Sánchez allocates €1.3bn to modular housing

Sánchez mobilises €1.3bn for modular homes

The industrialisation of housing has just received €1.3bn in public funding and a target of 15,000 homes a year. The announcement promises timelines 20% to 60% shorter and affordable prices. The debate that trinc puts the real cost far beyond the brick: land, permits and an accumulated deficit of 600,000 homes eat up any savings achieved in the factory.

Pedro Sánchez presented the new PERTE (Spain's strategic industrial plan) for housing at the Rebuild fair at Ifema Madrid, alongside minister Isabel Rodríguez. Its headquarters will be in the logistics activities area of Puerto de Valencia, on land owned by Sepes, an entity under the Ministerio de Vivienda, a gesture with which the government wants to show its commitment to rebuilding the areas hit by October's DANA (cold-drop storm).

What the industrialised housing PERTE includes

The plan has three axes: increasing the productive capacity of SMEs that bet on industrialisation, gaining efficiency and climate resilience, and raising the presence of young people and women in the sector. The data cited at the event are telling: only 11% of the workforce are women, and among all people employed in the sector the figure falls to 6%. Funding will be distributed over ten years with support from the Instituto de Crédito Oficial and European funds.

The context does not invite optimism. The Banco de España puts the accumulated deficit between 2022 and 2025 at around 600,000 homes. Growing demand, supply that fails to keep up and rising prices. That is the playing field where the government places its bet on factory construction, one of twelve measures announced in January to tackle the housing emergency.

Why land and permits are the bottleneck

There is a diagnosis repeated insistently: the house is not what is expensive, what is expensive is where to put it. “The problem is not building housing, it is freeing up land,” summarises one participant. Urbanising, closing permits, navigating the town hall. That is where the budget goes.

Two cases that appear in the thread: an inherited plot on rural land where “nothing liveable” can be built, and a developable parcel where any project shoots up to €300,000 without a single brick laid. According to a calculation circulating in the debate, the cost of land multiplies that of the house by fifteen, and paperwork by three or four. Some argue there is a perverse municipal incentive: more developable land means more housing, less cadastral value and less revenue from IBI (local property tax).

How much it really costs to build a modular house

The breakdowns circulating are anything but uniform. A calculation circulating in the thread fits four 20 m² modules at €6,000-7,000 each and produces a home for around €20,000 plus the slab. Another estimate speaks of €10,000 per unit. The conservative scenario, by contrast, describes those prices as “the shell and little more”: foundation, drainage, services, air conditioning, joinery and plot enclosure are missing.

All told, one participant calculates that the final square metre is around €2,000, practically the same as concrete construction. Added to that is a comfort problem flagged by another participant: insulation in site cabins is toy-like, with 25 millimetres of insulation and aluminium foil, more suited to a fridge than a home. Nice and cool in summer, they summarise.

The percentage of cost that is never materials or labour

A calculation circulating splits the construction bill into 25% materials and labour and 75% for managers, procedures and administrations. That is why making the factory cheaper barely moves the final price. The alternative proposal that appears in the debate is fiscal: exemption from charges and taxes for a first home and retroactive payment if it is resold before ten years, unless it is reinvested in another main home. With that design, argues its proponent, prices could fall by up to half for those buying to live in rather than to speculate.

What could happen with the 20,000 promised homes

Here it is wise to be cautious. One participant believes the official arithmetic does not add up: 15,000 a year on average would not reach 20,000 in a decade, unless growth is very uneven between the first and last year. And the track record of big publicly branded projects does not help: Expo de Sevilla, Aeropuerto de Castellón, Marina d'Or appear among the examples cited as a reminder of oversized promises.

One prediction that appears in the thread, with all reservations: the first developments will be built, the real land and permit problems will appear, and the plan will fall into the background. If it goes well, it will move thousands of homes out of the speculative circuit. If it goes badly, it will have cost €1.3bn and one more label for the housing problem.