“Coliving of high standing, quality finishes and comfort for a luxury stay in the city of Barcelona.” This is how a single room in the Catalan capital is advertised on a real estate portal. Its price, 1,100 euros per month, almost the average in the city to rent an entire apartment. Before becoming an apartment with eight rooms rented separately, the house was a professional office. From one day to the next, some workers uploaded mattresses and furniture, and in early November the advertisement appeared.
What happened in this 200 square meter apartment located in the so-called ‘Golden Square’, the noblest area of the central Barcelona district of Eixample, is no exception. A simple search on the Internet confirms the rise in room rental, and there are even companies dedicated solely to the so-called coliving, with prices ranging from 700 euros to more than 1,000 per room. The rest of the rooms such as the dining room, kitchen or even the bathroom are shared by all tenants.
This type of rental exacerbates the conflict that housing in Spain is going through, considered both a right and an investment asset and economic return. Both lawyers and real estate portals identify a core characteristic of room rentals: these types of contracts are outside the rental regulation as they are not governed by the Urban Leasing Law (LAU).
Along with seasonal rentals, room rentals have become the escape route from the rent cap. The consequence is an increase in profitability for the owners. According to data from a report by the specialized portal Pisos.com, the average profitability of renting an entire 90 square meter apartment in Spain is 5.91%, while it rises to 7.01% in a shared property.
However, escaping housing regulation is not the only reason for homeowners to opt for this modality. The lawyer and legal advisor of the association of property administrators of Barcelona and Lleida, Marta Martín, explains that several companies in the Catalan capital direct their business to a growing demand for post-university students, especially foreigners, or professionals.
“If we want to project Barcelona as a university city that attracts foreign talent, the coliving It is a coherent modality, because the person who comes is not looking for a rental for five years, but for the months or the course that their master’s degree lasts,” explains Martín. The minimum duration of contracts is usually two months.
The lawyer adds that the floors of colivingUnlike traditional rentals, they are fully furnished and the tenant does not have to deal with changing supplies. The trend, says this expert, is for companies to look for entire buildings rather than homes on farms with other neighbors.
Other lawyers specializing in housing, such as the lawyer Simón Cava, are more critical: “The contractual relationship between owner and tenant in the coliving It is not equitable. The LAU rental entails “inalienable” rights and the negotiating position of the parties is balanced because there is regulation, Cava highlights. ”But outside the law there are no limits for the owner, who can get the most out of the property,” he adds.
Converting a large apartment into a room rental, the lawyer indicates, is relatively easy. “If the house has a minimal structure, a few minor works that the community is notified of are enough, because neither partitions nor beams are touched; Only smaller rooms are made and the common elements are maintained,” asserts the lawyer.
For this reason, adds Cava, it is increasingly common to find apartments that are not shared by young people to save costs, but rather rented through agencies and companies specialized in coliving. A change in the uses of housing (from families with traditional rentals to professionals or foreign students who are passing through the city) that also has an impact on neighborhood coexistence, although the tenants do not cause the inconvenience associated with tourist apartments. “He coliving and seasonal rentals are the absolute overexploitation of housing and lead us towards a city that is not for living, but is an aparthotel,” he concludes.
Tenants demand regulation
Attempts to regulate room rentals have so far ended in failure. Catalonia tried it with a decree that the Government of Aragonès brought to the Parliament during the legislature’s discount time and which required that the rent for the total number of rented rooms could not exceed the rental price of the entire apartment. The norm was overturned by PSC and Junts.
The spokesperson for the Barcelona Tenants Union, Enric Aragonès, recalls that the entity promoted state regulation of room rentals, but that the initiative was rejected by Junts and the rest of the right-wing parties.
“We warned about it a year ago when the Housing Law was approved and it has been fulfilled: the rental of rooms and the seasonal rental were outside the norm and it was an invitation to the owners to skip the price regulation,” denounces Aragonès.
The tenants’ spokesperson considers it “common sense” that the maximum rental price per room cannot exceed the rent for renting the entire home. Lawyer Marta Martín does not share this conclusion, and assures that the coliving Yes, it is open to “reasonable” regulation, but not to a price cap.
What’s more, if room rentals are regulated as the Tenants Union intends, Martín warns that many homes would be sold: “They are completely renovated apartments, if the activity stops being profitable, they will not go on to the rental market.”
The state Housing law does not contemplate coliving. Today, the single rental window is being processed, which would require owners to register each room they rent, although it does not impose restrictions on the price. Any sanction on the owners would correspond to autonomies and city councils, but the Tenants Union criticizes that the sanction for not appearing in the registry has yet to be defined.
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