The combination of rising housing prices and falling wages has caused the average effort required for Canary Islanders to acquire a home to increase in 2021 to six years and two months of their full gross salary, a figure similar to the national average, according to a study published this Tuesday.
The report, prepared by the job offer platform Infojobs and the real estate website Fotocasa, calculates that to buy an 80 square meter apartment last year, an investment of close to 152,000 euros was needed.
Its authors base this on the fact that the sale price of second-hand housing increased by 1.7% in 2021, with an average price of 1,907 euros per square meter, while the gross salary decreased by 2.5%, to an average of 24,555 euros per year (equivalent to 2,046 gross euros per month in twelve payments).
According to their estimates, in 2020 Spaniards needed to invest 6 years of their gross salary in full to buy an apartment, two months less than a year later.
In a statement, the Director of Studies at Fotocasa, María Matos, has predicted that increases in housing prices will continue during 2022, although "slightly", so whether Spaniards have to make more or less effort to pay for a home will depend on the evolution of salaries.
By communities and provinces
By autonomous communities, in 14 of the 17 regions, the number of full salary months required to acquire an apartment increased.
The Balearic Islands lead the statistics with 9.8 years of salary to be able to buy a second-hand apartment of 80 square meters, just ahead of Madrid, with 9.4 years; the Basque Country, with 9.1 years; and Catalonia, with 8.2 years.
At a distance were Cantabria (6.5 years), the Canary Islands (6.2), Andalusia (5.9), Galicia (5.9), Aragon (5.6), La Rioja (5.3), Asturias (5.3), Castilla y León (5.2), Navarra (5.2) and the Valencian Community (5 years). At the bottom are Murcia (4.1), Castilla-La Mancha (4) and Extremadura (4), according to the report.
By provinces, those that spend the most time paying the mortgage are the Balearic Islands, Gipuzkoa, Madrid and Barcelona, with an average of over nine years. In contrast, Ciudad Real (3.3 years), Toledo (3.6), Jaén (3.6), Castellón (3.8), Teruel (3.8) and Ávila (3.9 years) are the ones that require the least effort.
