Despite the efforts and regulatory changes adopted in the legislation related to rental housing in recent years, the truth is that it is becoming more expensive every day for tenants to access a rental home and less safe for landlords to offer their home for rent.
The average cost of renting a home in Spain per square meter in January 2024 was €12.4, registering an increase of 10.8% compared to the same month of the previous year.
In Spain, three out of every four homes are owned by their residents, with rented homes representing 24% of the total available homes, a trend that has increased in recent years, despite the preference of Spaniards to buy rather than rent. More than 90% of Spanish real estate properties are under the ownership of individuals, affecting any regulation for millions of families, both owners and tenants.
Rental households in Spain allocate between 25% and 40% of their income to pay rent, with the price of rental homes having increased by more than 35% since 2011.
Although since 2020, regional and national legislators have introduced contradictory modifications to property regulations, these changes, intended to emphasize the social function of housing, have contributed to creating a climate of legal insecurity for owners. As a result, a significant decrease in the supply of rental homes and an increase in the price of the homes offered has been observed.
With the current regulations, the legislative function of facilitating access to housing for the most disadvantaged classes, who are the ones who represent the greatest risk of non-payment, has been transferred to landlords, which together with the costs, times and limitations to recover rented homes in situations of non-payment by landlords, produces the withdrawal from the rental market of a large number of homes, whose owners are not willing to assume the vicissitudes already mentioned.
Faced with such an unfavorable market and legislative framework, where the current regulations establish limitations on rent updates, rent limitations in areas declared as stressed or surcharges on the IBIS of empty homes of up to 50% for owners. of more than four properties, the landlords have adopted measures that are producing, among others, the impact of expenses that until now were not reflected in the rental price.
Also factors such as the increase in home occupations, the actions and little respect that these squatters have for the homes (in the vast majority of cases), and the lack of effective regulation collected in the Law, which includes new requirements to initiate eviction procedures, as well as the existence of social regulatory conditions that seriously harm the owner of the occupied homes, causing the delay of the pertinent judicial actions, are factors that seriously harm the market. of housing rental in Spain.
The inclusion of social conditions in the assessment of tenants and their subsequent legal treatment, such as those aimed at classifying the tenant as a particularly vulnerable person, which grants specific rights contrary to the interests of the owner, providing the tenant with legal advantages in situations of non-payment, has been the definitive blow to the rental market, where many older owners, fearing suffering adverse situations and compromising their properties, have chosen to withdraw them from the market and put them up for sale.
The lack of a rule that truly protects private property and that facilitates the rapid and agile recovery of properties occupied by their corresponding owners, represents an extremely serious problem for the latter, which they must face a series of expenses derived from the occupation that in some cases involve the disbursement of significant amounts of money to launch processes that can take up to more than two years.
Spain is one of the European countries with the greatest lack of protection regarding the real estate property of its companies and citizens. In countries like Holland or France, a complaint is enough to proceed to evict an occupied property in no more than 48 hours, which is a crime in countries like Italy or England.
This fear, as a consequence of legal insecurity and the increase in the squatting phenomenon, has caused many owners to redirect their leasing activity to markets such as seasonal, tourist, and even room rentals.
Other owners, as a consequence of the above, are raising the demands and requirements they request to rent their properties, harming many rental applicants, who cannot meet the required requirements, such as higher deposits, bank guarantees or previously unpaid insurance.
In short, the insecurities and fears that current legislation generates in owners in aspects related to the security of their properties and the resources to recover their property in the face of unwanted situations, leads them to overprotect their interests, which has repercussions of increasing tension. plus the rental market and the supply of rental properties.
