Few Spaniards live on rent - 24% - if we compare it, for example, with Germany (53.3%, according to Eurostat, in 2022). And those who do it, for the most part, do not do it by choice.
79% of the tenants here aspire, within a period of 5 years, to acquire a home of their own. The problem is that “the transition from renting to ownership is no longer within the reach of a large part of the population,” concludes the latest “Study on the vulnerable consumer and barriers to access to rental housing”, dated December 2023. and of which the OCU and the Ministry of Consumer Affairs are responsible.
But the rental barriers are not short either. The biggest of them, the increase in rental prices.
The economic effort of an average household to access rent has shown an upward trend since 2001 and, in 2023, will reach historical highs. Although the rise in rental prices is not exclusive to our country, here it is irreconcilable with the evolution of salaries.
In 2023, all of Europe has seen the largest year-on-year variation in rental prices of the entire century, which “makes some of our cities demand for rental housing (also for purchase) by foreign citizens.” reflects the OCU report, which in turn prevents prices from falling in accordance with salaries in Spain.
Only the pandemic, during 2020, had enough force—and sudden!—to curb demand and push prices down. But nothing: “the subsequent recovery in demand has caused a wave of rent increases in practically all large cities,” the study states.
A tragic circumstance as such should not be desired for prices to drop again, since it also means unemployment and other “added problems to the household economy.”
However, a real investment in public housing would be useful, incorporating at least 600,000 rental homes “to have a stable impact on a park where there are currently almost three million rented homes,” according to the OCU.
And above all, we should “provide security to private landlords, who make up 80% of the providers of rented homes in our country,” so that they find it attractive to rent their home.
In order to boost the rental supply, it would be necessary to eliminate “unfounded fears” spread among the community of landlords and offer them legal security, to “mobilize for rent some 500,000 homes of which are currently empty.”
The majority of landlords fear late payment (76%) and suffering damage to the home (70%) and, to a lesser extent, being able to recover the house in time if the tenant does not pay (44%).
Instead of punishing empty homes and imposing other measures by force – something that “at the moment does not seem to be a good way to counteract the fear felt by the owners” – the owner should feel that he will be able to resolve the problems arising from non-payment of rent. the income within a reasonable period of time, as well as “that situations of special vulnerability will be resolved by the corresponding Administration and will not fall on their particular economy.”
