• The rental price hits the brakes and closes 2019 with an 8.54% rise compared to 18.35%, which concluded in 2018 according to recent report.

The rental price closed last year with an 8.54% rise from 18.35% that ended in 2018, according to the “Annual Rental Price Report” prepared by the real estate portal “Pisos.com”. For its part, the house for rent in December had an average area of 124 square meters and an average income of 966 euros per month. This represented a fall from November to 2.03% and in the cumulative of the second half of the year, a 2.44% increase.
In the opinion of experts, there is “a trend towards restraint in rent” after a period of strong growth and, in this regard, they have pointed out that for the first time since 2016 year-on-year growth is less than 10%, after several major “peaks” over the next three years. For these experts, “the rental market is much more reactive and the payment cap of the family units has been reached”. As an example, they mention the shift in demand from large capital to the periphery. “Many of our clients are real estate agencies and they tell us, if they used to have a flat to rent in a portfolio, they now take between a week and ten days,” they conclude.

Madrid, the most expensive region, Teruel the cheapest

The study also analyses which are the most expensive and cheaper ranges, provinces and municipalities: Between the provinces, the most expensive have been Madrid (1,744 euros per month of average income) followed by Barcelona (1,531 euros/month) and the Balearic Islands (1,394 euros per month). At the other end, the provinces with the lowest average rental income are Teruel (387 euros per month), Lugo (424 euros/month) and Ciudad Real (424 euros per month).
The province where rents have risen the most over the past year has been Albacete, where 17.69% have soared while at the opposite end the biggest drop took place in Alava where rents were 5.20%. In the last month it has been Cuenca (4.81%), the province where it has been better with a rise of 4.81%. By contrast, Soria has been the province in which rents have been lowered the most during December (-4.77%).

Among the provincial capitals, at the end of last year, the most expensive rentals were again in the city of Madrid (1990 euros per month), followed by Barcelona (1,949 euros/month), Palma de Mallorca (1,338 euros per month) and San Sebastian (1,252 euros per month). For Ferrán Font, director of Pisos.com studies, it is precisely in the aforementioned populations where “the price has gone up a lot and there is a problem of accessibility”. In this regard, this expert has pointed out that the regulation that the new Government intends to adopt “will have to be adapted to these specific markets because generic legislation will be considerably less useful”.
Whereas, on the opposite side, with the cheapest rentals were the cities of Teruel where the rent can hardly cost on average 431 euros per month, Lugo (442 euros/month and Ciudad Real (456 euros/month).

Extremadura, the cheapest community

At the regional level, the most expensive regions when it comes to renting were, in December 2019, the Community of Madrid (1,744 euros/month), the Balearic Islands (1,394 euros per month) and Catalonia (1,249 euros/month). Among the most economical incomes are Extremadura (459 euros/month), Castilla-La Mancha (585 euros per month) and Galicia (596 euros/month). The largest year-on-year increase took place in Catalonia, where rental rents soared by 13.55% while, at the other end, in La Rioja the rents fell during 2019 to 3.71%.