40.07% of homes registered in the Canary Islands in 2023 belong to owners of five or more homes, whether individuals or businesses. This is the highest percentage since 2013, when the islands and the rest of the world were mired in a financial crisis. Analysis of the figures also reveals that registrations of small owners (one or two properties) have fallen by 40.43% over the last decade, suggesting the consolidation of a new trend in the real estate market.
The data comes from registrations collected in the land registry of registrations of new properties for residential use. This information is broken down by type of owner (natural or legal person) and by number of properties owned. These are only new constructions. Changes in ownership (when someone buys a second-hand house) are not taken into account.
The registration of houses in the land register in 2023, the last year with figures, amounts to 10,912, the highest value since 2015. Of this total, 59.41% come from natural persons and 38.96% from people morals. Most cadastral registrations in the Canary Islands correspond to two very specific profiles: small individual owners (individuals owning one or two properties), who account for 45.97% of registrations; and commercial businesses with five or more dwellings, accounting for 34.52%.
The percentage of listings made by owners with five or more properties is 40.07%. This is the highest value recorded in the Archipelago since 2013, when the collection of housing by this type of owners was in full decline since 2008, the start of the economic crisis. It continued to decline until 2015, then recorded a small valley in its evolution and in recent years it has continued to increase.
For their part, small holders have led a completely opposite dynamic. After the triggering of crack financial, they achieved barely 32.77% of registrations. This percentage began to grow until 2014, when they made almost two out of three registrations, but their importance has continued to decline since then. Data shows that, in the current context of the housing crisis, owners with at least five properties are gaining more and more weight in the housing stock, cornering small owners.
“When you buy a house, you are not competing with your neighbor, but with an investor who wants to organize this house according to speculative parameters,” reflects Jordi González, doctor of sociology from the University of Leeds and collaborator of the ‘Urban Research. Barcelona Institute (IDRA). “There is a logic of increasing returns in which those who own more apartments and have a business structure find it increasingly easier to acquire houses.”
More data supports this thesis. Land registry statistics define owners as the owners associated with the rights of a property (ownership, usufruct, bare ownership, surface area and administrative concession) and are calculated without taking into account the percentage of ownership. Well, in 2006, the number of owners with at least 11 properties in the Canary Islands was 7,065. In 2014, this record stood at 13,470. And in 2024, the last year recorded, there are already 16,522. The only group of owners that lost weight relative to the total was smallholders. In 2006, they represented 87.01% of headlines. Now 78.74%.
For González, this shows that those buying a house right now “are not, for the most part, families or young people who are going to get a mortgage loan”, but rather specific investors who have an “appropriate objective” for this property. . All this in a context “where supply is very scarce and there is extreme competition in rentals and purchases”. In 2020, registrations of individuals represented 68.11% and those of legal entities 29.6%. In 2023, they correspond to 59.41 and 38.96% respectively.
The government of the Canary Islands has insisted on construction as a “priority” measure to tackle the housing crisis, in the words of its president, Fernando Clavijo (Canarian Coalition). The regional executive claims to have 4 billion euros from European reconstruction funds and more than 2 billion additional provided by the State for the construction of residential properties.
The housing decree approved at the beginning of this year focuses on this, on increasing the public and private housing stock, focusing everything on brick. So far, the regional government does not know how many housing units have been built to this standard and is working with the Canary Islands Federation of Municipalities (FECAM) to carry out a “joint assessment”, underlines a spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing. Canary Islands now. According to figures from the Canary Islands Statistics Institute (ISTAC), the construction of 1,338 housing units was completed this year, none of which are officially protected.
“Everyone agrees that we need to increase supply. Nobody disputes that. The problem is what do you do in the meantime? » asks González, who advocates rent regulation and intervention in the empty real estate market. Ángela García Bernardos, doctor in public policies from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), develops in the same direction: “The construction of housing does not lead to elements of falling prices unless it is accompanied by other measures that mitigate price growth. », he adds.
The expert, who published a thesis a few years ago on the Spanish housing system during the Great Recession (2007-2016), regrets that many governments, such as the Canary Islands, apply the “economist” maxim according to which, If the price of housing is high, it is because supply is scarce. “For example, if there are few washing machines and many customers, it is normal for the cost to be high. But with housing it doesn’t work in exactly the same way,” says Bernardos.
The doctor says that one of the main reasons for this is that “no two houses are identical” and that the product (housing, in this case) “presents certain particularities that make the place where it is decisive when it comes to determining the offer. He also explains that houses in Spain act as “investment channels”, meaning that their price, even after use, does not fall (unlike washing machines, to continue with the example).
The gradual increase in the weight of large investors in the real estate market is generally linked to large funds, such as Blackstone, but González also highlights the role of SOCIMI, created in 2009 to invest in housing and “reinvigorate the market”, and Leasing . Housing entities (EDAV). The former do not pay corporate tax and the latter benefit from deductions on the same tax.
“In a model where housing is so commercialized, these processes happen. That everyone must compete on an equal footing for something that, for some, is a source of wealth and, for others, a roof over their heads. This is how perversions occur, especially when a family has to compete with a large company,” Bernardos emphasizes.
