If you are an official or retiredis among the potential tenants of a “magnificent” type apartment loft in the tourist town of Corralejoin Fuerteventura. Of course, if you are a public employee, you must prove what you do – doctor, teacher, computer scientist… – and what contract you have with the Administration. In short, “demonstrable solvency” is needed. If these requirements are met –and as long as you are not a smoker or have petswhich are two other conditions sine qua non to have any chance of enjoying the loft–, it will now enter the final screening of potential tenants. Then the owner will make “a selection with all interested parties,” and If you are lucky enough to be chosen, for 800 euros per month you will reside in this apartment of… 30 square meters. Well, actually 800 euros plus water, electricity and community, which are not included in the price, and upon payment of a deposit of two months, that is, 1,600 euros. With all this, you will now be a tenant of that mini-apartment – its size is more similar to that of a room than that of an apartment itself – in the coastal Corralejo. The square meter will cost you 26.7 euros per month. –not counting extra expenses–. To get an idea of how expensive or cheap it is, just remember that the average rent in the province of Las Palmas is slightly above 13 euros per square meter, so the loft costs double. However, what really shows the housing shortage in the two easternmost and most touristic islands of the region, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote –in addition to in the south of Tenerife and Gran Canaria–, is that the 13.3 euros per square meter that the average rent reached last November – in December it remained at 13.2 euros – are the all-time high. So the price of the mini-apartment in question doubles the highest average price in history in that province.
The previous example, taken from the offer published in Idealista, the leading real estate portal in Spain, is not an isolated case. Far from it. Exorbitant prices are not the exception, but the norm. In Playa de las Americasin the also tourist Aronafor 1,250 euros per month, a small 55-meter apartment was offered this Friday. The rent thus comes out to 22.7 euros per square meter, almost double the highest average price recorded to date in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.: 12.5 euros from last October. And even more bleeding is the example of the apartment located in Puerto Ricotourist town par excellence of Moganthat With only 45 square meters it is rented for a whopping one thousand euros per month. One thousand euros plus expenses for water and electricity, which are not included either. It is the price to pay for a conventional or long-term rental in a location where there are plenty of vacation homes but there is a lack of homes to reside.
Quadruple bubble
Spain is going through a rental bubble that is worsening in the Canary Islands, which is in turn worsening in the most touristy islands and which, within these, is even more serious in the municipalities and towns that concentrate the bulk of travelers. A real estate problem that has long become a real social problem. Renting a house to live in the Archipelago, anywhere in the Archipelago, costs an average of 12.8 euros per square meter, according to Idealista data, which in the absence of more and better refined official statistics remains as the reference to calibrate prices in the different Autonomous Communities, provinces and municipalities. At the end of 2007, the year that marks the before and after of the real estate bubble, the average rent in the Islands was 9.7 euros per square meter, meaning has since shot up 32%. But the rise in prices has not been progressive, but sudden. It was in December 2018, eleven years later, when the average cost of rent a home in the region It returned to those 9.7 euros per square meter. Five years later it is at historic highs.
The big problem is not tourism itself, but the lack of public offering and the rise of vacation rentals
If you look a little closer at the price statistics, you can see that the average rent in the province of Las Palmas, the aforementioned 13.2 euros for each meter of living space, exceeds the average amount in the district of Santa Cruz de Tenerife by one euro –12.2 euros–. A difference underlying tourism. While in the western province only one of the four islands that make up it is eminently touristic –Tenerife, which is the one that receives the most visitors and the one that contributes the most to the sectoral GDP of the entire Archipelago–, all the islands in the demarcation of Las Palms, included The Gracious, they have the tourist sign. The weight of tourism factor in the cost of rentals is evident when checking how the average price in Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, the two islands where the first industry region contributes the most to its economy, ranges between 16.6 euros for the Maxorata and 18 euros for Lanzarote. 30 and up to 40.6% above, respectively, the average of the Autonomous Community. And if you go down to the municipalities that concentrate the tourism business, such as The olive in Fuerteventura, Aunts in Lanzarote, Adeje in Tenerife or Mogán in Gran Canaria, then the average rent goes up to 22.8 euros in La Oliva, 24.3 in Tías, 23.1 in Adeje or 21.5 in Mogán.
A crazy receipt
However, it is necessary to transfer the cost per square meter to the monthly bill to realize the true dimension of the problem. Why rent a conventional home of 75 square meters in the Archipelago – a rather small home – It costs an average of 960 euros per montha bill that in the province of Las Palmas would shoot up to 990 euros, that in Fuerteventura would go up to 1,245 and that in Lanzarote it would reach a whopping 1,350 euros. And even more so if the house or apartment is, of course, in the most eminently touristy locations. So if you take into account that the average salary in the Canary Islands is 1,568 euros per month – according to the latest data from Adecco, the multinational specialized in human resources –, It is evident that the rents are almost unaffordable for the typical islander and directly unbearable on the most touristic islands and municipalities.. Thus, the cases of teachers who have given up their place in schools or institutes in Lanzarote or Fuerteventura due to not finding a rent they can pay without having to live on nothing for the rest of the month are not surprising. Now, is tourism the problem? The truth is that no.
Teachers have given up their places in tourist centers in Lanzarote and Fuerteventura due to not being able to pay rent
The underlying problem, the big problem, is the very low supply of ordinary or long-stay rentals.an anomaly of the island real estate market for which the lack of public promotion of housing and the rise of tourist rental, not tourism. The huge business of holiday housing led many owners to take their apartments and houses out of the long-term rental market and put them in the tourist rental market, a transfer which, of course, has been more intense in the towns and areas most linked to the first industry. Not surprisingly, landlords find it more profitable to rent their property for a few days or weeks to tourists –a type of inexhaustible client in which it is much easier to find those who are willing to overpay the rent– than to residents. And also, the landlords who still Do you sell Their long-stay properties have increased prices as supply has fallen.. It is a basic principle of the market: if supply decreases and demand is maintained – and in the Canary Islands it is not that it is maintained, it has even increased due to the increase in population –, prices rise. If we add to this cocktail the fact that public housing promotion in the Islands has been ridiculous, it turns out that the current shortage of houses – aggravated where tourism and therefore vacation housing have the most weight – appears as a logical scenario.
