The housing crisis in Spain is awakening a wave of indignation. Among the facets of this problem that affects thousands of people is the difficulty for the population to find decent housing at a price they can afford with their salary. Faced with this reality, there is another: the use of housing as an investment asset for speculation.
Canary Islands is the Spanish autonomous community with the most housing owned by companies. Of the total residential property stock in the archipelago (around 991,300), 7.5% belongs to companies (around 74,630), according to data published by El País through Cadastral Statistics.
Breaking down this situation by island, this reality is much more noticeable in Lanzarote and Fuerteventura than in the rest of the archipelago, with 10.9% and 10.4% of housing in the hands of companies. This reality is more noticeable in the most touristy areas, as they concentrate the largest number of houses belonging to companies.
Tías is the Canary Islands municipality with the most houses owned by companies and the second in the entire country with the highest proportion of housing in the hands of companies, only behind Toril (Extremadura). In Tías, 27.28% (around 3,897 residential properties) belong to companies, and of these, 20.92% (2,988) belong to companies with more than ten properties. This tourist town also holds the position of the Spanish municipality with more than 10,000 inhabitants with the most empty homes.
The situation is also more acute in Yaiza, where 16.84% (around 1,506) of housing is in the hands of companies and 487 (5.45%) belong to companies with more than ten properties. Towns like Arrecife and Teguise are also above the Canary Islands average, with 9.91% (2,387 houses) and 7.81% (818 properties), respectively, owned by companies. These figures are only reduced in San Bartolomé, with 5.2% in the hands of companies (403 properties), Haría, with 5.32% (171 houses), and Tinajo, with 3.79% (101).
More than half (57.3%) of company-owned housing is registered to companies that own more than ten properties, and almost a quarter (24%) are owned by companies with more than one hundred. The Canary Islands archipelago surpasses autonomous communities such as the Balearic Islands, Catalonia, or Madrid in the number of properties held by companies.
Companies had not bought so many properties since 2007, coinciding with the year the subprime mortgage crisis erupted in the United States, which eventually also affected Spain.
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