Neighbors of tourist apartments in Barcelona: not only do they put up with the inconvenience, but their homes are devalued

The residents of Barcelona who live with tourist apartments that cause inconvenience not only have to put up with the rush of suitcases at any time, little care with common spaces or partying day in and day out. The presence of apartments for visitors, if there is a commotion, can devalue the neighbors’ homes by up to 25%. And the loss of value escalates if there is more than one source of conflict on a property. It is a phenomenon that occurs in Barcelona and that, for now, has not been detected in other tourist cities in Spain. In the Catalan capital, where the number of licensed tourist homes (HUTs in its Catalan acronym) was frozen in 2014 at around 9,000, residents explain that it is very difficult to close economic activity if it is legal, although the current government The municipal government wants to reduce the number of apartments for visitors in the most pressured neighborhoods. The city has successfully fought since 2016 against illegal supply thanks to a battalion of trackers and inspectors.

Alba S. and Esther R. evoke episodes starring the clients of the tourist apartment with which they live in a building in the Eixample district. “Check in until two in the morning, noise of suitcases.” “The day the smell of marijuana came down through the extractor hood.” “When the tourists pushed the old woman from the third floor.” “Dinners, jumping and music at night on weekdays.” “The day we rang the bell and there was a table full of computers and printers; “They weren’t tourists.” “Those who emptied a fire extinguisher.” Or “when they destroyed things on a neighbor’s ladder and motorcycle.” A story that can be repeated in other neighborhoods in Barcelona and that led Alba, who lives just below, to consider selling the apartment and leaving. “Well, it turns out that having the tourist apartment on top of it devalues ​​my home. A property for which I paid 450,000 euros is now worth 350,000, they told me at the real estate agency. They bother and earn thousands of euros a month; and I lose health and money. “Why are they punishing me?” she exclaims.

This 68-year-old neighbor has been accumulating documentation for some time to sue the owner and the company that manages the apartment for damages. To her and her farm. The neighborhood community has even approved an allowance for legal expenses. “We are afraid,” says Esther R., the vice president of the ladder. “How can it be that an apartment with a tourist license, which was obtained for life with a statement and less than 300 euros, is worth so much money and mine is devalued?” Alba asks. José Manuel, another resident of the building, who lives between Barcelona and Castellón, has not considered selling the apartment, but he remembers looking at the application from his bank and seeing how the price of his property dropped. He explains that he sometimes finds cigarette butts or cans on his terrace that tourists throw away. Alba and Esther say that another neighbor who was pregnant chose to go live in the city of her birth, “because of the stress she had.”

At the apartment management company, Tendency, Mauricio Peña responds that they have had it since 2010 and that they installed “two 24-hour noise measurement devices.” The device warns and they can request tourists. If they don’t answer, they move, says Peña, whose version differs from that of the neighbor below: “He harasses us, sometimes he calls and there is no one in the apartment, we go to community meetings and on one occasion there were problems , we made repairs and kicked out customers. “We don’t give up.” He warns that they will report her for “harassment.” Alba replies that the City Council claims that the meters are poorly installed and insists: “You never know if you are going to sleep all night.” The Consistory reports that in this apartment, according to the Urban Police, between 2023 and so far in 2024, the neighbors have called 112 10 times. “Sanctions are not always imposed because the phone is called 24 hours after the apartment is due. available and if they respond, collaborate and there are no more complaints to 112, the patrol does not move. On at least three occasions he moved and three fines of 460 euros were imposed,” they explain at City Hall.

At the College of Real Estate Agents, its lawyer and spokesperson, Carles Sala, confirms that professionals report that flats that coexist with tourist apartments “do harm and devalue” the rest of the homes: “They tell us that in many transmissions , buyers ask for the latest community minutes to find out if there are problems with any apartment.” “If someone wants to buy an apartment to live in and sees that they have to live with housing for tourist use, they may lose the sale: people do not want to share the place where they live with tourists,” says Sala. And regarding the depreciation percentage he states: “It can range between 10% and 20% and some professionals have even told us that it can reach 25% in some cases.”

Emiliano Bermúdez, partner and deputy general director of Don Piso, agrees with the APIs college. “The tourist apartment is a deflationary factor in the price of housing, when there is one in a building and a neighbor wants to sell his, it does not help, because in some cases they are a source of problems: movement of people, keys to the main door that “They circulate from one hand to another, misuse of community facilities… Many clients are young people who come to have fun and cause inconvenience at night.” Bermúdez admits that if the apartment is illegal, it can be reported so that the City Council can try to stop the activity: “But if it is legal, there is little that can be done. “Once you have a license, it is very difficult to withdraw it.” And he defends that real estate agents must “provide transparency, provide truthful information about the property.” The manager says that, in the Barceloneta neighborhood, they had “an elderly person, an owner who could no longer stand the problem of not being able to sleep day in and day out.” In the end, he says, “he did not undersell, but he did do so for a lower price than if that building did not have tourist apartments, it was 10% or 15% less than the value demanded by the area.” And he concludes: “If the building has more than one, the problem escalates. It is not a negligible impact, someone should review the concept of a tourist apartment, it is an offer that is eliminated from residential and stable rentals.”

The case of Alba S. and other properties in Eixample has reached the ears of the deputy mayor responsible for tourism and the district, Jordi Valls. He recalls that the municipal government is committed to “a substantial reduction in tourist apartments, mainly where there is more density, Ciutat Vella [el centro histórico] and Eixample.” “Until where? We have to study it in depth, prioritizing those that have an impact on the communities of owners,” he specifies. Valls recently met with representatives of the Eixample neighborhood association and five communities where there is tourism and “confirmed the difficulty of acting when they have a license,” reports the City Council. The only cases of license revocation are that you do not have a valid occupancy certificate (which is not the case of these properties) or that you accumulate more than three firm sanction
s for not having a 24-hour telephone service (which is also not the case). The deputy mayor points out that the new decree of the Generalitat will force tourist apartments to have an urban planning license. For two reasons: so that they do not generate coexistence problems and because with the housing crisis in Barcelona, ​​the City Council understands, the majority must return to the residential market.

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