2025 Analysis and Forecasts for Housing in 2026

2025 Analysis and Forecasts for Housing in 2026

December 11, 2025

By Francisco Iñareta, spokesperson for idealista

The housing situation in Spain at the end of 2025 is clear: a national emergency. The lack of supply has become endemic, but the focus remains on attacking prices from highly ideologized positions. We have been stuck in this framework for years, and it is essential to abandon this approach and adopt a new course based on consensus, experts, and, above all, data-driven decisions. Unfortunately, we believe it will be virtually impossible to undo what has been done, and the measures advanced in recent weeks are pushing us in the wrong direction.

In line with the political confrontation, housing has entered a kind of post-truth era, in which institutions themselves attempt to undermine trust in the data and statistics presented to bring clarity and transparency to the market, especially when the data presented shows the ineffectiveness, if not the harmfulness, of all the measures adopted.

We are experiencing enormous legislative uncertainty, where the lack of even minimal agreements will make it virtually impossible to pass or amend any law that improves housing affordability. By 2026, the housing situation will only deepen along the path we have been following in recent years: prices will continue to rise, both for sale and for rent, while supply will continue to fall, also for sale and for rent.

Rental

Prices/Supply/Effort

The rental emergency is complete, bordering on catastrophe. We are living with the consequences of years of legislation that has tended to overprotect tenants with existing contracts, but which has excluded tenants who are actively seeking housing, and even those who, feeling protected by a contract, will discover that contracts expire and they must return to the market to find another place to live. The increasingly pronounced imbalance between landlords and tenants continues to cause thousands of homes to disappear from the market, swelling the statistics of houses sold. This has led to a situation where the current problem is no longer just prices, but the impossibility of renting a home, even when one can afford it.

Undoubtedly, the political deadlock has been somewhat beneficial for the rental market, as it has prevented the approval of new measures that would have further hampered the rental market, particularly by making access to housing even more difficult. However, since this is a matter of parliamentary arithmetic, rather than a change in the diagnosis and solution to the housing crisis, it is possible that some of the proposed measures could eventually be implemented.

In 2026, we will see prices moderate in the areas where they have plateaued as a result of this legislation, while they will continue to rise in markets where no intervention has taken place. But the cost of maintaining price controls will be borne by those looking for a home who find that the supply continues to decline and conditions continue to tighten. It will be a struggle among tenants: those who benefit from the coercive measures against landlords versus those who can't find a home as a consequence of these measures.

This is where the real problem facing the rental market in Spain right now lies. Competition among families to access one of the few homes available is fierce. More than 50 interested parties compete for each listing published on Idealista, for whom, at first glance, price is not the main obstacle. They begin a casting process every time they try to access a rental, a process in which only one family will be selected. The rest must continue searching and participating in successive selection processes in which it is very likely that a more secure candidate will always appear. Families with children, people over 65, single-parent families, or individuals who must cover rent on a single income will systematically lose the chance of being chosen to rent a home.

Faced with a flood of applications, landlords consistently favor those who offer the greatest security of payment (many of whom are financially overqualified for the established rents), leading to an "elitistization" of the rental market. With fewer available properties, greater financial qualifications are required to be selected, excluding many individuals who, prior to the implementation of policies addressing the imbalance in the rental market, had no major problems finding housing. In other words, the measures designed to protect vulnerable people first drove the vulnerable themselves out of the market, then those who could potentially become vulnerable, leading to the current situation where large groups of people who are rejected