Rental and housing transfer growth in Spain's post-boom regions.

In recent years, the real estate market in Spain has changed

and the ownership regime has lost its importance in favor of renting and transferring residential properties. Although Spain remains a country with a high percentage of homeowners (three out of four families live in their home), in most autonomous communities their proportion has declined in recent years. This is revealed in the Housing and Land Survey 2022, published by the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Development (Mitma) and based on the Annual Housing Survey of the National Institute of Statistics.

Official figures show

that between 2007 and 2021, the share of ownership decreased by 5.4%, while the share of renting and transferring increased by 21.6%. Thus, at the end of 2021, 75.8% of households lived in their own homes, while the remaining 24.2% lived in a rented or transferred home.

If we consider development by devolved communities

it is clear that the situation in Spain was very different. Since the construction boom, ownership has increased in the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla (by 10% and 4.4% respectively) and in Extremadura (by 4.3%), in contrast to the overall situation in the country, where ownership has decreased by 5.4%.

With regard to renting and transferring, significant increases occurred in Castile-La Mancha (69.8%), Cantabria (59.2%), Madrid (45.4%) and Valencia (44.9%), as well as in Pais Vasco (29.6%), Asturias (25.8%) and Navarra (24.8%). In some regions, such as Andalusia (10.7%), Aragon (18.4%) and Catalonia (17%), the share of rentals and transfers has increased by double digits since the real estate boom. Melilla also saw an increase in the proportion of rental and transfer housing compared to homeownership, although the increase between 2007 and 2021 was more moderate (5.7%).

The highest percentage of households living in their own homes in 2021.

are registered in Pais Vasco (83.8%), Extremadura (81.7%), La Rioja (82.8%), Castile and León (81.2%), Murcia (78.1%) and Andalusia (78.3%). On the other hand, the predominance of rental and transfer of housing as a mode of transfer of ownership is observed in the Canary Islands (35.4%), the Balearic Islands (36.2%), Catalonia (28.2%) and Madrid (28.2%), as well as in the Autonomous City of Melilla (38.7%).