Buying a house in Spain has become an almost impossible task. Inflation and high interest rates caused It’s expensive to go into debt today. This means mortgages much higher than before, along with a steady increase in purchase prices in almost all major cities. Given the difficulties of owning a home, another idea is gaining ground.

Buy a room instead of an apartment.

Project. Last year a startup called room.com It attracted the attention of the Spanish real estate market. The company, which won the 29th SeedRocket Entrepreneur Campus, introduced the room purchasing method for the first time in our country in order to open the door to people (mostly young people) who cannot afford to buy a complete apartment.

Logic. “A young man who until now was paying 400 euros a month for a small room in Madrid, thanks to our platform, can now pay the same 400 euros a month for his own room and amortises it every month and then pays it off to get back all your savings or rent and help you cover your expenses.” sell to generate a monthly income that will help,” the creators explained This article is from El Español.

How does it work? As they explainWhen you buy a room, you buy a percentage of the property. The process is the same as buying a complete home, but in this case you’re buying one part: your room and a percentage of the common areas. The purchase and sale transaction is formalized with a title deed in the presence of the notary who owns the property in the Land Registry.

This way you get some benefits: you stop spending money on rent, you turn that expense into savings for the down payment on your entire home, you have a real asset that revalues ​​over time, and you get access to the real estate market Er.

What if I leave that city? The room is still yours. So, as the owner, you can sell your share of the property or rent it out and get passive income every month. Currently the startup is offering the first rooms and aims to become “Spain’s number one room operator”. Their plan is to launch 50 rooms in 2023 and increase that number to 500 in 2024.

Context. As we have stated in many of our articles, the loans given by banks to families have become more expensive. And this means: higher mortgage monthly payments. CaixaBank calculated last year that the percentage of a middle-class family’s income allocated to a mortgage was around 38%. A scenario that is a few percentage points above the 30% of family income that financial experts determine as a healthy limit.

Rental drama. And the lease is not released either. A. idealistic work He draws attention to this in cities such as Barcelona quota increased to 47.5%. Following the Catalan capital is Bilbao, which reached 38.3 percent, Madrid, which increased from 33.1 percent to 37.7 percent, and San Sebastián, which increased from 31.5 percent to 35.4 percent. Today, the rental market is going through a boom period and is subject to pressure from tourist housing and foreign purchases.

A room. Thus, the demand for single rooms in cities such as Madrid and Barcelona increased by up to 40 percent, as young people had difficulty accessing an entire apartment. According to data from Pisos.com20% of the rental housing stock in Barcelona (not counting tourism) is currently allocated to the room market.

But of course, this demand also causes prices to rise. In Spain, where the average price is 383 euros, apartment sharing is 10% more expensive than two years ago, but in large cities the rate is much higher. Spothome points out that €603 per month in BarcelonaIt reaches 558€ in Madrid and 516€ in Palma de Mallorca. Even in the suburbs this happens: in Móstoles or Leganés they ask for 800 € and 850 €.

Because? One of the reasons why many tenants offer separate rooms is that this method is more financially profitable for them. According to some experts, for a 110 m2 apartment in Eixample (Barcelona) they charge 1,800 euros per month, while if they rent 4 rooms separately, they can earn 2,800 euros. this EFE article.

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*An earlier version of this article was published in June 2023.