The consequence of this concentration of homes is not harmless. Ten years ago, you could rent a 70-square-meter house in Madrid with 30% of your salary, according to the real estate portal Fotocasa. With that same amount, now only one of 39 square meters could be rented.
Thus, in February 2014, an average of 9.8 euros per square meter was paid in the region, and 11.2 in the capital, according to data from the real estate portal. Idealistic. These figures have now skyrocketed to their record figure, 16.8 and 18.7 euros, respectively. That is, to rent an 80 square meter apartment in the Community of Madrid you have to pay an average of 1,344 euros per month, which reaches 1,496 in the case of the capital.
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Despite the upward spiral, which includes the fact that rental prices have risen by 12.8% in Madrid in the last year, according to Fotocasa, the regional government does not consider it appropriate to establish rent caps that would affect large holders such as Blackstone, CBRE , Caixabank, Renta Corporación or Cerberus, with thousands of homes under their belt.
“We do not believe in the declaration of stressed areas, because it attacks the right to property, invades competencies and are initiatives that raise prices and lower supply,” says a spokesperson for the regional government.
But that positioning does not stop the opposition for now. First, the town councils of Getafe, Fuenlabrada and Alcorcón, governed by the PSOE, asked the Community to declare their municipalities as a stressed area. Given the negative response for the first two, which will predictably be similar in the case of the third, the socialist mayor of Alcorcón, Candelaria Testa, has decided to explore a new path with the support of the general secretary of her party Juan Lobato: take it to the Assembly regional a proposed law to regulate the declaration of areas stressed by the excessive price to pay to buy or rent housing, with the aim of establishing limits that facilitate the emancipation of the population.
“The problem is not that there are large owners with many homes, it is that they have many homes and they are empty and unrented because they are speculating on their value,” says Lobato. “What these large owners have to do is pay the estate tax, which until now they are not paying,” he claims. “That will energize the market. The underlying problem is the lack of public housing in Madrid, where we have 1%, and where nothing has been done for a long time.”
As the PP enjoys an absolute majority in the regional Parliament, it is foreseeable that the PSOE initiative will not go ahead. When that happens, if it happens, the problem of access to housing will still be there.
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