With 49.7% of homes owned and slightly more than 13.5% of empty houses, our country still has margin in the real estate market.
Spain is a country where property housing has a significant weight. And real estate investment is still a good savings formula.
The latest data on ‘Affordable Housing‘, compiled by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Commission (EC), place our country in the residential market average.
In statistics, Malta stands out because of the large number of empty houses it accumulates, compared to Switzerland and Sweden, which stand out for the opposite.
While half of the residents in Spain are owners and 13.66% of the properties are uninhabited.
Although most are in rural areas, while prices continue to rise in urban centers.
Global Classification of Empty Homes
The European countries located on the shores of the Mediterranean and in other warm areas of the world are also those with the largest proportion of empty houses.
The OECD country with the most empty housing is Malta, with 18.42%. In second and third position are Greece (14.09%) and Mexico (14.03%). Only a few tenths ahead Spain with 13.66% occupies the fourth position in the world.
No less than 3,443,365 empty houses, although the vast majority are outside urban areas.
At the other end of the ranking, Sweden and Switzerland have 1% of uninhabited properties. Clear contrast between warm zones and cold areas within the same continent.
At the same time that Spain stands out for this large number of empty houses, it also does so because its aids to housing access are only 0.01% of GDP. We are behind only Chile, Croatia and Greece.
Property owned or rented
This information, about the facilities to access housing, comes a few days after the National Statistics Institute (INE) warns of the situation of 4,955 Spanish municipalities. Locations with less than one million inhabitants who are at risk of disappearing.
Contradictory fact in a country traditionally linked to home ownership. In Spain, 49.7% of residents are homeowners.
We outperform countries such as Germany, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom. Although far below others such as Italy or Romania, they touch the plenary regarding property housing.
Of the Spanish owners, 28% have signed a mortgage. While the housing rental market is significantly concentrated in private operators (12.4% of the total) compared to public housing (2.5% of the total).
A market that will require more participation from the administrations. And above all from a greater availability of public land for the real estate sector.
