The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, has this Thursday signed the decree to declare the city as a "stressed housing market" area, a "prerequisite for the immediate application of the housing law", as the mayor declared just after this Thursday's meeting of the Barcelona council's governance committee, which also completed the distribution of the new council's portfolios. "Barcelona will be the first city in Spain to apply Pedro Sánchez's housing law", announced the mayor, adding that this first measure "will not be sufficient, but it is absolutely necessary" to be able to solve a "structural" problem, that of access to housing. Collboni insisted that the measure will serve "to counter the increase in rental prices", but that it will be important to accompany it with an increase in housing supply.
It should be borne in mind that the new Spanish housing law sets out four requirements in order for a territory or municipality to be declared a stressed market area, on which price controls can then be imposed. The law says that at least one of the four conditions must be met, although in the case of Barcelona, three are fulfilled: namely, that the percentage of household income dedicated to paying rent or mortgage, plus utilities, exceeds 30% in both cases, or that the increase in rental prices in the last five years is three percentage points higher than the evolution of the Consumer Price Index.
With regard to the requirement on the percentage of income dedicated to paying the rent, the residents of Barcelona dedicate 36% of their income to paying for rental housing. As for mortgage payments, with an average monthly payment of 1,210 euros, the percentage is 43.3% of income. And with regard to the third requirement, rental prices have increased by a whopping 21.1% over the last five years, rising from 889.60 euros per month on average in the fourth quarter of 2017 to 1077.50 euros in the fourth quarter of 2022.
The next move must be made by the Catalan government
However, the declaration of Barcelona as a stressed housing market area will not mean the automatic application of the housing law, but is a necessary first step, with the next step in the hands of the government of the Generalitat. Thus, the first deputy mayor, Laia Bonet, clarified that the city council is now sending the Catalan administration "the decree, accompanied by a report confirming compliance with the requirements, that we certify it and are sending housing proposals”, but which will now depend on the government, which also has to formalize the application for the 140 Catalan municipalities whose stressed status is already known because the measurement mechanism had already been set up for the earlier Catalan housing law. However, all this is also pending the possibility that a new Spanish government emerging from the 23rd July election will stop the deployment of the new law in its tracks.