In 2024, 134,649 fewer homes were delivered in Spain than needed to absorb the households created that year, with the largest imbalances recorded in Madrid (-32,644 units) and Barcelona (-21,148), although the figure for the Balearic and Canary Islands stands at 19,700.
This is stated in a report prepared by the Spanish Association of Real Estate Consulting (ACI), in which, in addition to Madrid and Barcelona, Alicante also appears among the provinces with the most deficit, an imbalance that affects the upward trend in sales prices.
In addition to these cities, there is the accumulated deficit in the Balearic Islands, Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife (almost 19,700 homes between them), where the scarcity of land and "urban planning limits" increase structural tensions.
The report concludes that the formation of new households will stabilize at around 200,000 units per year in the 2030s despite the expected increase in population, which will exceed 53 million inhabitants in 2035, according to INE data.
Among the causes it indicates are the aging population, job insecurity, the delay in young people's emancipation and changes in family models (more single-person or shared households). All of this, ACI points out, requires a redesign of residential policies, beyond mere construction.
It is not enough to increase the number of homes
According to the president of ACI, Ricardo Martí-Fluxá, Spain has stopped building at the rate of its population, which is fueling an access problem that is already structural.
In his opinion, it is not enough to increase the number of homes, but a new vision is needed that includes the rehabilitation of the existing stock, the typological diversification, with smaller and adapted homes and a territorial planning that contemplates the unequal evolution of the provinces.
The association, which brings together the main international real estate consultants with a presence in Spain, - which represent more than 90% of the market, demands a State Pact for Housing, a "lasting, transversal agreement, detached from partisan debates, that guarantees legal certainty, regulatory stability and the joint mobilization of public and private resources to promote affordable housing".
Spain faces "a structural imbalance that compromises the balance of the residential market" and that "does not respond to the rate of demographic growth or the evolution of housing needs, derived both from the scarcity of developable land" as well as from increases in construction costs, regulatory restrictions and delays in urban planning processing, he points out.
He also emphasizes that the majority of sales in 2024 were of second-hand homes given the limited availability and high cost of new construction, which continue to shift demand towards existing residential properties.