“Colivage high standard, quality finishes and comfort for a luxury stay in the city of Barcelona.” This is how a single room in the Catalan capital is advertised on a real estate portal. Its price, 1,100 euros per month, is almost the city average for renting an entire apartment. Before becoming an eight-room apartment rented separately, the house was a professional office. Overnight, some workers uploaded mattresses and furniture, and in early November, the ad appeared.
What happened in this 200 square meter apartment located in the so-called “Golden Square”, the noblest neighborhood in the central Eixample district of Barcelona, is no exception. A simple internet search confirms the boom in room rental, and there are even companies dedicated solely to so-called coliving, with prices ranging from 700 euros to over 1,000 per room. The rest of the rooms such as the dining room, the kitchen or the bathroom are shared by all the tenants.
This type of rental exacerbates the conflict facing housing in Spain, considered both a right and an asset for investment and economic return. Lawyers and real estate portals identify an essential characteristic of room rental: these types of contracts escape rental regulations because they are not governed by the law on urban leases (LAU).
With seasonal rentals, renting rooms has become an escape from the rent cap. The consequence is an increase in profitability for owners. According to data from a report by the specialized portal Pisos.com, the average profitability of renting an entire apartment of 90 square meters in Spain is 5.91%, while it amounts to 7.01% in a shared accommodation.
However, escaping housing regulations is not the only reason why owners opt for this modality. The lawyer and legal advisor of the Association of Real Estate Administrators of Barcelona and Lleida, Marta Martín, explains that several companies in the Catalan capital are directing their activity towards a growing demand for post-graduate students, especially foreign ones, or professionals.
“If we want to project Barcelona as a university city that attracts foreign talent, coliving It is a coherent modality, because the person who comes is not looking for a rental for five years, but for the months or the course that their master’s degree lasts,” explains Martín. The minimum duration of contracts is generally two months.
The lawyer adds that the floors of colivingUnlike traditional rentals, they are fully furnished and the tenant does not have to worry about changing supplies. The trend, according to this expert, is that companies are looking for entire buildings rather than houses located on farms with other neighbors.
Other lawyers specializing in housing, such as lawyer Simón Cava, are more critical: “The contractual relationship between owner and tenant in the coliving It’s not fair. The rental of LAU carries “inalienable” rights and the negotiating position of the parties is balanced because there are regulations, Cava emphasizes. “But apart from the law, there are no limits for the owner, who can make the most of his property,” he adds.
Transforming a large apartment into a room to rent, says the lawyer, is relatively easy. “If the house has a minimal structure, some small works are enough, of which the community is informed, because neither the partitions nor the beams are affected; Only smaller rooms are fitted out and the common elements are preserved,” says the lawyer.
For this reason, adds Cava, it is increasingly common to find apartments that are not shared by young people to save costs, but rather rented through agencies and companies specialized in coliving. A change in housing uses (from families with traditional rentals to professionals or foreign students passing through the city) which also has an impact on the coexistence of the neighborhood, even if the tenants do not cause the inconvenience linked to tourist apartments . “He coliving and seasonal rentals are an absolute overexploitation of housing and lead us towards a city which is not for living, but which is an apart-hotel,” he concludes.
Tenants demand regulation
Attempts to regulate room rental have so far failed. Catalonia tried it with a decree that the Government of Aragonès presented to Parliament during the discount period of the legislature and which required that the rent for the total number of rooms rented could not exceed the rental price of the entire apartment. The norm was overturned by the PSC and Junts.
The spokesperson for the Barcelona Tenants Union, Enric Aragonès, recalls that the entity promoted state regulation of room rental, but that the initiative was rejected by Junts and the rest of the right-wing parties.
“We alerted him a year ago when the Housing Law was approved and it was respected: the rental of rooms and seasonal rentals were unusual and it was an invitation to owners to circumvent the regulation of price”, denounces Aragonès.
The tenants’ spokesperson considers that it is “common sense” that the maximum rental price per room cannot exceed the rental rent for the entire accommodation. Lawyer Marta Martín does not share this conclusion and assures that the coliving Yes, he is open to “reasonable” regulation, but not to price caps.
In addition, if the rental of rooms were regulated as the Tenants’ Union wishes, Martín warns that many houses would be sold: “These are completely renovated apartments, if the activity ceases to be profitable, they will not go not on the rental market.
The National Housing Act does not contemplate coliving. Now, the one-stop rental shop is being developed, which would require landlords to register every room they rent, but would not impose restrictions on price. Any sanction against owners would be the responsibility of the autonomy and town halls, but the Tenants’ Union criticizes the fact that the sanction in the event of non-appearance in the register has not yet been defined.
