Madrid rental listings drop to 8,762 homes

Only 8,762 apartments and rooms from €550 available in Madrid

Can you rent anything in Madrid without losing half your salary? The market’s answer is a definitive no, backed by numbers: according to a count circulating on forums, there are 8,762 active rental properties across all of Madrid and 5,100 rooms, a stock that, according to those searching, disappears as soon as it is listed. The cheapest room, the smallest and most compromised, starts at €550 plus utilities, according to that same count. What used to pay for an entire apartment a few years ago now pays for a door with a lock.

How many rental properties are there in Madrid?

The count is the starting point. Eight thousand seven hundred and sixty-two complete homes for the entire Madrid region. Five thousand one hundred rooms. Nothing more. Between both figures emerges an uncomfortable reality: much of what is published is not an apartment, but a room in a shared dwelling, and idealista returns almost empty pages to those who search with any minimum criteria.

The number of rooms matters more than it seems. When the supply of whole homes contracts, the market does not empty out: it fragments. The owner who previously rented a two-bedroom apartment now rents each room separately, because the sum of the parts exceeds the whole. The housing stock still exists, but it no longer serves to form a household.

From €600 for an apartment in Vallecas to €650 for a room

The most repeated reference to measure the collapse is the memory of those searching. According to a forum user’s recollection, in 2017 a one-bedroom apartment in Vallecas was rented for €600 and it was enough to call as soon as the ad was posted to secure it. There was competition, yes, but there was supply. Today, according to another message in the thread, the average price for a room excluding utilities is around €650, and that figure no longer corresponds to a home.

The comparison is not anecdotal. The adjustment has not come through the price of classic housing, but through the disappearance of affordable housing. What was the floor of the market, the small apartment in peripheral neighborhoods, has become the ceiling of the unattainable. And the intermediate step, the room, has inherited the price of the apartment.

Housing stock hasn't always been this low

There is a fixed snapshot that helps size the problem. In June 2020, with tourism halted and the country running at half estimulante ilegal, the stock published on portals was different, according to figures shared in the thread: 55,381 homes for sale in Madrid province and 25,889 in the capital; 26,552 for rent in the province and 21,872 in the capital. The full breakdown, compared with current supply, gives a difference worth looking at entirely before assigning blame.

Because the diagnosis splits into two. One line of analysis argues that intervention on prices has dried up supply: when rent is capped, the owner withdraws the property or converts it into rooms. The rebuttal comes from the other flank: in Madrid, that regulation has not been applied and prices have risen anyway, so the problem is not regulation but lack of construction. And a third current, more uncomfortable, focuses on demographic pressure on the capital: more population competing for the same stock.

Fixed contract, guarantor, and tax return for a room

The economic filter is only half the filter. According to the account in the thread, accessing a room requires a permanent employment contract, a guarantor, pay slips from the last three months, and the income tax return. A complete dossier, the same one required for an apartment, applied to a room shared with strangers.

That dossier has a silent effect: it excludes from the market those who cannot prove it. As one forum user summarizes, housing, which should be a right, "has become a privilege."

What solutions are proposed?

In the thread, proposals range from structural to immediate. Massive construction of public housing, for rent and for sale, with severe tax penalties for unused homes. A legal cap preventing rent from exceeding a quarter of the region's average salary. An obligation to sell or rent third homes. And, at the opposite extreme, lowering taxes and cutting public spending, arguing that the root of the matter is low wages and tax pressure on employees and freelancers.

While politics debates, a forum user reports that the market has created its own shortcuts. There are rental circuits that do not go through portals or real estate agencies: word of mouth, student networks, groups of healthcare workers, police officers, and teachers, and internal transfers among company colleagues, where the outgoing tenant recommends the incoming one to the landlord. They work on trust, not on ads, and therefore do not appear in any official count.

With 8,762 apartments, 5,100 rooms, and a queue of candidates willing to sign anything, the Madrid market has found its perfect formula: scarcity of supply, record prices, and the blame, naturally, always on the seeker.