The housing access crisis extends beyond the apartment buying and selling market with the rise in rental prices in Spain, which have skyrocketed in recent months. The situation is especially serious for young people, for whom the loss of purchasing power makes emancipation difficult.
The most recent data from Eurostat reveal that the average age at which young Spaniards leave home is almost four years above the European average, remaining at 30.3 years compared to the 26.4 average in the Union European. In fact, Spain is the fourth country in which young people take the longest to emancipate, only below 30, 7 years in Greece, 30.8 years in Slovakia and 33.4 years in Croatia.
The Director of Studies at the piso.com portal, Ferran Font, points out that the reasons behind this difference “are diverse and come from a long time ago, since we have found our country in these positions in the European ranking for some time now.” The effects of these results include “inflation, rising costs of living, wage stagnation” and, above all, unemployment.
Spain, at the head of youth unemployment
This analysis coincides with Eurostat data regarding unemployment; since in the last two years Spain “has led” unemployment among people under 25 years of age in the European Union. “If on average, in the EU, 14.7% of young people are unemployed, in Spain the figure almost doubles, reaching 28.6% in December of last year. With these values, it is not surprising that they take longer to leave home, since they do not even have the opportunities to generate wealth to make the leap into the rental or buying and selling market,” Font laments.
This entire context, in short, has forced many citizens to not only move outside the large capitals or to other municipalities in the same province, in search of cheaper prices, but also to share an apartment at ages much older than those usual. . “With the current level of salaries, the majority of young people who would like to become emancipated would have to dedicate approximately 80% of their salary to paying rent,” says the expert.
