, mainly, from the guarantees for the contracts that are deposited in the Institut Català del Sòl (Incasòl), a public body dependent on the Department of Territory. The maximum price limit proposed by the central government, for its part, is based on the conclusions of the technical group that was established to prepare the state reference index for rental prices and which draws on broader sources: the Tax Agency, the General Directorate of the Cadastre, the National Institute of Statistics, the Bank of Spain, the College of Registrars and the Department of Economic Affairs of the Ministry of the Presidency. The Executive considers, therefore, that its data has a greater degree of specificity to know the situation of the rental market in these stressed areas.
It must be remembered that the Generalitat of Catalonia already established its own price index within the framework of the regional Housing law of 2020, a norm that was declared partially unconstitutional in 2022. The state law came to protect the Catalan norm. The Ministry of Transport, first, and now the Ministry of Housing have always defended the establishment of a state price reference, common for all autonomous communities, which is what the group of experts designated for this worked on.
In the coalition government, housing policies have already led to some internal friction. Last week Sumar opposed the ICO guarantee fund for young people and families and yesterday the party's deputy spokesperson in Congress, Aina Vidal, demanded that the ministry immediately approve the rental price index system to avoid, among other things, the “systematic scam” that, according to what he denounced, affects old rent tenants.
