The disproportionate increase in housing prices and the also notable and sustained growth of tourists, thanks above all to the boom in housing for tourist use, are two of the star topics of the public debate in the city of Malaga and, by extension , in the province. In the last year they have set the political agenda, especially after the massive demonstration on June 29, called by the Tenants’ Union. But on the table there was a pending question, at least in the academic field: what exact influence does the fact that a relevant part of the capital’s real estate stock – 13,253 homes, according to the Registry of the Junta de Andalucía – is it dedicated to tourist use throughout the year or part of it?
A study by researchers from IATUR (Andalusian Institute for Research and Innovation in Tourism of the University of Granada, Málaga and Seville), directed by UMA professor Enrique Navarro, now gives a figure: “54% of the variations in rental price can be explained by the concentration of housing for tourist use.” Navarro clarifies that this is the “reliability” of the relationship between both variables, at least in the cases studied.
According to the report, the price increases by 33% on average in tourist cities when the VUT reaches 10%, which represents an increase of 3.29 euros per square meter.
The study is based on the analysis of data from Málaga (fundamental object of the report), Seville, Jaén and Teruel, cities that serve as a contrast to assess a relationship that can be extrapolated to other tourist cities, and that around half of the increase of the rent is related to tourist housing.
“There is a relationship, everyone knows it, but there was no number,” says Navarro, who was tired of hearing that there was no data that quantified the relationship.
The authors advocate for a regulatory response to a “worrying” situation in “high tourist intensity” destinations where net income per person is low, such as Malaga or Seville. “The influence that the VUT exert on the rental price is one more component of a phenomenon that needs regulatory mechanisms in the short term to guarantee access to decent housing solutions, even if in an emergency.”
The report is part of a multidisciplinary research project (The impact of housing for tourist purposes in the Province of Malaga: analysis and proposals from Public Law) directed by Manuel Moreno Linde, professor of Administrative Law, which will be presented in the coming months.
“Vertiginous” growth of VUT
The chosen cities represent opposite situations. While Malaga and Seville are two cities with obvious symptoms of tourist saturation (in 2023 – the date on which the study closes – there were 10,403 VUT and 54,728 places in Malaga, and 8,370 VUT and 40,975 places, in Seville), in Jaén and Teruel the presence of VUT is marginal. In all of them, their growth has been “dizzying” in recent years. From 2016 to 2023, Málaga has grown by 1200%, Seville by 964%, Jaén by 4000% and Teruel by 636%. The high data for Jaén and Teruel are explained because in 2016 the supply of tourist homes was almost non-existent.
At the same time, residential rentals have also skyrocketed: 85% in Malaga, 48% in Seville, 32% in Jaén and 39% in Teruel. The most significant increase in rents occurs in the historic centers and their periphery, where the largest number of tourist homes are also concentrated. This is the case of Carretería and Álamos streets, in Málaga, or Triana, in Seville.
The study offers a measure of the influence of VUT on the rise in house prices. The quantitative analysis is twofold: on the one hand, it is based on a linear regression model with a panel of data from 2016 to 2023 at the scale of census sections; The second is a spatial correlation analysis only for Malaga, where a qualitative study has also been carried out, based on interviews, on the impact of the touristification of Malaga on the population and commerce.
The paradigmatic case of Malaga
As the researchers conclude, the difference in the price of rental housing in 2023 between the scenario of the non-existence of tourist housing and the scenario of having 10% of VUTs in the municipality is a 31% increase in the price in Malaga. ; in Seville 33%, 44% in Jaén and 46% in Teruel.
“This positive relationship between high rental prices and high VUT concentration (…) has been spreading from the census sections of the heart of the city center and the eastern sector, expanding like an oil spill between 2016 and 2023,” says the document. “You can see how it has influenced other neighborhoods, even though they do not have a very high percentage of tourist housing,” Navarro points out.
The case of La Merced, in Malaga, is paradigmatic: the cost per square meter has gone from 8.8 euros (2016), when only 5% of tourist apartments were registered, to 18 euros (2024), when it is around 40 %. On the other hand, in areas to the north of the city where the presence of tourist housing is marginal, the increase in rent is barely noticeable (from 10.4 to 11.4 euros).
The study suggests that the demand for vacation rentals has absorbed the increase in the housing stock in some areas. Thus, in the last two decades there have been more family homes in the Center (50% more, largely the result of rehabilitation), but the proportion of habitual homes fell from 56.5 to 45.3 from 2001 to 2021.
Upward trend dominated by large owners
In Spain it is estimated that some 340,000 homes are allocated for this use, close to 10% of the size of the rental market. Andalusia is the region with the most vacation rentals on online platforms in all of Europe, with Malaga as a prominent hub. The authors of the report emphasize that VUT owners “are no longer mainly small owners seeking a complementary income”; “In many cases, they are large and medium-sized private owners or investment fund owners.”
The exact influence exerted by the increase in the number of homes intended for tourist accommodation in cities or neighborhoods exposed to mass tourism was, until now, the unknown to be resolved. Renters of tourist homes continue to point out other factors that also influence, such as the low construction of new housing and demographic growth due to immigration, which has added thousands of new inhabitants to urban centers such as Malaga and its periphery. However, the Bank of Spain itself pointed out in a report last April that “the rebound in tourist home rentals could also be having an impact on rental prices.” It remained to quantify.
The raw data supported the intuition that tourist housing is decisive in cities like Malaga. In the capital of the Costa del Sol, rental prices in the city went from 10.3 euros per square meter (December 2019) to 15.1 (December 2024, historical maximum), an increase of 46%, according to data from the Idealista portal. The increase is 118% in a decade. Along the way, the boom in tourist housing came across. In 2016 they did not reach 800 in the city, which now has the highest density in Spain, with more than 13,000 registered by the Junta de Andalucía as of January 2025.
Between 2021 and 2023 (deadline date of the study) the city added 4,836 VUTs to the registry, with year-on-year increases of 13%, 25% and 32%, respectively. In those three years, more VUTs have been registered than in all the previous ones combined, with 2023 being the year with the most registrations (2,532 VUTs). The trend has been similar throughout almost all of 2024, with many months in which between 7 and 8 new tourist homes were registered each day. In Seville, the dynamic is similar, but less accentuated after the pandemic.
Late regulation in Malaga
After years of ignoring the warnings of experts and its own organizations, such as the Urban Environment Observatory, the Malaga City Council now says it is determined to put a stop to them, and has established two mechanisms successively: they can no longer be registered if they do not have independent outlets and supplies. , with retroactive effects to February (thus intending to cancel some 1,500 already registered, which is already causing litigation). They also cannot be registered if, even if they meet this condition, they are in a neighborhood in which they already account for more than 8% of the real estate stock. This last decision, still pending to come into force after an error in the mayor’s vote, was adopted after a municipal report that warned that there are areas where one in three homes is used for tourism.
The report by IATUR researchers includes another significant piece of information extracted from the census. In 2021, in the city of Malaga 13.1% of the population lived in rentals, a significantly lower percentage than in cities such as Barcelona (31.4%) or Madrid (25%).
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