The rental reference price index that the Ministry of Housing plans to publish on Friday and which, for the moment, Catalonia has only requested to apply in 140 municipalities, reflects prices that are 19% higher on average than the ads offered on Idealista during 2022. The system currently takes references from two years ago, so it is reasonable to compare the results of the official indicator with this year’s offers.
The real estate portal wanted to wait a few days, until now, to draw its own conclusions from the rental index. Using the year 2022, the average price level of the official reference (it must be remembered that the indicator offers a maximum and minimum threshold) was practically the same as in 2017.
Once Catalonia requests the declaration of a stressed area, the housing index will begin to be applied in a single area that will cover the 140 aforementioned municipalities. Both events could occur on the same Friday.
With this calendar, Idealista highlights that in the province of Barcelona, ??where the majority of municipalities in the future stressed area are concentrated, there was a difference of 19% between the prices of the official index and the reality of the market in Idealista during the same year comparable, 2022. This data corresponds to the statistical average, and may be higher in the most in-demand areas of the city centers.
In the province of Girona, the average price difference between the official index and Idealista ads in 2022 was 20%, while in Lleida it reached 21% and in Tarragona it was 23%.
These differences between the official index and the prices of Idealista advertisements in the four provinces of Catalonia are widely exceeded if current market prices are taken as a reference. In this sense, the average difference in Barcelona is 36%; in Girona, 35%; in Lleida, 29%; and in Tarragona, 33%.
Using data from 2022 again as a reference, the market where the difference between indices is most noticeable is Castellón, where it reaches 33%. They are followed by Lugo (31%), Valencia (29%), Cuenca (28%), Zamora (26%), León (26%), Palma (25%) and Segovia (25%).
In other large markets such as Malaga, the distortions between the market price of Idealista in 2022 and the ministry reach 22%, while they remain at 14% in Seville. In Madrid, on the other hand, the difference between one study and another is only 9%, the lowest in Spain only behind Melilla (7%).
Idealista affirms that the market is betting “on a massive withdrawal of product rather than renting at those prices, further hardening the supply deficit.” Specifically, the portal points out that in the last quarter of 2023 (latest quarterly data available) “the volume of permanent rental homes found by a family in the search process is 23% lower than that registered in the same period of 2017” .
By capital, Cuenca is the one that has lost the greatest volume of supply, since there are currently 63% fewer homes on the market than in 2017. It is followed by Pontevedra (-59%), Barcelona (-58%), Zamora (-54%), Valencia (-45%), Seville (-42%) and Madrid (-32%). They are followed by Palma (-23%) and Alicante (-6%) among the large markets. In Malaga, there is a curious case that the current offer is 50% higher than in 2017, which may be due to its recent explosion as a technological hub in southern Europe.
