A few days ago, José María Alfaro, president of the Federation of Real Estate Associations (FAI), said that the mere publication in the BOE of the first urgent decrees on housing last week had already taken its toll on the market. “Its publication already influences the decisions of those who were considering renting a home.” «An owner who postpones his decision. Another who chooses to sell. A house that remains closed. More demanding solvency requirements to access those that are still available,” he lamented.
His feeling, the result of his knowledge and work in the market, has been corroborated by the figures days later.
According to data collected by LA RAZÓN from Idealista, the main real estate marketplace in Spain, In recent days the supply of rental homes has been reduced at a rate of about 580 units per day.
On Friday, October 2, the date on which Congress did not validate the decrees approved on September 29 by the Council of Ministers and which were published on October 30 and 1 in the Official State Gazette (BOE), the offer was 77,991 units.
However, after the weekend, specifically last Tuesday, and shortly before Pedro Sánchez announced after the Council of Ministers that the decrees had been republished with slight adjustments compared to those that had been overturned by the votes of PP, Vox and Junts four days before, it had already fallen to 76,810. The next day, the supply had already been reduced to 75,465 apartments, 1,345 less. On Thursday, the supply had fallen again to 74,891 apartments and yesterday, Friday, it fell again by almost 600 more homes, to 73,814.
That is to say, the supply, on average, has fallen by about 525 apartments per day only due to the effect of the approval for the second time of what are known as “Maricarmen decrees.”
But the first enactment of both laws also had profound effects on the rental market. According to an analysis published by the think tank EsadeEcPolbetween September 29, the day on which the decrees were approved for the first time by the Executive; and on October 5, the Monday on which the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, dissolved the chambers and called early general elections for next November 29; Long-term rental listings fell by at least 6% in the ten largest cities.
The fall, depending on the job, reached or exceeded 6% in Murcia
(-12.5%), Madrid (-9.2%), Valencia (-7.5%), Alicante (-7.2%), Las Palmas (-6.3%) and Palma (-6%). In all of them it is greater than in any control window, which the analysis fixes in any given week, although in Las Palmas and Palma by very little: the largest decrease in six days had been between 4% and 6% (1% in Alicante).
In Zaragoza (-5%), Seville (-2.7%) and Málaga (-2.5%) three or four previous windows had fallen more, and Barcelona (-0.6%) behaved like any other week. The analysis aims to justify what happened in Barcelona that one hypothesis is that the adjustment had already occurred there. Catalonia, as you remember, has been regulating seasonal and room rentals since January, and Barcelona is a tense area, with limits on rents. “The owners most sensitive to regulation – the ones we see disappearing in the rest of the cities – in Barcelona could have done so already,” he argues.
Most of the fall, according to the EsadeEcPol study, occurred between Wednesday the 30th and Friday the 2nd, with the first decree already published in the Official State Gazette.
After the repeal of the decrees, EsadeEcPol did not detect a general rebound in supply: between Friday and Monday, the advertisements moved as on any other weekend. The exception was recorded in Palma de Mallorca, which recovered part of what was lost (from -8.7% to -6%), more than it had risen in any control weekend. Málaga also recovered somewhat (from -4% to -2.5%), within the usual range.
Without transfer to the sale
The homes that left the rental market did not end up, however, in the buying and selling market, according to EsadeEcPol’s analysis. Sales announcements, he explains, do not accompany the drop in leasing: they vary between -0.7% and 0.7% in seven cities and they increased in Barcelona (1.5%), Málaga (1.9%) and Murcia (2.4%). “This increase occurs on Saturday the 3rd and also appears throughout Spain, so it cannot simply be read as a transfer from rent,” he says.
With the cautions of an analysis like this, such as the short time since the repeal or the small samples, Jorge Galindo, director of EsadeEcPol and author of the report, concludes that the data “are compatible with a preventive withdrawal of rental offers in most large cities during the week of the decrees” “Uncertainty has a real weight on landlords, but we do not know how much it is or how they are going to respond to the new wave of uncertainty that opens the call for general elections for November 29,” Galindo reasons.
Before this consultation, the Government will predictably be able to validate the decree already in force that includes a freeze or a maximum increase of 2% for income. Yesterday, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda updated its “rent calculator”, a computer tool designed to make it easier for tenants to calculate the updated rent of their contracts.
The main novelty of this application is the incorporation in its calculations of the extraordinary limitation on the annual updating of income provided for in the new standard. This restriction will affect all housing lease contracts that must update their quota from now until December 31, 2027.