The city of Barcelona does not meet the legal conditions to be declared a tight market area, which is established by the new law on the Right to Housing, so rent caps cannot be applied, according to a study presented by the Chamber of the Urban Property of Barcelona, which concludes that, in the metropolitan area, Sabadell and Santa Coloma de Gramenet also do not meet the legal requirements.
The manager of the Chamber, Óscar Gorgues, pointed out that the entity has used the data and methodology that the Generalitat and the Barcelona City Council used to apply the Catalan income control law in 2020, and have updated because the new law obliges to calculate the increases that the real estate market has suffered in the last five years.
Replicating these calculations, Gorgues points out, in the capital only the districts of Ciutat Vella, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi and Sant Martí would meet some of the requirements provided for by the law, which nevertheless does not foresee declaring stressed areas below the municipal level. Sarrià and Sant Martí could declare themselves tense, because the increase in sales prices over the last five years exceeds the cumulative increase in the CPI by more than 3 points. And Ciutat Vella, because the effort in paying the rent exceeds 30% of the personal income of the inhabitants of the district, since it is 31%.
According to the official data used by the Chamber, for the city as a whole the burden on the average household income is 24.11% in the case of the mortgage and 22.46% in the case of the rent, and does not reach the 30% that the standard establishes as a maximum.
Regarding price increases, the average rent has risen in the last five years by 10.47% and the average sales price by 13.27%, compared to an average increase in the CPI of 11.64%. In both cases, therefore, the increases do not exceed the maximum provided by law, which would be 14.64% (three points above the CPI).
"We hope that the administrations will not choose to declare only a certain district a tense area, because this will have a negative impact on that area of the city and will divert investments", acknowledged Gorgues.
Joan Ràfols, president of the institution, clarified that "from the Chamber we are not saying at all that there are no tensions in the real estate market in Barcelona, because there are, but that the requirements of the law are not being met. The origin of the problem is the lack of supply and the law not only does not address this but makes it worse".
Ràfols also emphasized that if the calculations are based on the state rent index, which uses the data declared by the owners in the personal income tax and therefore of the housing stock and not of the contracts that are signed every year, the effort to access housing is even less.
The Chamber has also studied the situation in the metropolitan area as a whole, and although for the 30% effort no city meets them, due to the increase in purchase and sale prices in the last five years they would all be included the localities, except Sabadell and Santa Coloma de Gramenet. "We believe that the increase in prices is partly due to new construction promotions, which are more expensive and increase averages, but the law does not provide for these nuances", admitted Gorgues.
Ràfols said that the Chamber of Property is waiting to see what the Generalitat does, which has already announced that it has begun the procedures to declare tense areas, and said that "they will be active in defending the rights of owners" and "belligerents" , and they will take the tense area declarations to court when they are made.
Ràfols explained that they had already done so in the application of Catalan law, and when the Administration rejected their allegations they presented an administrative contentious claim, the result of which, he acknowledged, they had not informed until now "The court, at our request, provisionally suspended the declaration of tense areas in Barcelona, but since the Constitutional Court had invalidated the law, this was no longer relevant. The judicial procedure, however, remains open".
The Chamber of Property has already calculated the cases provided for by law in different localities to be able to act quickly in the public information period and present the corresponding allegations. "With the Catalan law they left 15 days, and some administrations even a week and in the middle of August, and it didn't give us time", he acknowledged. According to Gorgues, "we have done the calculations with the official sources and the methodology they themselves used, and our conclusion is clear. If this methodology is not correct, it will end up being decided by a judge".
