“The difficulty of accessing housing is already the first problem in Spain, not only for people at risk of social exclusion, but also for the middle classes, and if measures are not taken, it is a problem that is going to get worse,” Javier summarized. Faus, president of the management company Meridia Capital, one of the speakers who participated this morning in “The District”, a fair that brings together 10,000 professionals from the sector at Fira de Barcelona.
In an edition marked again by the protests of a group of activists against evictions, who threw paint at some attendees, the managers agreed that the need to meet the great demand for housing generates a great business opportunity for companies. Xavier Güell, director of the CBRE consulting firm in Barcelona, explained that investment in housing, residences for the elderly and students accounted for 31.4% of all real estate investment made in Spain in the first semester.
"Residential and logistics are the sectors in which all investors want to increase their presence in the coming months - confirmed Borja Godoy, CEO of Servihabitat - and the Government cannot build the more than 100,000 social homes that are urgently needed, in 2 or 3 years, alone, without relying on the private sector.”
“There is a lot of money willing to invest to build affordable housing, and we just need to create the conditions so that they have flexibility,” said Oriol Barrachina, president of Cushman.
Eduard Mendiluce, CEO of the real estate companies Anticipa and Aliseda, of the Blackstone group, pointed out that these measures should be to streamline urban planning procedures for land management, and establish a maximum period of 90 days from which administrative silence would be positive. and real estate agencies could promote under their responsibility, especially for rental housing buildings or affordable housing.
“The big problem with access to housing in Spain is rent,” confirmed Xavier Vilajoana, president of the APCE, the association of Catalan developers. “And to solve the housing crisis, we builders and promoters are the good guys, not the bad guys in the movie, because we have the machines and equipment for urban planning and construction management. Without us, the housing shortage has no solution,” he lamented.
The complaint against the housing policies of recent years was widespread. Mendiluce recalled that “Catalonia has been left alone in its intention to apply rent caps”, a measure, he recalled, “that was already implemented between 2020 and 2022 and only served to worsen access to housing.”
Faus stressed that the housing shortage “is an endemic problem in large capitals around the world, such as Tel-Aviv, New York, Paris or Berlin. We do not have to invent the wheel but do what has already been seen to work” which in his opinion is to expand the metropolitan area by expanding the metro network. “There are 5.2 million people living between Sitges, Terrassa and Mataró. We have to get everyone in that area to live within 15 minutes of a metro stop… and build more houses, because there are large pockets of land where it is possible to do so.”
Juan Gómez Vega, director for southern Europe of the Deutsche Finance International fund, explained the experience of his company that builds homes for rent at an average price of 7 euros/m2/month in large Spanish urban areas, such as Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, Valencia or Zaragoza. “It has become difficult for us, with the rise in rates and construction costs,” he acknowledged and to facilitate it he asked for “more agility in the processing of permits to be able to build faster. A measure with which everyone would benefit.”
