The rental market continues to be a topic of great interest into which the gap between salaries and housing prices is widening in the country. In the Balearic Islands, the price per square metre of rented housing rose by 18.2% and salaries fell by 1.2% in 2022, according to the study “Relación de salarios y el alquiler de vivienda” based on the average prices of rented housing from the Fotocasa Real Estate Index and data on average salaries from job offers on the InfoJobs platform.
Looking at the evolution of salaries and housing prices since 2012 shows that in these 10 years salaries have increased by 7% (7% in the last 5 years) while rental housing prices have risen by 97.9% (45.9% in the last 5 years).
“The price of rent has been getting more expensive at a frenetic pace over the last decade. After the recovery of the economic crisis in 2014, rental housing was promoted as the main housing option for citizens, which caused the demand to increase in the face of a very scarce supply. At present, we are facing the highest rental prices in history, caused by a very sharp reduction in the volume of rental housing, which has led to a situation of minimum stock. While the cost of rent is growing, salaries are not growing at the same rate, forcing citizens to make a 43% salary effort to pay their rent. A situation that increasingly complicates access to housing,” explains María Matos, Director of Studies and Spokesperson for Fotocasa.
“During the last 10 years the average salary in Spain has grown slowly after the economic recession of 2008-2013, with a behavior similar to the rest of the European Union. However, we are far from the salaries of countries such as Germany or France and Spanish workers have been the most affected by the loss of purchasing power. The wage increases agreed between employers and unions between now and 2025, together with the containment of inflation, are focused on alleviating this situation and maintaining employment”, says Mónica Pérez, Director of Communication and Research at InfoJobs.
The community in which the price of rental housing has risen the most in the last year is the Balearic Islands, with 18.2%, and 45.9% of the total since 2017. If we analyze the data for the last 10 years, we see that the Balearics have gone from paying 7.16 euros/m2 per month in 2012 to paying 14.16 euros per month in 2022 for the square meter of a rental property (i.e. 97.9% more). In addition, average salaries in the Balearic Islands have fallen by 1.2% in the last year, but have increased by 7% in the last 5 and 10 years (from 21,760 euros/year in 2012 to 23,292 euros/year in 2022).
In general, if we analyze the last year with respect to the previous one, in 2022 the average salary decreased in seven autonomous communities, but the price of rental housing rose in all of them. Even in five of them the increase in housing prices has exceeded 10%, while wage increases have not exceeded 5% in any region of the country.
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