Coins in the kitchen pantry, windowless basements, illegal hidden agency fees, wealthy tenants who themselves increase the price of the house during a visit, paying a six-month deposit upon entry, fraudulent advertisements and the obligation to pay up to 30 euros to see the floor clean. This is the reality that hundreds of people face every day in Madrid, where finding a room or an apartment to rent has become an odyssey that exhausts more and more people. Regardless of the permanent contract and the territory, the ban is devastating both the center and the outskirts of Madrid. This suffocating race is also taking its toll on migrants, exhausted by the stigma that falls on them.
María Martínez is 28 years old and has been looking for a room to rent for two months because of the impossibility of living alone in a city increasingly populated by apartments intended for tourism. “I have found rooms that I don’t even know how it is legal to rent them. Once I saw one that was in what used to be the pantry of the kitchen. The door opened directly into the kitchen and it was a bit small,” explains this young woman who arrived from Jaén to Madrid in January.
These small rooms where there is only one bed, because there is no room for anything else, are also a common reality that people like Martínez encounter. “The worst part is that they cost around 500 euros. “I don’t understand why rent prices are so unbalanced in relation to salaries,” he says.
All this not only has short-term repercussions, but also creates emotional stress for the future. “I’m quite old, I have a job and I don’t know how long I’ll be able to share an apartment. I would like to have my privacy, a quiet and safe space in which I can grow as a person. I have friends who are 38 years old and still can’t live alone,” says Martínez, who currently lives in the Goya area.
“I have seen things around the Puerta de Toledo and the Acacias and the problem of money is still there. And my salary is around 1,550 euros per month,” says this young employee of a communications agency. UN-Habitat has estimated at 30% the percentage of income that residents must dedicate to paying for housing to consider it affordable, a reality totally different from that experienced in Madrid.
Although at first glance the capital may seem like a city of opportunities, the issue of rent continues to cloud the aspirations of many people, especially those arriving from other provinces. “I hope that this will be regulated at some point, because the resignation it causes me is such that I don’t know how much longer I can bear it. The reality is that either you are rich or you will never be able to live alone in this city,” Martínez herself points out.
The requirements, impregnable wall
Scams regarding the rental of rooms in the capital are the order of the day. This is another of the obstacles faced by those who, day after day, spend hours searching on applications like Idealista. Paloma Montiel is a graphic designer, she is 29 years old and has lived in Madrid for seven years. The move she is currently facing will be her seventh transfer. “Now I live with three other people, but the only one who still owns the contract, because we all arrived later, is leaving, so the owner told us she would not renew it,” she says. says, sad.
Located on Atocha Street, near Antón Martín, Montiel knows that you will hardly find anything in this neighborhood. And, if they are found, the requirements to access housing can also become prohibitive. “All three of us have permanent contracts and we have been in our companies for at least two years. Together, we have earned about 5,000 euros, but not even that,” she laments. This is not insignificant: “We saw an apartment for 950 euros, very cheap, but they asked that one of us charge 2,200 euros net or that there be a guarantor who would pay that amount.”
On the other hand, the initial down payment can also be a wall to overcome. According to this graphic designer, to get the rent, you have to pay the current month, at least two deposits and expenses. “And they keep charging you the agency commission, because we invent new ones, so for a room at 500 euros I might have to pay 2,500 euros in advance,” he quantifies.
The competition is so fierce that there is hardly time to think about whether or not to keep an apartment. “If you call and it’s to see it tomorrow, it’s bad, and it generates enormous stress. I’ve had visits canceled the same day because they had already rented it an hour before,” Montiel illustrates.
The rental deposit, the new entry into real estate credit
Ayla Pérez will be 30 this month. She is a social worker from Madrid and earns around 1,600 euros. “I live alone in the Pacific region. Last year I had no problem finding something for 800 euros and an apartment of around 60 square metres, although I had to pay four monthly payments at the same time,” he explains. In a few months, the reality of renting has changed so much in the capital that some owners are now asking to charge almost 3,000 euros per month to be able to live in their property. “And they ask for up to six monthly payments, it’s as if it were a bank deposit for a mortgage, just to pay for a small apartment to rent,” he points out.
After a few months of actively searching for an apartment, this Madrid native considers that “housing is a basic necessity and that owners use the real estate system as just another business, when they should not speculate on something like that.”
Although he admits that some landlords may have had bad experiences with their tenants, Pérez believes that the reality goes beyond the supposed fears of the landlords: “It is very good for them that there are now so many people against tenants who do not pay because they cannot occupy them, because in this way they reaffirm themselves by implementing so many measures to supposedly be protected, and they always end up renting them.
Tenants raise the price
Pilar Ortuño works in a renowned consultancy firm, she is 25 years old and arrived in Madrid from Pamplona after finishing her university studies. She currently lives in the Bernabéu district with two other friends. “Everywhere you go, there are prohibitive prices, in addition to false advertisements to fall for scams”, she denounces. He is now looking for a new apartment to discover another type of coexistence, he emphasizes, but his expectations are gradually diminishing: “I have found authentic basements, semi-basements without windows, for 1,000 euros”, he says.
Once again, the continuous movement of the rental market in the capital complicates the situation. As Ortuño says, “there are areas where many people with a lot of money have settled, which leads them to increase the price for others.” The reality is so bloody that on many occasions it is no longer negotiated downwards. The young woman illustrates it this way: “I saw an apartment for two people for 1,200 euros, which I could afford and it was acceptable. After a while, they told me that the person who had visited it before wanted it and had offered to pay 100 euros more than me, which means that now it is the wealthy tenants who are increasing the prices.
The Spanish first, according to the owners
The situation of Puerto Rican Dalila M. Olmo, as well as that of hundreds of migrants trying to find decent housing in the capital, is even more complicated. Having been living in Madrid for four years, at 25 she needs her parents’ help to survive in the city, because the 1,100 euros she earns as a journalist is not enough for her. “I now have the privilege of living in Chueca. I pay 825 euros and I live with a roommate, but I have to leave in a few days because they have not renewed the contract,” she says.
She has experienced first-hand the racism that is prevalent in society. “Many landlords told me directly that they wanted to be honest with me and not get my hopes up, that there were other Spaniards and that they preferred to give them the apartment,” he says. In addition, migrant status usually carries additional requirements. “When she called for information, she said directly that she was a foreigner and that my guarantors did not reside in Spain,” which sometimes causes problems.
Her experience tells her that finding a rental will not be easy, at least not with at least decent conditions. “I have seen rooms without windows and beds in precarious conditions. The best was when I visited a house that was completely dirty, all upside down. The person who showed it to me told me that if I wanted to see it clean again, I would have to pay 30 euros,” says Olmo. For now, she will continue to look for a space to settle in Madrid, trying to make it involve as few sacrifices as possible, like so many other people, young and old, who are trying to cope with the excessive and unusual rental market in the Spanish capital.
