The Sant Martí district in Barcelona has experienced a rapid transformation in the last thirty years. The urban modifications that have been carried out in the Poblenou area have revalued these neighborhoods more than other parts of the district and the city and have projected the area internationally.
The awarding of this event to Barcelona had a direct impact on the neighborhoods of Vila Olímpica and Poblenou: the elimination of the railway section of the coast opened the neighborhoods to the sea and the construction of new houses turned them into more residential spaces as opposed to the industry.
The most current project, and one of the most conditioning for the Sant Martí district, is Pla 22@, which was approved in the year 2000 with the aim of transforming an area of ??working-class tradition into a space for development and research. Its application extends to neighborhoods such as La Llacuna, Provençals del Poblenou or Diagonal Mar and the Front Marítim, whose axes are being redeveloped and pacified.
Having a rented apartment has gone from costing €341.65 per month on average, at the beginning of the century, to costing €1,000.16 in 2022, according to official data based on the deposits deposited with the Incasòl.
It is one of the districts where the price has become more expensive in the last 20 years, a similar circumstance only in districts like Ciutat Vella, which has undergone a notorious process of gentrification during this period, or l’Eixample.
This urban transformation of the area directly influences the demand for housing. Vila Olímpica del Poblenou is not only the neighborhood with the most expensive rent in the district —and the sixth in the entire city—, but also where properties are rented the fastest.
Housfy, a comprehensive real estate services platform, estimates the average time that an advertisement for a rental apartment in Vila Olímpica remains published before finding a committed tenant at 8 days.
An example of this is this 60 m² apartment on Carrer de Llull, in Vila Olímpica, distributed in 3 rooms. It was built in 1965, but recently renovated, Housfy rented it out in just over a week for €1,200.
Used housing is more expensive in most of the Poblenou neighborhoods than the Barcelona average. The price per square meter stands out in Diagonal Mar and the Front Marítim (€6,364.87/m²), the second most expensive in the entire city, according to sales data registered in the last quarter of 2022.
During the same period, new build developments were sold at high prices in Parc de la Llacuna del Poblenou (€5,860.11/m²), Poblenou (€5,768.99/m²) and Vila Olímpica (5,713.42 €/m²).
It is surprising to discover that a decade ago, in 2013, new construction in La Llacuna cost €1,691.32/m².
Some neighborhoods of Poblenou enjoy sales times that are much lower than average. According to the latest data published by Housfy, a property in Vila Olímpica is sold in an average of 35.5 days, just over a month.
The award goes to Provençals del Poblenou, the neighborhood in the Sant Martí district where apartments were sold the fastest: the average time from the publication of the announcement to the formalization of the sale is 32 days. The average in the entire city of Barcelona lasts up to two and a half months, according to these data from Housfy.
An example? This regal estate of 98 m² was built in 1923, in Carrer d’Espronceda, within the confines of Provençals del Poblenou. Housfy sold it in a month and a half for €368,000:
Housfy is presented as the first ecosystem of real estate and home services in Europe and has a wide presence in Barcelona and all of Catalonia. Thanks to the digitization of processes and an online methodology, they offer adjusted rates with which users can save several thousand euros in commissions.
