Cole Sinanian
IDEALISTA listings have revealed that there are now only two studio apartments available in Alicante for €600 per month, the cheapest offerings in a city where demand for affordable housing now far exceeds supply.
Alicante — which once offered entire flats for 300 or less — is quickly becoming one of Spain’s tightest housing markets, with average rents per square metre having more than doubled in the past 10 years.
One of the two cheapest studio apartments in the city is 40 square metres and the other is 35, while neither includes an elevator.
The listings reflect the evolution of rental costs in the Valencian city, which have skyrocketed in recent years.
It comes after figures released this month showed Alicante was the most popular destination for foreign mortgage buyers last year – the majority of whom were British (40%).
Meanwhile this week an expat guide branded the city the ‘most affordable’ for Brits looking to move to Spain – however that may soon change.
Idealista data shows that the average rental price per square metre in Alicante increased by 14.3% between February 2023 and February 2024, reaching a historic maximum of €10.8 per square metre.
In the past two years, average rent per square metre increased by 40%, from €7.7 per square metre in February 2022.
Looking at individual districts, all but the beachfront neighbourhood of Playa de San Juan-El Cabo reached record-high rental prices in February 2024.
Although the Alicante City Council has made recent efforts to boost the market through public housing projects, such as a €5 million investment in 62 units of social housing in October 2023, low supply and high demand have left residents struggling to find housing within their price range.
Some experts and analysts have attributed the city’s rental woes to the failure of the new Housing Law passed in May 2023 which, among other things, limits rent hikes, transfers fees from the tenant to the landlord, allows municipalities to limit rental prices through the declaration of “stressed” markets, and provides protections to renters against evictions.
A 2023 report from the real estate franchising network Tecnocasa found that as a result of the law, rental housing supply in Alicante could fall by as much as 19.7%, or 6,660 total homes.
According to the president of the Alicante Real Estate Agent’s Association Marifé Esteso — who spoke to Informacion — the law has discouraged owners from renting out their properties in fear of being prosecuted by breaking the now stricter regulations.
“By prohibiting evictions and creating so many obstacles, owners do not feel comfortable renting their home,” she told the paper.
The situation makes renting especially difficult for young people, for 15.5% of whom renting in the city is inaccessible, while 31.6% of the same group spend an inflated percentage of their income on rent, according to Alvar Lopez de Medina, president of the Alicante Youth Council, who also spoke to Informacion.
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