Entire housing units collapse in Barcelona. If in 2024 there were 217 properties, in 2025 the figure fell to 149, 31% less. They are data from , which knows the data because the purchases and sales of this type of assets must be communicated to the administrations to give them a preferential option to buy them (with the trial and withdrawal mechanism). The majority of offers that the City Council receives are for properties in the Eixample, Ciutat Vella and Sant Martí districts. And from where less, from Sant Andreu, Les Corts and Nou Barris. , Joan Ramon Riera, celebrates that these operations are going down and attributes it to successive ones that seek to protect tenants and scare away capital.
“It makes us think that we are on the right path, since we regulated [con la Ley de Vivienda] the rental price, then the seasonal rental, the colivings (room rentals)…”, Riera celebrates without nuances: “There are still vulture funds operating in the city of Barcelona, but they are no longer coming, or we can estimate that they are no longer coming: speculative demand is going down thanks to regulation and we are left with residential demand.” Since 2021, sales and purchases of entire buildings have remained above 200 units each year (except in 2022, when there were 167).
The purchase of entire buildings is at the origin of the expulsion of neighbors by new owners who do not renew the contracts, with the aim of renovating the homes to rent them more expensively, converting them into colivings (flats shared with) or sell them. This is what has happened, and the Tenants’ Unions have denounced it, with buildings such as (symbol of the fight for rents since 2024), or blocks such as the one on Sant Agustí de Gràcia street known for the attempts to expel Escorsa; , modernist style and where neighbors have warned of property damage by their landlords; or those whose buyer distributed the apartments with three companies on the same day of the acquisition. of elderly people in Eixample and entire blocks throughout the city, from Poblesec to Sarrià. The buyers are diverse: in the examples cited, the investor in Casa Orsola was a property owner from a Catalan family (Lioness), in Gràcia or Papallona it is the real estate agency NAD, with Dutch capital (which this week) or on Calle de Mallorca an international corporate network that makes it difficult for neighbors to communicate.
Stable rental price and fewer seasonal contracts
In parallel to the sales data, Barcelona City Council published this Monday the semi-annual report of the Metropolitan Housing Observatory (OHB) monitoring the , the first major Spanish city where prices were hit. The co-director of the Observatory, Carles Donat, focuses the balance on the behavior of prices (which slows down in new contracts, although the price per square meter increases), the stock of rental apartments and the behavior of seasonal rentals. In all cases, the data (from the second quarter of 2024 to the end of 2025) are taken from and correspond to the rent regulation period.
Donat points out that with the entry into force of the regulation there was a sharp drop in new contracts (which the observatory attributes to longer contracts, which took longer to expire when they went from three to five or seven years of validity) and since 2024 they have stabilized. “They have remained at low levels, because from the point of view of profitability it is not worth it to the owners to change tenants.” [porque no pueden subir precios] and they maintain those who have.” Regarding the balance between new ones and those that are extinguished, the Observatory assures that the rental stock (which is around 230,000 apartments) has grown by 1,374 units.
Regarding prices, Donat highlights that during the validity of the regulation the average price of new contracts has gone from 1,193 euros per month to 1,161 euros, 2.7% less, although the price has increased in the last two quarters. It has also increased if you look at the square meter, which is explained by two phenomena: smaller apartments are rented, and it has entered the statistics and new construction rental apartments are also counted (where those with free prices do not fall under regulation and public ones have affordable prices).
the data points to a sharp drop in new contracts of 53% in just one quarter (from the third to the fourth of 2025, when there were 1,282) just after the Catalan regulation. But we must take this data with caution: because it is only one quarter, and because the administration does not know how many seasonal rental contracts are registered in Incasòl.
