Three years ago, the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Development of Spain presented the "Index of Rental housing" (Indice de Alquiler) — an online tool that allows you to visually familiarize yourself with the basic prices for rental housing in various parts of the country. As stated on the Index's website: "The purpose of the index is to ensure the transparency of the rental housing market, given the lack of available official information".
How does it work?
The site allows you to get acquainted with the average price level at various territorial levels: streets, districts, municipalities, provinces and autonomous communities. Using Tax Information Sources (IRPF) and cadastral data, the tool offers to study data collected for a whole year on the basis of almost 2 million rental housing contracts.
When accessing the Index site, by default, the user will be sent to the level of the minimum census area - this is a piece of a settlement in which from 1,000 to 2,500 people live. However, there is no such division in small municipalities, so streets are used. If you want to view larger territorial areas, you need to click on the links that appear under the map.
If you click on any of the territorial zones of interest, a drop-down menu will appear with information about the characteristics of residential real estate in this zone (at least in those areas of the country that were used to compile the Index).
The objects can be divided into residential complexes and private houses, the average monthly amounts of payments and the area of these objects will be shown. There is also a division into the median 50% of the cheapest residential properties and 50% of the most expensive. By the way, in the Index you can find information about the average income of people living in these houses.
In the case of higher territorial levels, provinces and autonomous communities, you can find links under the map viewer that will allow you to access a PDF file with a data table. Visualization is based on them.