SPAIN is facing a housing shortage of more than 730,000 homes fuelled by a massive influx of new foreign arrivals
New data reveals a ‘perfect storm’ for property buyers as home construction has completely failed to keep pace with an exploding population, which has seen the addition of 2.3 million people in just two years..
According to the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (INE), 2,308,073 foreign-born residents moved to the country between 2023 and 2024.
READ MORE: Malaga tax intake from foreigners nearly TREBLES thanks to non-resident property boom
This rapid demographic shift means foreign-born residents now make up 9.46 million of the national population – around 20% of the total.
But a severe lack of new builds has left the new arrivals and locals competing for a dwindling pool of properties.
Since 2021, there has been demand for 1.2 million new homes, but developers have completed just 474,000.
A new report from CaixaBank Research warns this has created a ‘structural deficit’ of 730,000 properties.
Nearly half of this missing housing stock is concentrated in the popular hotspots of Alicante, Murcia, Valencia, Barcelona and Madrid.
Experts warn the supply crisis will keep property prices climbing throughout 2026 and 2027, pricing out many potential buyers.
In highly oversaturated provinces like Tarragona and Murcia, new building visas are covering less than 10% of the actual demand.
It comes as official figures from the Catalan statistics institute Idescat confirm Catalunya has just broken the 8.2 million population barrier for the first time.
Tarragona is currently the fastest-growing province in the region, recording a 1.6% population surge over the last year alone.
With the European Central Bank expected to hike interest rates two or three times this year, mortgage pain is set to increase for buyers trying to secure a home in the squeezed market
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