Empty homes in Spain, between 3% and 5% in Barcelona and Madrid and 15% in Zaragoza

The difficult negotiations between PSOE and United We Can to shape the future state housing law revolve around axes such as the limitation of rent prices, the suspension of evictions to vulnerable groups or the mobilization of empty housing towards affordable rent , mainly that of large owners.

Just yesterday, the Secretary of State for Agenda 2030, Ione Belarra, stated in this regard that if the large landowners allocated 30% of their homes to social rent "we could increase the public stock by about 140,000 or 150,000 properties."

From the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (Mitma), however, they have been arguing that the lack of official information regarding empty houses makes it almost impossible to quantify the impact that measures of this type would have.

For now, some companies in the sector do dare to put figures on this reality.

Yesterday, during the presentation of the

XXXII Report on the housing market

, prepared by the Tecnocasa Group and the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona, ​​the group's director of analysis, Lázaro Cubero, estimated that the empty housing stock in Spain is close to 10 %.

Although with important differences between one area and another.

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The main cities, Cubero continued, where the large stressed areas and the most pressing housing problems are concentrated, have a proportion of empty homes significantly below the average, with Madrid in 5.4% of the park and Barcelona in the 3.1%, always according to the data of the aforementioned company.

The picture begins to change as cities get a little smaller, with 7.7% uninhabited housing in Seville and 8.6% in Valencia, again below the country's average.

You have to go to Zaragoza, the fifth Spanish city by number of inhabitants, to exceed the Spanish rate: 15.1% of unoccupied housing in a park that, in absolute figures, has nothing to do with that of the large markets.

For this reason, José García Montalvo, Professor of Economics at Pompeu Fabra University, assured that Belarra's figures do not add up, since institutional investors, such as banks and large funds, have "between 4% and 5%" of housing stock for rent.

“Social housing is a problem for the public authorities.

The mismanagement of the public cannot be burdened by the private sector, ”he pointed out, emphasizing the thousands of publicly owned properties that administrations have sold over the last few years.

In the same vein, Blackstone's real estate manager, Eduard Mendiluce, took a position at a meeting organized by PwC.

There he warned that social rent is "100% responsibility of the public Administration" and that only in the area of ​​affordable rent are they willing to reach public-private collaboration agreements.

The coalition government is debating precisely how to mobilize that part of the park that belongs to large landowners towards social rent.

The socialist part, headed by the portfolio of José Luis Ábalos, has put on the table the possibility of establishing tax breaks or tax incentives for large holders to take part of their stock to the affordable rental market.

United We, for its part, opts for taxing the empty homes of the large owners to pressure them and thus mobilize their portfolio.

Beyond the type of measures that are being considered on both sides of the coalition government, the promotion of affordable or social rent seems to be a common point of the two partners of the Executive.

Along these lines, Tecnocasa data also offers a picture of the reality of this market in each of the five large cities.

Again, with great differences between Madrid and Barcelona and the other three cities.

Thus, in the capital, the proportion of rented housing has gone from 10% of the park in 2017 to more than 15.5% at the end of 2020. In Barcelona, ​​for its part, it has gone from 18.7% to 20, 1% in the same period.

Valencia has doubled its proportion, going from 5% to 10%;

Zaragoza remains around 5%;

and Seville has gone from around 2.5% to 5%.

In parallel, beyond the negotiations on the role of large holders and empty houses, the price of used housing in Spain fell 4.4% in the year-on-year rate in the second half of 2020, linking three consecutive negative semesters , according to data from Tecnocasa. The decline began already in the second half of 2019 with a 2.1% transfer. It was from the pandemic that negative rates shot up to almost -5% in the first half of 2020, coinciding with the first months of the health and economic crisis, to moderate the decline to -4.4% at the close The exercise. This evolution, in the opinion of García Montalvo, is not entirely alarmist. In fact, it shows that there is a certain "hold." What is not possible to venture, in the opinion of the professor, is how the price will evolve in 2021 totally subject to uncertainty.