Rental prices have been rising significantly in recent months due to the rapidly rising inflation we are recording in Spain and the values are already over 10%. So much so that it is becoming more and more profitable for citizens to pay off the mortgage rather than face the installments of an income.
Specifically, according to a report from mortgage comparison tool iAhorro, for just six months the rental fee has increased by 7.78%, meaning it went from paying an average of 990 euros to paying 1,067 euros each month. This requires a great deal of effort for the majority of tenants, who see how they have to allocate a higher percentage of their salary to pay the rent each time. They calculated this effort from iAhorro based on average net income per household and average rent paid by region. Result: The effort to pay rent is now 41.89%, this figure has increased by 3.18 points in just six months, remaining at 38.71% in March.
These data on effort to pay the rent contrast with the average effort Spaniards make when paying a mortgage. The first thing to keep in mind is that the most recent data published by the National Institute of Statistics is referenced for the calculation: a mortgage with an average repayment period of 24 years and an average fixed interest rate of 2.64%. . Thus, the mortgage payment effort increased slightly and reached 26.45% in the same period; It was 26.37% in March.
Supply and demand, keys to rental prices
While it is true that this data varies according to the autonomous community in which you reside, there is no region where paying rent is more profitable than a mortgage loan. Regarding rentals, as expected, they reside in the Community of Madrid (€1,351.41 on average), Catalonia (1,272.78 euros), the Basque Country (1,164.75 euros) and the islands. at most, on average, it far exceeds 1,000 euros per month. On the contrary, we can find the cheapest rental apartments in all of Spain in Extremadura (497.01 Euros), Castilla-La Mancha (533.46 Euros) and Castilla y León (586.73 Euros).
Why is there so much difference? “Outside of the big cities, we find less stressful markets where house prices are below the national average and there is a more balanced relationship between supply and demand, facilitating access to housing,” explains Antonio Gallardo, iAhorro financial expert. And this argument can be used in much the same way to explain the difference between the average price of a lease and the average price of a mortgage.
Where better to take a mortgage than to rent an apartment?
Buying a home is not equally profitable in all regions. Mortgage payments are highest in the Balearic Islands (€1,054.38 on average) and Madrid (€1,026.45), with the lowest in Extremadura (€369.44), followed by Murcia (€406.60) and La Rioja (413). .36) is coming. Euro). In this sense, the case of both Catalonia and the Basque Country is striking, where mortgage payments are much lower despite offering very high rents: Catalans pay an average of 747.92 Euros and Basques 763.96 Euros per month.
This is clearly reflected in efforts to lease or get a mortgage: the effort to pay rent in Catalonia is 43.66%, 18 percentage points higher, compared to 25.66% for paying a mortgage. There is a similar situation in the Basque Country: the effort to rent is 37.89% and the effort to mortgage 13.08 points lower, ie 24.85%.
Among the autonomies that show the biggest difference between rent and mortgage are the Canary Islands; although the average amounts are lower in these islands, their effort to rent (40.17%) is 15.78 percentage points higher than they intend to pay the mortgage (24.39%).
The example of the Balearic Islands should also be highlighted. Six months ago, iAhorro revealed in its report that Pitiusas was the only place in Spain at that time where it was more profitable to rent than to buy. So much so that the time between buying a house and getting a mortgage (42.75%) was more than five points from the effort to pay rent (37.35%). However, now that has changed. The effort to pay rent has since increased by 8.72 percentage points to the current 46.07%; and the mortgage payment effort at the same location is currently at 43.08%, just 0.34 points above the March figure.