The movement for dwelling as a whole has organized a demonstration for this Saturday in Barcelona with a very explicit motto: “Let’s lower the rents“The demand, which has become a vital necessity for increasingly broad sectors of society, responds to the runaway increase in rental prices that rentals have experienced in the last decade.
If we focus on the Catalan capital, the rental price signed during the second quarter of 2024 is almost 70% higher than those sealed during the same period in 2014. Specifically, if ten years ago the lease contracts signed that quarter rose on average to 667.89 euros – always second to data of the Catalan Habitat Agency from the deposits deposited in the Catalan Institute of the Sun (Incasòl)–, currently the price rises to 1131.75. In the set of Cataloniathe increase is 55.7%, since in this time new rents have gone from 528.41 euros to 822.9.
Taking into account that around 25% of the Catalan population lives on rent, a figure that rises to 40% in the case of the capital, it is easy to understand to what extent these increases in prices have impacted millions of people. Furthermore, the evolution of prices is totally unrelated to the growth of wages and even inflation.
Throughout Catalonia, according to the most recent data from the National Social Security Institutethe average salary has gone from 25,177 gross euros in 2013 to 29,313 in 2022, that is, a nominal growth of 16.4%, almost 40 points lower than the increase in rents. In the case of Barcelona, in the same time it has evolved from 28,781 gross euros to 33,837, which represents an increase of 17.5%. Plain and simple, in relative terms The average rent in the city has grown four times more than salaries in the last decade.
As for the inflationfrom 2014 to June of this year CPI accumulated in Catalonia as a whole is 25.2%, the same level as in the province of Barcelona. In any case, its growth is clearly below half of what the rental price has experienced.
Decrease when there is regulation
In the last ten years, the trend in rental prices has been clearly upward, although at times it has tended downward, mainly when mechanisms of protection have been applied. price control. The increase in prices slows down in 2020, when a pandemic which, among other issues, makes the business of tourist flatsand is consolidated towards the end of that year, when the Catalan law to regulate prices.
Specifically, prices in Barcelona fell from 979 euros on average for contracts signed in the third quarter of 2020 to 934 in the last quarter of 2021. In Catalonia as a whole, in the same period they went from 745 euros per month to 733 .In March 2022, the Constitutional Court overturned Catalan price regulation, a fact that caused rents to skyrocket from then on.
In the fourth quarter of 2022, for example, in Barcelona they had reached 1,077 euros, 144 more than a year ago, while in Catalonia they rose to 815, 78 more. The rise in prices would continue throughout 2023 and the first quarter of this year, when they set a record of 1,193 euros in Barcelona and 867 in Catalonia.
In the second quarter of 2024, however, the trend has changed and the average prices of new rentals have fallen by just over 5% in both Barcelona (1,131.75 euros) and Catalonia (823). The decrease coincides with the first quarter of application of the price cap in stressed areas, a measure derived from the state housing law. For at least the last decade, rents in Catalonia have experienced reductions when prices have been regulated and have skyrocketed when they have not.
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