Any analysis of possible solutions to the residential crisis ends up, at some point, in the need to build more homes. In spite of households than housing, causing a deficit that the Bank of Spain estimated at 600,000 houses between 2022 and 2025.
Given this alleged lack, the Ministry of Housing celebrated an unprecedented fact since 2018. The number of new construction visas confirms a slightly ascending trend, but in 2024 it exceeded, after a five years, that of new households created. “The negative trend has been broken,” said from the department of Isabel Rodríguez, which acknowledged that “the next step is that more homes are built than new homes, a measure that, together with the impulse of rehabilitation and return to the housing market Tourist housing has to help solve the aforementioned deficit. ”
Specifically, as of November 2024, 126,761 new construction visas had been granted, which enable the constructions, compared to 111,548 households created in the full year. The lack remains linked, however, to the end of work certifications, about 96,000. There is another relevant fact, the number of visas is the largest in 15 years and already exceeds 2009, the year following the outbreak of the real estate bubble.
“He Match It does not occur because we adapt the production to the creation of households, but because, surprisingly, it is in the middle of the forecast ”, estimates the vice president of the Association of Construction Promoters of Spain (APCE), Carolina Roca, which indicates that They should be building and putting between 200,000 and 250,000 homes a year before a demand voltage that “remains increasing.” The idealist portal has published this Thursday a study on express sales from which it follows that 12% of the properties announced on the platform in the last 2024 quarter were sold in less than a week.
Given the fall in the creation of households, which has gone from the environment of the 280,000 in 2022 and 2023 to 212,000 in 2023 and about 100,000 less last year, Roca arises if this indicator “is accompanying the production” of homes. According to a report by the Youth Council of Spain, the first half of 2024 had only emancipated 14.8% of the population under 30. But the housing crisis is not the only factor in a clear country and in which in the last six years there have been more deaths than births.
The fall in household creation responds mainly to the families of one or two people. “It is a fact that totally breaks the series,” considers the promoter.
Despite the change in tendency, which is still little pronounced, the effects on the housing market will not begin to be seen, at least, within a couple of years. “We must compare the work start data with the creation of households two years later,” explains Roca, who points out that throughout the historical series a decalage of around 15% of frustrated real estate usually occurs.
This relationship can be seen in the following graph. For example, in the first years of this century, with a boom Of uncontrolled offer, visas were distributed to Mansalva, exceeding 800,000 in 2006. Those licenses had their effect in the subsequent years. In fact, after the outbreak of the real estate bubble, many of these constructions were completed, with up to 600,000 homes finished in 2008, almost 400,000 in 2009 or more than 200,000 in 2010, the worst years of the great recession.
The graph also shows the decalage. For example, in 2021 and 2022, 108,000 projects were visited each year, but in 2023 and in 2024 there were only 86,000 and 95,986 end of work visas.
Beyond housing construction, one of the main concerns is the price. Will the brick formula serve to facilitate access? From the lobby The sector assures that yes, but the recent history is witnessing how in the golden age of the bubble, when they put themselves on the market between 400,000 and 600,000 homes a year, prices did not stop growing.
“The 2008 situation was truly of financial-immobiliary bubble, which is radically opposed to the current one, with an offer crisis. Then prices could continue to grow because everyone had the necessary financing and could buy a home without savings. We began to produce, produce and produce and that production was absorbed above our own capacity, ”says Roca, which considers that the credit is now limited and the supply crisis produces a waterfall effect:“ There is no public housing; Protected housing is not taking place for the middle classes, which had some solvency, or free or luxury housing … In the end, the middle-high class that could access free housing has to go to the protected and that middle class is expelled to rent. As is more solvent, the lessor prefers it, so he ends up expelling everyone. ”
Despite greater control over credit by banking entities, the Bank of Spain has signs of concern in this regard. Mainly, due to the doubts about the independence of the appraisers, which are the ones who value prices when granting a mortgage, with respect to the banks, their clients.
Other voices are more critical of the supply model without control. “Historically, all booms in which more homes have been generated than homes have gone hand in hand with price increases,” says researcher Jaime Palomera. The explanation lies in the conception of housing as a financial asset, but also in the particularities of the branch itself, which does not respond to the typical market laws. “The soil where it is built is a scarce and motionless good, it is in a fixed place and you cannot create more, but economic activity and the population grows, so, unlike other market goods, although it deteriorates, its price It grows without its owner providing value, ”he develops.
And within that market with imperfect rules and scarce or no regulation on the price, other actors enter, who acquire homes as a refuge of value. In fact, about half of the houses that were bought in recent years were without a mortgage. “The point is that the market is incorporating housing, especially in large cities and in the coast, which are too expensive,” says Palomera, who cites the data of the Association of Promoters of Catalonia (APCE): buy an apartment in Barcelona Cuesta, on average, almost 700,000 euros. “What we would call ‘middle class’ cannot afford to live and those prices emphasize those of the environment, also those of second hand,” he explains.
The formula for cooling prices leads to protected housing or affordable price, although there are discrepancies regarding rates. “We should return to what has historically occurred in this country: about 250,000 homes a year, of which 100,000 are protected, because it responds very well to the needs of the middle class, plus public housing, which is done very little. This would allow everyone to find their niche and have a sustainable housing market, which we have completely lost, ”says Roca.
Palomera, on the other hand, claims a commitment to protected housing with a very high level of ambition: “It is the only way to make affordable housing and contribute to cooling prices.” From the government they have also been insisting on the idea of increasing the public housing park, so that it converges with European standards, still far away. At the moment, according to the Social Observatory of the Housing, it has gone from 2.5 to 3.3% on the total.
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