• Prices: Buying a house is 20% cheaper today than before the crisis, but renting costs 10% more
  • Frenazo.The brick cools: the sale of homes suffers its biggest fall since the crisis

The price of housing l cam already almost five years growing strongly [it has done 23% since 2013], but it is still far from reaching the level prior to the bursting of the housing bubble. Actually, buying a house today is still 21% cheaper than it was in 2007, just before everything fell apart. In those days, a Spaniard had to allocate his income of 13.6 years to acquire a home owned; Today the effort is less than 9.7 years .

The economic crisis, which has lasted for a long decade in our country and from which we are still recovering, changed the habits of Spanish citizens - many forcibly - especially those related to saving. And the purchase of housing, probably the most important and compromised decision, has also changed compared to before the hard recession.

Although in Spain, buying is still the majority option [77.1% of households] and is still well above the Eurozone average [66.1%], rent has been gaining ground little by little. Specifically, just before the bubble prick, only 14% of households were rented. Although still far from the percentage of owners, the data in 2018 nevertheless climbed up to 18%.

But not only the interest of citizens for rent has grown after the crisis. It has also done so, and in what way, its price. If buying a house is 21% cheaper today than in 2007, renting one is 11% more expensive.

This is reflected in an ambitious report from the BBVA Foundation and the Valencian Institute for Economic Research (Ivie) released yesterday and that contrasts the escalation of the rental price with the behavior of the price of housing in all autonomous communities.

In all of them the rental option has grown, although there are still large differences by territories. For example, there is a chasm between the percentage of rented homes in the Canary Islands (27.8%) and that of Extremadura (10.9%), the community in which it still has less roots.

Also the escalation of the rental price has had different intensities according to each autonomous community. Where it has skyrocketed most since the crisis has been in Catalonia , Cantabria and the Balearic Islands , with increases of more than 15%. And only in a community, Navarra, it is cheaper today to rent a house than before the crisis, 0.8% specifically, according to this report.

The effort to buy a house is smaller today than in 2007, as mentioned before [9.7 years versus 13.6] because the price of housing has not yet recovered from the flat tire [still 21% below ], but the per capita income of households has increased by 8.8% . But this is the Spanish average, and there are great differences again depending on which community you live in. In the Balearic Islands , for example, it is where greater effort is needed to acquire a property home (13.3 years of rent), followed by Madrid, with 12.1 years, and the Basque Country (11.6). At the opposite end is La Rioja , where you can buy a house with the rent of 6.5 years, less than half that in the Balearic Islands.

Where the decline in the effort index has been greater during the years of the crisis has been in Murcia (it has decreased 5.6 years), in Andalusia (4.9) and in Aragon (4.9).

The price of housing has fallen without exception in all communities, but it has also done so differently [see graphic]. Navarra and Aragón are the autonomies with the prices farthest today from those of 2007 (41% and 38% below, respectively). And the Balearic Islands is the region in which the cumulative fall since 2007 has been minor (11%).

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • Balearics
  • Navarre
  • Aragon
  • Andalusia
  • Basque Country
  • Murcia
  • Madrid
  • The Rioja
  • Estremadura
  • Spain
  • Catalonia
  • Cantabria
  • Canary Islands

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