Spain's villages get cheaper while the city pushes people out

Villages get cheaper as the city wins out over the car

What happens when the city of Valencia keeps getting more expensive while the villages around it lose value? The property market reflects a social shift that has been years in the making: fewer and fewer people want to live in the countryside. And this time, the data is not opinion.

Valencia's commuter belt is cooling

Prices in the city of Valencia keep climbing while in the surrounding municipalities they stagnate or even fall. You don't have to go far: nearby villages are feeling it. Giving up the car, the lack of public transport and the concentration of leisure and services in provincial capitals explain much of the phenomenon. Women, young people and migrants, according to this analysis, seek the city or well-connected towns. The trend is no longer buying a village, but a residential development with services.

Who is repopulating the villages?

There are two readings of rural repopulation. One holds that immigration reaches villages through official programmes with subsidies, and would disappear without them. The other, blunter view is that it will be the migrants themselves who repopulate inland Spain, because their mobility and ability to adapt to low wages outstrip those of the average urban Spaniard.

The urban ghetto of the future

On the pessimistic side, some warn that the non-touristy centres of cities will end up as ghettos, American-style, while people with money move to the outskirts. Online shopping, moreover, removes the need for neighbourhood shops. And with the housing crisis driving up prices across the whole Valencia metropolitan area —growing demand, insufficient supply and blocked development—, the pressure can only increase.

Bottom line: villages are getting cheaper because hardly anyone wants them. Maybe the problem isn't the price, but what's around them. As everyone knows: when everyone thinks the same, the loser is the one who arrives late. Or the one who stays.