Room with shared bathroom right on Puerta del Sol in Madrid: 875 euros per month. The room advertised on the pisocompartido.com portal is one of six in the apartment. If they are all rented at the same price, the monthly rent that the owner receives is 5,250 euros, more than double what the average conventional rent in the region costs, according to the Idealista portal, and almost 2.5 times that Average salary in the community. The owner also states that she does not live in the apartment herself: she rents it out by the room. When asked by this newspaper, she did not answer why she chose this formula or what type of contract she uses with tenants. Another ad for a room in Chamartín is placed directly by a real estate agent: 600 euros including additional costs, a monthly deposit and “administrative costs” of 250 euros. Of course, the owner provides the Netflix account.
Real estate portals warn that there are more and more room advertisements and their prices have skyrocketed: the average rent for a room in Spain is 405 euros per month, according to Pisos.com, almost 6% more than in the previous quarter. Barcelona is the city where they are most expensive (631 euros on average), followed by Madrid (477 euros), Palma (473) and Vitoria-Gasteiz (448).
Given these prices, those looking for a room are turning to word of mouth and social networks, especially now that the new university studies are starting. “Foreigners who can afford it are more likely to fall for this type of advertising. But it is true that by paying these prices they are helping to create a housing market that people cannot afford,” says Igone Franco, 25 years old. He comes from Bilbao, but has been moving to Barcelona in September for several years and is looking for an apartment or a room. “This summer I didn’t want to look for a whole apartment, but rather looked for a room. I looked her up on Instagram. “It can be quite violent, it’s like looking for a job, some strange dynamics arise.” In the end he found a room for 330 euros including utilities. “The price is good, but it’s not very big and it’s a mezzanine,” he says.
Gonzalo Bernal, 21, was also lucky enough to find a room in the Catalan capital for 240 euros because the apartment belonged to the family of a fellow student. But this September he will be putting up a friend in a kind of storage room because he can’t find a reasonable and cheap place: “This year it was very noticeable that people had to go to remote areas because prices have risen sharply in some places.” “Everyone has had bad experiences: checking the contract when it is not due or problems refunding the deposit.”
Prices have also skyrocketed in cities like Malaga. Marta Beltrán, 22 years old, is looking for a room for a maximum of 350 euros because she will live in the city to work as a mileurist. He asked on Twitter and Instagram because at this point “everything is already rented and the rest is very expensive.” Since 2019, every class has been looking for a room in Malaga and has noticed that rents have increased during this time. “I once paid a lot of money to get a room that I found through a real estate agency and it was a room in very poor condition. “The landlords have become free riders,” he says.
With the strategy of renting rooms by room, some owners are aiming for even greater profitability than renting entire apartments, although at very high prices, especially in cities. According to the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Development, rents increased by 20% between 2016 and 2021. In Barcelona, according to the Generalitat, it costs an average of 1,087 euros per month from the deposits paid.
Ferran Font, director of studies at Pisos.com, believes that this room rental trend is not only aimed at greater profitability, but also aims to circumvent the housing law that came into force in May. Although part of the measures of this regulation depend on their application by the Autonomous Communities (in particular price control), the law provides for a limit on the increase in rents for the coming years, rules for large tenants and the obligation to pay real estate agency fees is by the landlord and not by the Tenants to pay.
Lack of regulation
“The owners are helpless and are trying to evade the law by removing their property from traditional long-term rentals. This is how short-term rentals and room rentals emerged, formulas that are not provided for in any law,” summarizes Font, who believes that these cases should be regulated more homogeneously. Prices for room rents used to grow between 1 and 2 percent every year, but now they are skyrocketing, explains Font: “Especially in Madrid and Barcelona, but also in cities like Valencia, Málaga or Granada.” Historically speaking “It was a market that was closely linked to student activity, but it is no longer just this group that needs it.”
According to a study by Fotocasa, 44% of Spaniards share an apartment not for pleasure, but because they cannot afford a full-fledged apartment. And what’s more, it’s the least protected group: a May study by the Barcelona Urban Research Institute (a body affiliated with the tenants’ association) found that almost 70% of people who don’t have a formal rental agreement actually rent a room.
“We have already pointed out that the housing law is incomplete and has too many loopholes,” explains Jaime Palomera, co-founder of the Union. Palomera recalls that the room rental “is nothing new, but it will increase, like all formulas that are not regulated”, pointing out the difficulties of not having a contract: “This means that it will be more difficult to do so To ask for the deposit back or to avoid having a contract “forced to pay” the fees. If the rental market is already a jungle, the room market is even more so.”
Palomera defines what Font describes as the “defenselessness” of the owners differently: “The legislature was aware of these loopholes but did not want to regulate them.” There were people who said that the sector needed to be given an escape route. “There are players in the real estate market who hope to have a significantly higher rental return than many other financial products, and this is now being systematized in mobile applications in which one can invest by purchasing rooms.”
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