It isn’t enough to say young people want a home while their days fill with nightlife or long trips. The debate about whether newer generations are faring worse than their predecessors has resurfaced after journalist Elisa Beni claimed at a recent event that today’s youth have an all-legal option to live freely and then settle down. In the past, many parents and grandparents sacrificed to invest in homes and limited social outings in favor of creating security.
Asked on Twitter, Beni stood by her stance. “Travel abroad, shopping, indulging in whims, and buying a home… these are the worlds of the Yuppie era. No previous generation did anything like this.”
There is a growing consensus that young people are increasingly financially stretched. The Household Financial Survey, a document produced every three years by the Bank of Spain, shows a clear trend: the share of homeowners under 35 has fallen by about half in less than ten years. In 2011, 69% of those under 35 owned a home. By 2020, ownership dropped to 36%. The pattern began during the worst years of the financial crisis, when the balance shifted toward renting between 2012 and 2013 and the gap widened from there.
But is the decline due solely to excessive spending on leisure? Or are there deeper factors—rising housing costs, tighter credit, and a weaker financial footing—behind the trend?
Housing and real estate groups acknowledge a common forward-looking concern: high rent consumes a substantial portion of earnings, hindering the ability to save for an upfront payment, typically around 20% of a property’s value, aside from additional costs such as notary fees, administration, and taxes.
A common calculation asks: how much would a teenager need to cut spending to accumulate a down payment for a home? The answer varies by region, but the math is consistently stark.
In Gipuzkoa, the province with the highest per-square-meter price in the country, the entry payment for a 90-meter apartment could exceed 58,600 euros. If a young person saved from weekly travel abroad, lightly summarized as 86 trips per year, based on average daily travel expenses, it would take many years to reach a down payment. If one were to forgo such trips year after year, the goal would stretch into decades.
Choosing to disable streaming subscriptions and conserve a monthly 12.99 euros could still leave a person far from a mortgage for many lifetimes. The outlook isn’t uniform across regions; the Balearic Islands, Madrid, Bizkaia, Barcelona, and Malaga have seen some of the strongest rent increases in recent years. In contrast, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, and Jaén show much lower entry costs, though cutting leisure activities remains a practical choice for many.
Economic conditions worsened
Ignacio Garijo, a young economist from Andalusia, explored how conditions for youth shifted after the 2008 crisis. He proposed the hypothesis that the situation had deteriorated rather than improved and found alarming trends once data was weighed. His analysis, shared on social platforms, examines perceptions of the job market, income, poverty, inequality, and access to housing for young people, comparing data from 2006 and 2018.
Garijo notes that millennials face a relatively new set of concerns. After the crisis, recovery began, but by 2017 and 2018, improvements stalled, prompting economists worldwide to scrutinize the issue. In southern Europe, the post-crisis generation often earns less and faces lower employment rates. Fewer opportunities early in the career path translate into delayed emancipation, reduced home ownership, and slower wealth accumulation. Yet the situation is not identical everywhere; in Germany, conditions for young people improved compared with prior years.
Juan Luis Jiménez, another economist, presents evidence of the tightening economic climate for Spanish youth. He highlights that younger workers often earn less and that the earnings gap persists into the mid-30s. To gauge saving capacity, Garijo tracked contributions to individual retirement plans from 2006 to 2018, noting declines across age groups, especially among those under 44. He suggests the drop could reflect both lower returns and diminished saving ability.
The ESADE study defined the ability to accumulate wealth and found that pre-crisis generations saved more in their 30s than those who came of age after the crisis.
No flats without savings (or family assistance)
Alongside reduced buying power, house prices have trended upward in the OECD since 1990, and access to credit tightened after the financial bubble burst. In Spain, prices peaked before a new surge, with a notable rebound after 2015. Sales data from the late 2000s show many purchases completed without mortgages. In some cases, buyers are those who had capital, inherited wealth, or external investment.
In this context, inflation and higher interest rates threaten to widen the gap. Housing is seen by some as a parental refuge, while others must rely on income and savings alone. The polarization between landlords and tenants is expected to grow, according to voices from the Tenants Union of Catalonia. A larger share of household budgets now goes toward housing, with the burden rising in poorer households and remaining significant even as other consumer costs have moderated.
Historical data from OECD and local associations reveal a growing share of household budgets spent on housing. While costs for clothing and entertainment have softened, housing remains a heavy line item in monthly expenses. The latest family budget survey from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística reports that 34% of the average household budget goes to housing, rising to 44% in the poorest households. The effort to buy a home in Spain has lengthened: in 2000 a family needed about eight years of income to purchase a home; by 2022, that figure rose to eleven years.
So questions remain: do young people spend too much on nightlife and travel, or do structural factors—credit access, wages, and price growth—keep them from buying? Some observers suggest family support or inheritance can bridge the gap, while others emphasize the role of policy and market dynamics in shaping outcomes for youth and housing opportunities.
While the housing sector and the real estate industry share the concern, their proposed remedies differ. Public support to improve youth access to credit, tenant protections, and lease arrangements are among the debated measures. The conversation continues with varied perspectives on how best to support younger generations without sacrificing broader economic stability.
Ultimately, Garijo offers a personal reflection. It may be true that earlier generations sacrificed more for their children, but today’s youth face choices that mix pragmatism with the pressure to balance life and work. The result, he suggests, is a more pragmatic stance toward the necessities of life rather than a romantic one. The current generation is navigating a different landscape, where long hours and careful budgeting become the norm for many families.
Methodology note: The analysis uses average price per square meter by province and recorded sales from the local registrars in early 2022 to project the entry price for a 90-square-meter apartment and the corresponding 20% down payment. The weekly travel expense cited uses INE tourism data from the summer of 2019, the last regular survey before the pandemic, with an average daily expenditure of 96.85 euros. Netflix subscription data reflects the Standard plan at 12.99 euros per month. Avocado price data is sourced from recent agricultural statistics, with a representative weight of 4.75 euros.