Housing affordability in Europe: Long-term implications and lessons for Spain
Housing affordability
Fecha: marzo 2026
Francisco Rodríguez Fernández
SEFO, Spanish and International Economic & Financial Outlook, V. 15 N.º2 (March 2026)
Since the mid-2010s, housing affordability has re-emerged as a central policy challenge across Europe, including in Spain, with rents in large Spanish cities rising by 50–70% in nominal terms between 2015 and 2025. Comparative evidence indicates that widely used policy instruments, such as rent controls and demand-side subsidies, tend to reduce supply or translate into higher prices when housing construction is inelastic, while largescale social housing models have stabilised markets only under specific institutional
and historical conditions that are difficult to replicate. Spain’s structural weakness lies in its historically ownership-focused model and the automatic expiration of protection on subsidised housing, which has left a social rental stock of just 1.5–2% of total housing, far below the EU average. At the same time, homeownership among 30- to 34-year-olds has fallen by more than 20 percentage points since 2002, emphasizing the intergenerational dimension of the problem. Spain’s effort to improve housing accessibility, the 2023 Right to Housing Law, follows the European pattern of short-term relief combined with risks of reduced formal rental supply. The accumulated evidence suggests that sustained affordability ultimately depends on expanding effective supply through more flexible zoning, faster licensing and greater legal certainty for tenants and landlords.