When it comes to renting in Barcelona, anything goes: Storage rooms, storefronts and basements cost hundreds a month

In Barcelona, anything goes when it comes to renting or selling an apartment. The advertisement of a tiny room for €350 ($378.75) per month in the Poblenou neighborhood has generated a lot of controversy on social media. A user on X (formerly Twitter) lamented that there were such precarious offers. The comments on the ad expressed surprise at seeing that 1,746 people had shown interest in the space with only a bed and a balcony: “This is no longer resignation, it’s desperation.” Almost one million Catalans are looking to rent or sell an apartment, according to the latest study by the Metropolitan Housing Observatory. The report concludes that the average search to find a home takes over a year, as strong demand clashes with scarce supply. The price of rent in the city of Barcelona has peaked; official data for the third quarter of 2023 indicated that it has risen to an average of €1,171 ($1,267.43) a month.

“We have the highest rental prices we have ever had. And this translates not only into people spending over half of their salary to pay rent, but also more and more families being forced to live in substandard conditions because they can’t access decent housing. These are people who live in stores, on ground floors or basements that do not have a certificate of habitability,” Enric Aragonès, Spokesman for the Catalan Tenants’ Union, warns.

Real estate websites have a multitude of offers for rent and sale in Barcelona. Among the cheapest offers, in the neighborhood of Nova Esquerra de l’Eixample, there is an ad to rent a 14-square-meter (150.695 square-foot) studio, of which only 12 m2(129.167 ft2) are habitable: it costs €780 ($844.04) per month.

A few months ago, there was a similar controversy on social media over the rental of a 12-meter “penthouse” for €650 ($703.38) per month in Travessera de les Corts. A user decried the fact that “in Barcelona storage rooms and meter rooms are rented as if they were homes. The smaller they are, the more profitable. Welcome to the jungle” and attached the link to ad on Idealista. Boats have been advertised on other occasions.

The problem is not just the rent. There are also ads selling spaces that lack a certificate of occupancy. Even so, they are advertised as an “ideal place to make a loft.” Such is the case of the apartment that this newspaper visited (incognito) on Pintor Josep Pinós Street, in the city’s Horta district. The 33-square-meter (355.209-square-foot) apartment advertised in the “housing” section is being sold for €54,000 ($58,517.10), but the person who shows it explains that it does not even have 30 usable square meters (322.917 square feet). The ad describes it as follows: “Store for sale, bright and at street level. Ideal for a loft. You will never be able to obtain the certificate of occupancy. You can register on the premises. Ideal for investment or to live as a couple or single.” The space has a “bathroom” that is just a toilet; there’s no sink or shower. It is a sort of room full of rubble. The place has elongated windows high up on the wall. The salesman suggests a design to “optimize the little space provided by the premises” and comments that all appliances must be electric, because there is no gas supply.

When it comes to selling it, both the ad and the seller call it real estate, but when asking for the certificate of occupancy, he recalls that “although it says in the ad that it is ideal for a loft, it is still the purchase of a store. Therefore, it has no permits of any kind. It would only be the private use that you would give it [that makes it home] since you do not have any authorization from the City Council. No City Hall is never going to give you permission to live here. In addition, there is the right you have to use it as you wish, since it is for private use.” The person who shows the place always says that this type of property is ideal for couples who do not have a lot of savings because it can be paid off quickly; “then you can rent it, very easily, for over €600 ($649.35) per month.”

At the Housing section of the Barcelona City Council, municipal sources say that it “is not illegal to advertise it without a certificate but to rent it as housing. The key is to see what type of contract it is. Perhaps there may be cases in which contracts are done that are not for housing, especially when the conditions are precarious. When the City Council detects or receives information about cases of sub-standard housing, it can start a procedure and sanction it.”

Of such advertisements, Idealista sources argue that “advertisers themselves fill in the required fields about the property’s characteristics. However, they indicate them on their own account, without Idealista entering to evaluate them at the time of publication.” In addition, the website says that there is regulation: “Although we do not exhaustively verify each ad, we do carry out certain regulatory tasks. We ensure that the relationship between the price and the square meters of the published properties is consistent, that the address provided really exists, and that the properties advertised as homes at least have a bathroom and kitchen, among other basic requirements for their habitability.” The same sources add that “in the event that we have actual knowledge that an advertisement does not comply with the law — for example, if it lacks a certificate of occupancy when it is mandatory — we immediately proceed to remove the advertisement to ensure compliance with regulations and protect our users.”

Nevertheless, there are many offers on the real estate website that do not follow the rules to get this certificate. Some do not have the requisite habitable square meters, while others lack safety permits and still others do not have the minimum required equipment: kitchen, hot water, doors, windows ... In the Sants neighborhood a mini loft of 25 meters total is being rented for €750 ($812.74) per month. “It is … a basement, so it only has a window overlooking a courtyard, but no windows to the street, or exterior structure of any kind,” the ad reads. The so-called home has no exterior ventilation.

Aragonès of the Tenants Union points out: “This reality happens increasingly more and goes unnoticed. We need price regulation that ends the increases and brings about radical decreases. In addition, we need a much larger public housing stock. The opportunities to access a social housing apartment are very scarce and people do not consider it as a viable option.”

This February, the regulation of rental prices contemplated in the Housing Law proposed by the Government last year is expected to go into effect in Catalonia. Catalonia has asked to apply the regulation of rents and an agreement on the rental index to calculate the price is still pending in 140 Catalan municipalities. With this new law, small landlords will have to apply the price of the last contract. However, large landlords will have to stick to the established price index. Tenants, owners and real estate websites uncertainly await the measures to be established with the new law.

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