Buying a new construction apartment in the city of Barcelona costs on average 626,708 euros (to which more than 10% of taxes and expenses must be added), according to data from the association of Catalan developers and construction companies, APCE. Its president, Xavier Vilajoana, pointed out that the price in the capital remained “practically stable” last year (the price per square meter fell 0.8%) and responds largely to the lack of supply: in the city They built only 3,813 homes, 48.7% less than the previous year.
The APCE attributes the drop in construction to the “negative impact” of the obligation to reserve 30% of new developments for social housing. “Everyone talks about housing policy, but very few do anything effective to solve the problem,” lamented Vilajoana, who considered that “the data speak for themselves.”
In the city of Barcelona at the end of last year there were 224 developments under construction, with 59% of the homes already sold, which had an average surface area of ??79.7 m2.
By districts, those with the greatest building activity are Horta-Guinardó (40 developments), followed by L’Eixample (35) and Sant Martí (29), while the smallest number of works occurs in Nou Barris (9) and Les Cortes (6).
In prices, Vilajoana highlighted the 13.9% increase in Gràcia, “where works have been paralyzed due to the obligation to allocate 30% of developments to VPO in new works or renovations of more than 400 m2”, and the Sant Martí, 10.7%, compared to the decreases of 8% in Eixample.
In Catalonia as a whole, 14,418 homes were started in 2023, 11.6% less than in 2022, a figure that is “well below” the creation of new homes, which makes it necessary to build about 25,000 a year according to estimates of the Generalitat. “The housing deficit is accumulating,” Vilajoana recalled, and aggravates the lack of supply and the rise in prices.
By province, Girona was the only one in which the number of housing starts increased, 36.3% more, while the provinces of Barcelona, ??Tarragona and Lleida registered decreases of 15.5%, 5% and 54%, respectively.
Regarding protected housing, the promoters indicated that until the third quarter of 2023, 1,320 VPO homes have been built in Catalonia (12.7% of all those built in Spain, despite the fact that it represents 16% of the population ). Furthermore, Vilajoana recalled, 66.3% have been built by the private sector (875) and only 445 by the public sector (33.7%).
The promoters recalled that housing development has been affected by the rise in raw materials and construction costs and rate increases. However, the president of the APCE pointed out, to these factors we must add other specifically Catalan factors: “the lack of land to build on, which is also not generated; the lack of administrative agility in the processing of licenses; “legal uncertainty due to constant regulatory changes, which paralyze activity, and the adoption of political measures that do not help to improve access to housing.”
