Housing

In this article originally published in the *Informe Económico y Financiero* that we released in March 2025 with the support of Banco Sabadell, Professor Joan Monràs reviews the four forces that have converged to push up housing demand: less construction, credit regulation after the crisis, the tourism boom, and the pandemic. This shock puts pressure […]

→ Seasonal rentals in Barcelona have grown from 2.1% of total listings in 2019 to 14.4% in 2023: their relative share has increased sevenfold. → In Madrid, they have also grown exponentially, though less intensely: from 4% to 10% (3.5 times). → Meanwhile, the share of long-term rental listings among total advertisements has dropped in […]

Last Tuesday, November 28th, we talked about our book “Un País Posible: Manual de Reformas Políticamente Viables” (Un País Posible: A Handbook of Politically Viable Reforms) thanks to the invitation of the Harvard Kennedy School Spain Alumni Network. The conversation counted with the interventions of Toni Roldán, Miguel Almunia, Marta Suárez-Varela and Antonio Cabrales and […]

Spain has practically the same real per capita income as 15 years ago, while other countries around us are much richer than they were then. This means that over the last eighteen years we have not improved our average standard of living. We are therefore on the road to two lost decades. There are many […]

The new housing policy aims to solve the evident rental problems in Spanish cities through price controls in stressed areas and an effort to increase the supply of social rental housing. The effort on access is promising and goes in the right direction to solve the problem, while the controls could prove counterproductive. The commitment […]

Rent control has become a central part of the public policy debate. Catalonia implemented one in December 2020: Law 11/2020, which capped rents in Catalonia for a year and a half. An evaluation of the Catalan experience based on microdata and a precise methodology, comparing homes affected and unaffected by the regulation, is essential not […]

Spain’s buildings use around 30% of its final energy, and just over 20% of Spain’s gas. Furthermore, over a third of Spaniards are dissatisfied with their home’s insulation. At its core: 51% of Spanish primary residences were built before basic thermal insulation requirements were included in technical construction standards.   In 2014, a national renovation […]

Territorial polarisation is among the main megatrends of 21st-century globalisation. The causes of depopulation are structural and are associated with the dynamics of globalisation and agglomeration economies. In this policy brief we analyse data on the evolution of depopulation in Spain over the last 25 years and study the different manifestations of the territorial divide: […]

→ Los jóvenes de hoy, a igualdad de características, se emancipan mucho más tarde que los jóvenes de hace quince años.   → Además, esa emancipación más tardía se está haciendo cada vez menos mediante hipotecas y cada vez más en régimen de alquiler.  → Emparejando lo anterior con la dificultad de acceso al mercado de alquiler, resulta que entre […]

En el presente documento analizamos al detalle los componentes clave (control de precios, medidas fiscales y aumento de oferta) de la nueva y ambiciosa Ley de Vivienda presentada por el Gobierno.

La temporada turística de 2021 va a ser crucial para la recuperación de la economía española. Para modular las expectativas al respecto, es clave partir de los datos disponibles durante lo que llevamos de pandemia, que indican una afectación más intensa en España que en el resto del mundo.

Las políticas por el lado de la demanda enfocadas en las rentas pueden ayudar a resolver esta situación, pero es poco probable que basten por sí mismas.