The construction of has experienced its greatest growth in a decade in 2024. According to the latest official data, published this Thursday by the Ministry of Housing, last year 14,371 houses of this typology were completed in Spain, which represents an increase of 62% compared to 2023, when 8,847 were recorded. It is the highest figure since 2014 and, nevertheless, it is still insufficient in the face of the structural deficit that drags the country and in front of the objective of the Executive to make this type of real estate one of the pillars to guarantee affordable rentals. In a context of fired prices and, this progress, although relevant, is just a patch, according to the analysts consulted. In addition, only a room has been dedicated to rent, although the real estate market accessibility problem is concentrated.
The rebound has several readings. On the one hand, it reflects the effort of the administrations (State and Autonomous Communities) for reactivating the production of protected housing (they are so called because they are built with public resources and with a maximum price of sale or rent set by the administration), a type of promotion that in Spain fell in chopped after the financial crisis of 2008 ―In the years of the boom Real estate about 70,000 houses of this type were built – and which, except shy rebounds, has remained at low levels since then. On the other, it shows that the institutional response arrives late against an increasingly pressing social demand. The construction volume of 2024, although remarkable in relative terms, pales in the face of the needs of the country, which needs to alleviate the current deficit and moderate tensions in the real estate market, according to estimates of think tanks National In addition, the impulse of this type of constructions is not homogeneous. There are communities that closed the year without building a single official protection house; That is the case of La Rioja, Murcia and Cantabria. For his part, Galicia only accounted for five units.
Santiago Carbó, Professor of Economic Analysis of the University of Valencia and director of Financial Studies of Funcas, acknowledges that it is a “very good fact”, but remember that the country starts from “low levels” after more than “a quarter of a century without a real housing policy”. This lack of impulse on the part of the administrations is what has caused the current deficit, and although in recent years “awareness has been taken by the administrations, we are still far away and many years of sustained growth will be needed for,” he says. José García Montalvo, professor at the Pompeu Fabra University, is more critical of the figure and insists that he has “lost the perspective” of what a good rhythm of building means. Remember that before 2014 the country built more than 50,000 protected houses every year, so in a long historical perspective the current volume is minimal. In any case, the positive side is that both consider that it is not a specific improvement, but structural, so that in the coming years the figure will increase.
More worrying that the lack of supply is the internal distribution of these new protected homes, according to experts. Of the 14,371 units built, 41% corresponds to promotions under property (5,884 homes), while only 26% (3,683 units) were allocated. The remaining 33% (4,771 homes) was distributed between mixed regimes or other formulas. This imbalance reveals a pending subject that Spain fails to approve: the strengthening of a public park for rent, which is the policy by which most administrations and experts bet to alleviate accessibility problems to the real estate market. For decades, governments of different sign have encouraged the culture of property. As a consequence, many of the VPOs that were in the park sold to their tenants after periods of limited rating, thus feeding the private offer instead of consolidating a permanent public park.
“Spain is in the tail in why? Because the social park of this type is very small. It is not understood that the country continues to promote protected housing for sale when it is known that the problem is not there,” Montalvo insists. The analyst puts an example to the Basque Country, where years ago the decision was made to turn his efforts to expand the percentage of official floors in lease. For its part, Carbó considers that the commitment to property in property is due to the fact that “people prefer assets for their future, that is, to have something that is in the end.” But the background question is that the Spanish model continues to prioritize the property model, unlike its neighbors. In this regard, a study by the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, published in 2022, indicated that the excessive increase of the price in rentals is addressed with more public offer. However, in Spain only 2.5% of households are protected, well below 9.3% on the EU and even further from 20% of Denmark or the United Kingdom.
Housing statistics show that, last year, there was only an autonomous community that dedicated almost all of the public housing built to the rental regime without option to purchase: about 236 protected houses accounted for. It was followed by Navarra, with 49% on the total of 277 VPO registered. Catalonia, Madrid and the Basque Country around the national average, with 30%, 28%and 27%, respectively.
