Walter Finch
THERE are now a third less apartments available in Spain for long-term rent since 2019.
Hard-pressed renters instead are being faced with short-term and ‘seasonal’ accommodation, which have tripled in the same period, now accounting for 14% of the rental market across the country.
However, Malaga is one of the few ‘distressed’ cities where the housing market is facing serious problems to actually buck the trend, according to a study by Idealista.
Here, long-term rentals are actually up by nearly a quarter (23%) in a year, along with fellow long-suffering Canarian duo of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (22%) and Santa Cruz de Tenerife (13%).
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Despite seeing these rises, Malaga has not escaped the trend in short-term accommodation, with the number of these apartments almost quintupling (466%).
And the numbers are similar across the board for every Spanish city of note – Alicante (309%), Seville (279%), Valencia (276%), Barcelona (244%), Bilbao (217%), and Palma (208%).
Madrid (159%) and San Sebastián (136%) saw increases below 200%, meaning their temporary rental supply didn’t quite triple.
The city that has seen the sharpest drop in the permanent rental supply has been Barcelona, where a staggering three out of every four rental homes have disappeared.
Now temporary rental listings make up 46% of the market, while in San Sebastián, they represent 38%.
An Idealista spokesperson blamed government policies over the past five years for ‘shrinking the permanent rental market.’
“This has put enormous pressure on prices, increased competition among families for homes, and effectively pushed out the youngest and most vulnerable tenants,” the housing portal said.
“The situation demands a reversal of many of these measures and a rebalancing of relations between landlords and tenants to bring more properties back onto the market and allow for a return to normalcy.”
