Pedro Sánchez’s government has launched CASA47, a new state housing portal designed to provide more affordable rental homes across Spain. Around 800 properties are available in its initial phase. Yet there is a striking omission: not one of them is in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia or Seville. Andalusia, despite facing acute housing pressures in cities and coastal areas, has no homes available through the scheme at all.
Spain Expat Press Editorial Team
Spain’s housing crisis has become one of the country’s most pressing domestic issues. Rents and property prices have risen sharply, particularly in major cities and along the Mediterranean coast, where demand remains intense and the supply of affordable homes is limited.
The Sánchez government is now attempting to address part of that problem through CASA47, the new state-owned housing and land company.
Its online portal is intended to become a central point through which people can apply for affordable state-backed rental properties.
The scheme begins with around 800 homes, with the government promising that considerably more will be added.
But the geographical distribution of those first properties has immediately raised questions.
800 homes – but none in Spain’s largest cities
Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville are among the places where finding an affordable home has become particularly difficult.
Yet none of the initial CASA47 properties is located in any of those four cities.
For Andalusia, the picture is even more stark. There are currently no CASA47 homes available anywhere in the region.
That includes Málaga and the Costa del Sol, where housing costs have become an increasingly significant concern for local and international residents alike.
The properties currently available are concentrated in the Valencian Community, Catalonia, Galicia, Navarre and Asturias.
Twelve of Spain’s autonomous communities have no properties available under the scheme at present.
So where are the homes?
Some of the largest allocations are in the provinces of Alicante and Castellón.
Alicante has 153 properties spread across several municipalities, including Dénia and Elche.
There are 157 in the province of Castellón, although only 10 are in Castellón de la Plana itself.
The province of Valencia has 88 properties – but none is in the city of Valencia.
A similar pattern can be seen in Catalonia. There are 93 properties available across the region, but none in Barcelona itself. Homes are instead distributed among smaller cities and municipalities, including Vic.
There are also 96 properties in Galicia, 34 in Navarre and 17 in Asturias.
The figures expose one of the immediate limitations of the launch: much of the available state housing is not located in the areas where pressure on rents is most severe.
What exactly is CASA47?
For foreign residents, it is important to understand that CASA47 is intended to be considerably more than a one-off allocation of 800 properties.
The Sánchez government wants to use the new public company to build up a permanent stock of affordable state-owned housing.
Under the principles announced by the government, rents are intended to be linked to household finances and should generally not exceed 30% of household income.
The first 800 properties are therefore only the beginning. The government has said a further 1,500 homes are expected to be incorporated into the system.
Can foreign residents apply?
For Spain’s large international population, this is an important question.
CASA47 should not be understood as a housing scheme automatically restricted to Spanish nationals. Eligibility depends on the conditions attached to each individual housing allocation.
Foreign nationals who are legally resident in Spain may therefore be eligible, but they will need to examine the requirements of each application.
Income, residency, household size and other social or financial criteria may all play a role.
In other words, being legally resident in Spain does not automatically guarantee access to a CASA47 property – but neither should foreign nationality alone necessarily exclude an applicant.
Madrid and Seville are promised thousands of homes – eventually
The absence of homes in Madrid and Andalusia does not mean the government has no plans for either region.
One of Spain’s largest public housing developments is planned for the former military grounds at Campamento in Madrid, where approximately 10,700 homes are envisaged.
In Seville, another project would provide 948 homes on the site of the former Artillery Regiment.
But these developments are still at an earlier stage.
For residents struggling to find affordable accommodation now, future construction plans offer little immediate relief.
An ambitious project with a modest beginning
CASA47 could eventually become an important part of Spain’s housing policy. Its launch, however, also illustrates the scale of the challenge facing the government.
After years of headline-grabbing promises to build tens of thousands of affordable homes, the government has still failed to provide a clear public account of how many of those promised homes have actually been built and delivered. The first CASA47 offering does little to dispel that criticism: its 800 homes are not the result of a new nationwide building programme delivered by the Sánchez government, while Spain’s largest cities and the whole of Andalusia are absent from the initial offer.
Affordable housing is desperately needed in Spain’s largest cities and in many of its most sought-after coastal areas.
Those are precisely the places where the first CASA47 offering is weakest.
The Sánchez government has launched its new portal with around 800 affordable rental homes. For now, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville have none. In Andalusia, the figure is simpler still: 800 homes across Spain – and not one in the region.
Source data: CASA47, the Spanish government
