South Americans pay €1,200 for rooms: overcrowding as business
South American immigrants pay up to €1,200 per room and share beds with strangers. Overcrowding thrives amid mass regularization.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
South Americans pay €1,200 for rooms: overcrowding as a business in Spain
In Hospitalet de Llobregat, a Peruvian woman pays €250 a month for a triple-decker bunk bed in a micro-room shared with two other tenants. This is not an isolated case: in Madrid, the price of a single room reaches €1,200, and it is increasingly common for South American immigrants to share quarters with up to three strangers, including women. The phenomenon is not new, but it has accelerated in recent months.
€1,200 for a bed: the economics of overcrowding
The debate over whether those €1,200 correspond to a room or an entire apartment is secondary. What matters is that the demand for housing among newly arrived immigrants is so high that the market has created a new tier: the shared bed. In Barcelona, a Peruvian woman says she pays €250 for a triple bunk in a room of barely 10 square meters. With a salary of around €1,000, she sends €300 to her family in Peru and survives on the remaining €450 for the whole month. The calculation is simple: as long as the income gap with their home countries remains brutal, migration will not stop, and with it, upward pressure on basic rents.
Mass regularization of immigrants and its impact on housing
In mid-February 2026, the Government announced a regularization plan for between 1 and 1.35 million irregular immigrants, according to El Confidencial. The Policía Nacional (National Police) estimates that initially only those already in Spain will be included, but the pull effect is evident. More demand on an already strained housing stock means rising prices across all segments. Those who support regularization argue it will bring these workers out of the informal economy; critics claim the measure only encourages more people willing to live in conditions a Spaniard would not accept.
Labor dumping and downward competition
An Esade study on labor dumping linked in the discussion notes that immigrant workers, desperate for income, accept wages below collective agreements. In practice, immigrant communities accuse each other of undercutting rates: Colombian women criticize Peruvians for charging less than €15 per hour for cleaning, illustrating how dumping reproduces within the same group. Spanish employers benefit from this pool of flexible, rights-less workers, perpetuating the cycle of precarity and overcrowding.
Spain's housing market is moving toward extreme polarization: luxury apartments for investors and shared beds for those keeping the real economy running. The question is how far this rope can stretch before social costs—healthcare, education, coexistence—outweigh the benefits of demographic growth.
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In Hospitalet de Llobregat, a Peruvian woman pays €250 a month for a triple-decker bunk bed in a micro-room shared with two other tenants. This is not an isolated case: in Madrid, the price of a single room reaches €1,200, and it is increasingly common for South American immigrants to share quarters with up to three strangers, including women. The phenomenon is not new, but it has accelerated in recent months.
€1,200 for a bed: the economics of overcrowding
The debate over whether those €1,200 correspond to a room or an entire apartment is secondary. What matters is that the demand for housing among newly arrived immigrants is so high that the market has created a new tier: the shared bed. In Barcelona, a Peruvian woman says she pays €250 for a triple bunk in a room of barely 10 square meters. With a salary of around €1,000, she sends €300 to her family in Peru and survives on the remaining €450 for the whole month. The calculation is simple: as long as the income gap with their home countries remains brutal, migration will not stop, and with it, upward pressure on basic rents.
Mass regularization of immigrants and its impact on housing
In mid-February 2026, the Government announced a regularization plan for between 1 and 1.35 million irregular immigrants, according to El Confidencial. The Policía Nacional (National Police) estimates that initially only those already in Spain will be included, but the pull effect is evident. More demand on an already strained housing stock means rising prices across all segments. Those who support regularization argue it will bring these workers out of the informal economy; critics claim the measure only encourages more people willing to live in conditions a Spaniard would not accept.
Labor dumping and downward competition
An Esade study on labor dumping linked in the discussion notes that immigrant workers, desperate for income, accept wages below collective agreements. In practice, immigrant communities accuse each other of undercutting rates: Colombian women criticize Peruvians for charging less than €15 per hour for cleaning, illustrating how dumping reproduces within the same group. Spanish employers benefit from this pool of flexible, rights-less workers, perpetuating the cycle of precarity and overcrowding.
Spain's housing market is moving toward extreme polarization: luxury apartments for investors and shared beds for those keeping the real economy running. The question is how far this rope can stretch before social costs—healthcare, education, coexistence—outweigh the benefits of demographic growth.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (152 replies).
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