The supply of homes in the permanent rental market in Spain has fallen by 17% in the two years that the Law on the Right to Housing has been in force, according to data from Idealista.com.
In addition, the number of people interested in renting has increased to 79% in the last two years. This situation of high demand compared to a stock that continues to decrease has led to an average increase in prices of rents of 24% between May 2023 and April 2025.
Meanwhile, municipalities in Navarra and the Basque Country are joining Catalonia in declaring areas of strained residential market to limit increases in new rentals, while trying to regulate seasonal rentals, by rooms or tourist apartments.
The Law on the right to housing has modified the Urban Leasing Law (LAU), has created the figure of areas of strained residential market or specifies the figure of the large holder, and should produce significant changes in the residential market, especially for permanent rentals.
However, in these two years of operation, the situation of rental housing in Spain has not improved, but quite the opposite.
The Minister of Territory of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Sílvia Paneque, together with the Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, stated with official data that rents have fallen in Catalonia as a whole.
But according to the figures from the Housing Studies and Documentation Service of the Generalitat, based on the rental bonds deposited in the Institut Català del Sòl (Incasòl), the number of contracts is falling sharply, while rents do not follow a clear downward trend except in Barcelona.
In a recent study by the IEE on the excessive taxation on housing, it also stated that there is excessive regulation of the housing market. "This regulation, which materializes, for example, through intervention in the price of rents or land, can generate distortions in the behavior of economic agents. Although the intention is to facilitate access to housing, this intervention limits the free functioning of the market, preventing supply and demand from adjusting adequately," they highlighted.
An opinion shared by Xavier Vilajoana, president of APCEspaña. "The will of the law was good, but it has not achieved the objectives it intended. Therefore, I think we have to think about it a lot more."
"In the end, the problem of housing in our country is a problem that has a multifactorial solution, which must be addressed in many points and, in this case, this law only affects demand. So, we have a problem. That is, you cannot try to solve the problems of a market only by affecting one of the parts: either supply or demand. You have to do it in both. And this is something that this law has not done," Vilajoana completes.