Walter Finch
YOUNG Spaniards now leave their parents’ home at the age of 30 on average, according to the latest Eurostat data – the fifth-latest in Europe.
While the statistic may be depressing for millions of young people across the country, it actually reveals a deeper problem that has been dubbed one of the four greatest threats to Spain’s economic security.
The figures, released this month, puts Spain nearly four years behind the EU average of 26.2 and almost nine years later than Finland, where young people typically move out by 21.4.
Only Croatia (31.3 years), Slovakia (30.9), Greece (30.7) and Italy (30.1) record later ages of moving out.
Traditionally, this gap has been explained as a matter of culture and family structure, with southern Europeans supposedly preferring to live at home for longer.
But new evidence suggests the problem runs much deeper – and now poses a serious economic risk.
Eurostat states that the proportion of Spanish youth who spend more than 40% of their disposable income on housing – the so-called ‘overburden rate’ – is just 8%, around the EU average.
This appears moderate compared to Denmark (28.9%), Greece (30.3%) or the Netherlands (15.3%).
Yet this measure is misleading, because it only captures those who have already left home – when around half of under-31-year-olds in Spain have not.
For the many who remain with parents, often into their thirties, the financial barriers are so high that they sometimes never even enter the rental market.
The real explanation lies in Spain’s housing shortage – and has implications far beyond the country’s youth.
The Bank of Spain has now warned that the country faces a deficit of some 700,000 homes, a shortfall that governor Jose Luis Escriva says is fuelling price rises, delaying independence for young people and acting as a drag on the wider economy.
In a recent speech, Escriva placed the housing gap alongside geopolitical instability, fiscal risks and climate change as one of Spain’s four greatest threats to its economic stability.
“The shortage of housing stock to cope with the growing pace of household creation is becoming a bottleneck for the labour market, especially in increasingly dynamic areas,” he said.
“If supply does not manage to grow at a much faster rate than it does now, which is going to be very difficult, the problem could get worse in the future.”
The central bank believes the crisis is driven less by demand than by a chronic lack of supply.
With construction rates lagging far behind the populace’s needs, new homes are not being built quickly enough to keep up.
This marks a sharp reversal from just a year ago.
In one of his final reports in 2024, Escriva’s predecessor Pablo Hernandez de Cos had suggested the shortfall might be as low as half a million homes.
By using a multi-year average for the 2022–24 period, the Bank had even suggested the figure could shrink further.
Now, however, the institution has returned to annual measurement and concluded the situation is worsening.
The deficit has grown by more than 100,000 in less than a year, and the final 2025 figure could be higher still.
Escriva also warned the problem has now ‘transcended its social and intergenerational dimension to become a major economic problem,’ arguing that the shortage makes it harder for workers to move to where jobs are and for companies to attract talent.
While the governor pointed to Spain’s broader economic health – a current account surplus and low levels of private indebtedness – he stressed that the housing gap could undermine those gains if it continues to widen.
Spain’s housing crisis is no longer just about frustrated twenty-somethings. With a shortage of 700,000 homes, it has become a structural fault line threatening the country’s future prosperity.
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