Room for rent for a girl who works, who has a contract, who spends little time at home, clean, respectful and tidy (...) who does not bring friends, because it would be more expensive for the room (...) than he likes to clean when it's his turn, that he doesn't smoke or drink." It is one of the advertisements, for a room in a shared flat in La Verneda, in Barcelona, that the illustrator María Pichel found this week, when she returned to look at Idealista, one of the sites in which life projects collide with the reality of the real estate market.
At 36, this illustrator can be considered a survivor of the housing crisis. He now lives in Tolba, a small town in Huesca with 70 inhabitants where he has access to a house that belonged to his grandmother. He would like to return to Barcelona, where he has friends and "a fulfilling life", but every time he looks for a room with enough light and space for his work table, he encounters not only exorbitant prices, but also the demands of owners who have a tenant model in head. "They want you to use the floor as little as possible, to not exist, to be like a robot," says Pichel.
Juan Porras is a real estate advisor in Madrid and usually writes curiosities on the subject on his X account (@ElHombreMalo). "A colleague brought a very strange flat, quite large with two bedrooms in a row. The owner was looking for two civil servants who were not a couple. Before, there were two girls in that flat who gave us the impression of being girlfriends, but who pretended they weren't in front of the owner. Many other people look for girls because they find them more formal", he explains. You know well that these clauses, which are written in many contracts, are not applicable. "Contracts in Spain are full of empty or outright illegal clauses."
According to Porras, the mistake is to confuse "property with residence". The property belongs to the owner, but the residence belongs to the tenant, and he can, within the law, do whatever he wants in the house he pays for.
The idea of the civil servant as the ideal tenant may make economic sense. He is, after all, someone with a stable job unaffected by the vagaries of the market. But some landlords adorn this figure with more attributes, explains Porras, they idealize a figure of a formal young person, who has spent years studying, doesn't go to many parties and returns home at weekends. MIR students are also part of this imagination. "They want someone who gets home late, sits in front of the TV for a while and goes to sleep."
Traditionally, couples with two salaries were and continue to be the most desired renters, but this also fluctuates, Porras points out. "Breakups are more traumatic and there can be months when the person who stays cannot pay the full rent. There is another profile of owner-investor who sees the flat as a source of income and prefers several flatmates because they are easier to replace”. The latter is confirmed by Carme Arcarazo, spokesperson for the Tenants' Union: "There are already whole blocks in Barcelona that only accept this profile, single people up to 40 years old who share a flat, because in this way the number of people entering a house is it multiplies and there is more mobility".
In the nightmarish experience that is often the search for a roof there are stories for everything, ranging from the anecdotal to the clearly discriminatory. The editor Julia Martínez, 30 years old, posed as a friend's partner to get her previous flat. "We lost two flats to couples, despite the fact that we went with the deposit and everything. And we decided to try it this way. We were well dressed, I in a coat that I never wear, we held each other's arms and said: 'do you like it, dear?'" It worked
The photographer Gregori Civera had to promise his owner that he would not take "pornographic photos" in the apartment. Carolina [not her real name], a 45-year-old masseuse, also pretended to be the partner of a friend of hers, with a very good salary, which is even listed in the contract, because her profile, the d 'a self-employed, unmarried woman of Latin American origin finds it very difficult to get a rental. Oenagés such as Provivienda report that more than 70% of real estate companies accept discriminatory premises such as "children are not accepted" or "only Spaniards". It goes without saying that the foreigners being vetoed are not white Europeans or Americans. The Barcelona City Council commissioned a study called Racisme a la carta, made with 350 calls to real estate agents and it was found that 62% agreed to exclude migrants from the selection process in a rental advertisement.
From the Urban Property Chamber of Barcelona, which brings together small property owners, they prefer not to comment because their owners, they say, do not commit this kind of abuse. "You must not lose sight of the fact that the property is forcing someone into their home," points out Mireia Espinet, a lawyer specializing in real estate law. But it clarifies that many of these clauses, which owners insist on putting in writing in their rental contracts, contravene the Urban Leases Act (LAU), and are void. Those of a discriminatory nature, in addition, collide with article 14 of the Constitution. "Including clauses such as no smoking, no pets, late arrivals, inviting more than five people, or that the owner has the right to enter the home without warning contravene the law, which only requires the tenant to maintain housing in good condition and not to carry out annoying, unhealthy, harmful, dangerous or illegal activities", he warns.
According to Espinet, there is now a "magma", "whether due to the influence of the news or political currents, which makes tenants more aware of what their rights are and some even dare to defend- them despite the emotional costs that the judicial process may involve". Even so, a certain ignorance and helplessness still prevail, since it involves a great effort to report according to which practices and the entire real estate market is based on the inequality of power between those who have a home and those who need one.
Carme Arcarazo, from the Tenants' Union, points out that the solution would be a public body of inspectors who "ensure compliance with the law", just as is required in the workplace. "It's good that there are legislative advances, but if we want to stop there being a feeling of impunity in terms of racism and discrimination, we do need public intervention," he adds.
