Rental property owners have changed their preferences when selecting a tenant. Families with children, who years ago were considered to have the most stable profile when it came to paying rent, are now viewed with a certain degree of suspicion by some landlords and are now opting for tenants who are, in their view, safer. The distrust multiplies when the person knocking on the door is a single-parent family like that of Marina Duarte, who has been looking for a rental apartment in Madrid for more than a year. Impossible. “They don’t want to rent to me,” says this 39-year-old Uruguayan woman with two underage children who lives in an apartment provided free by an NGO in the Tetuán district. She says she’s talking about “many families who are in the same situation.”
Duarte works but still has no access to a rental apartment. “I have two jobs, one for six hours as a cleaner and one for four hours as a housekeeper, and with both I earn 1,200 euros a month. But they tell me that I don’t pass the credit check because I have to support my two children with my salary.” From Provivienda they explain that profiles like this Uruguayan’s are excluded from the rental market. “Most agencies and owners prefer families without children and for families with children, they prefer two-parent families; “Single parents are the ones who experience the greatest direct discrimination.” For this type of household, which is headed by women in 81% of cases, the increase in rental prices in recent years has resulted in a very significant economic burden. According to the Provivienda Affordable Housing Observatory, one in four single-parent families have difficulty making payments. With two parents, this percentage drops to 8%.
Duarte continues to look for an apartment, both through real estate agencies and private individuals. Not even renting rooms is a solution because you would need two and “they cost 900 euros, 450 each.” He assesses the situation as follows: “It is a structural problem. “I don’t know what’s going through the owners’ minds, they make it harder for us than people without children.”
Carmen, 38 years old and mother of two children, feels the same desperation. She is currently the recipient of a Provivienda project funded by the Insular Institute of Social and Socio-Sanitary Care of Tenerife. “No one wants to rent to me, it’s a constant rejection. The rejection is complete and absolute. Because? Because I have children. “I don’t understand the reason for this rejection, especially from owners who have children,” complains the young Canarian bitterly. He has been trying to find a rental apartment since August. “The world collapses on me and my head hits the ceiling because it’s impossible. Despite submitting all the papers we ask for, such as pay slips and proof of provivienda, there is always a catch. In my case it is the small children because the owners also believe that they make noise and are a nuisance.”
The historical series of the Tecnocasa real estate network shows that the number of rentals to families (married couples and de facto couples) has decreased in a decade from 37% in 2013 to 27% today. On the contrary, renting to single people increased from 54.5% to 59%. “The owners prefer singles with good incomes, digital nomads, civil servants… Their mentality has changed and they value the options that they consider to be lower risk. It’s not discrimination, it’s an income issue. They want to escape defaults and a couple with children or a single mother are at greater risk because their income must be higher,” says Lázaro Cubero, director of analysis at Tecnocasa, who compares this process of landlords with the risk analysis that banks do, or with the personnel selection process of a company.
On the list of distrust of the owners is the fear of declaring the vulnerability of a family with minor children and the resulting difficulties in carrying out the eviction. “While the new housing law has introduced more mechanisms to protect tenants from evictions, it has also caused great unrest among some property owners. The latter fear that the presence of minors in the apartment will complicate possible evictions in the event of non-payment,” indicates the law firm KLJ Abogados. “The owner has the impression that the law is very protectionist towards the tenant and thereby creates uncertainty. He believes he is more exposed and closes the door to certain profiles,” explains Ferran Font, study director at Pisos.com.
Not to mention the prejudices regarding noise, inconvenience and damage that minors could cause in the home and the community. KLJ’s lawyers confirm that “when it comes to recently renovated properties, some owners, particularly individuals, avoid renting them to families with children because they believe they are more likely to return the home in poor condition.”
Owners of rental apartments are primarily looking for security. “When a family ends up running out of money, the first thing they stop paying is rent. The owners want to be sure that the tenants will not cause problems and have good solvency. “Now the most sought-after profile is a relatively young couple without children and also a civil servant,” says David Caraballo, general manager of Rental Insurance.
Rarely do you find a black and white requirement that profiles with children are not accepted, although there are some advertisements, particularly for room rentals. Both owners and real estate companies are more likely to announce the restriction verbally. “Once they get more information about the tenants (number of people who will live in the apartment, income and job stability, whether or not they have pets), they narrow the selection by, for example, indicating that the apartment is permanently reserved or “by demanding additional guarantees for the deposit that they know the tenant cannot afford,” they emphasize in KLJ.
The casting effect
This rejection of certain tenant profiles is one of the harshest and most unfair consequences of an offer that does not come close to covering the excess demand. “There are fewer and fewer houses for rent, so the owner has a choice,” says Font. The landlord has absolute decision-making power that has never been seen before. The well-known real estate castings have become established, in which countless requirements must be met in order to be able to rent out the apartment. “At the end of the day, owners own their homes and therefore they are typically the ones who have the final say on what type of tenant they want,” Caraballo says.
Regarding the question of whether it is discrimination, it is very difficult to prove that the landlord vetoes families with children, as he can give any reason why he does not accept them. “We consider that although there could be a violation of Article 14 of the Constitution, it is very difficult to prove this discrimination and that it is not a legal problem but rather a social problem,” conclude the KLJ -Lawyers.
The solution for households with children and landlords with insufficient ability to pay is to look for cheaper rental properties, which is practically impossible in large cities. It would be necessary to greatly expand and move away from the search area. “This can have consequences for families’ own lives. Moving out of the neighborhood sometimes also means losing the informal support network of proximity, be it within the family or through the neighborhood,” they claim in Provivienda.
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