The current situation with the availability of housing for an ordinary Spaniard, both for purchase and for rent, is an extremely serious problem. The factors influencing its formation are extremely diverse, from rising Euribor rates and a shortage of land for construction to inefficiently distributes the efforts of developers to produce new real estate.
An example is the overgrown segment of tourist housing, which developers produce in huge quantities, trying to keep up with the money of foreign buyers and tenants, neglecting to work to create a stable situation within the local market.
At the same time, the situation varies from region to region. You can pay attention to the community of Galicia, where the average rent has already approached 500 euros per month. Average rental rates in the city of Sunty exceeded 550 euros. The Atlantic coast cities are also ahead, including La Coruna (582 euros), Vigo (561 euros), Santiago and Pontevedra (both 530 euros). Lagging behind in price growth, but still showing exceptionally high growth rates of cities in the interior of the region, including Lugo and Ourense.
The growth of rents in the region is stable and continuous, it is pushed by the growing shortage of real estate that is supplied to the market for rent. This forced the regional government to resort to a directive restriction for the market, placing a limit on the increase in rental rates of no more than 2% between the contract and permission was given to extend existing contracts, the expiration date of which falls on June 30, 2023, for another 6 months.
The Galician Federation of Real Estate Companies warns that for the first time since the start of accounting, the number of apartments available for rent in the entire community has fallen below 3,000. There are 16,000 people on the waiting list for subsidized rental housing alone. And this is not to mention the general demand in the market.
Residential real estate for tourists
Having pointed this out above, it is worth paying special attention to tourist housing. It is one of the main factors of the shortage of rental real estate in the local market. Javier Korkova, managing director of the developer Kúpula, points out that more and more homeowners are also trying to ride the foreign demand from tourists and expats, so they are leaving the common market with their houses and moving purely to work in the tourist segment.
According to the latest official information available on the local market (February 2023), the number of residential premises for tourist use in Galicia is 16,953 units. Two years ago, there were about 12,000 of them, and in 2018, five years ago, there were only 5,000 objects. Thus, in five years, the number of objects for the tourist market has more than tripled, while the offers on the general market are not able to satisfy even a quarter of the demand only from those who are in line for social housing.
It is worth noting Sanxenxo. Among 17,000 objects for rent for tourists, more than 13,000 are located in Sanxenxo. Vigo, Santiago and La Coruna account for about 3,000 homes combined. The tension in the tourist market in these cities is very high.
