Spain’s Housing Ministry has outlined plans to create an online search engine in the style of Idealista to provide affordable rental properties via its new public housing company.
Spain’s Housing Ministry is moving forward with plans to create a housing platform for affordable rental properties amid soaring prices.
Reports in the Spanish press suggest that it will see the creation of an online property portal in the style of Idealista or Fotocasa to allow renters to identify, apply for and manage subsidised rentals through the public company ‘Sepes’ (Entidad Pública Empresarial de Suelo in Spanish).
The ministry headed by Isabel Rodríguez recently approved a plan to develop an integrated management system for affordable flats taken from a pool that will initially be made up of flats transferred from Spain’s so-called ‘bad bank’ (Sareb).
READ ALSO: Sareb – What is Spain’s ‘bad bank’ and what does it do?
The government previously announced that the new public company would incorporate some 40,000 homes from the bad bank, as well as 2,400 plots of land to build a further 55,000 additional homes. All of these properties will be reserved for rents “below market prices and in no case exceeding 30 percent of household income,” Rodríguez announced earlier this year.
Potential renters will have access to the portal where they can consult the public property catalogue, or as Spanish daily El País puts it: “a kind of public Idealista or Fotocasa, but enhanced, as prospective tenants will also be able to register their applications on the same platform and, once they have access to the property, manage their contracts and any incidents.”
Average rents in many of Spain’s major cities have skyrocketed in recent years. Many in Spain link the scarcity of affordable rental properties to the post-pandemic increase in short-term tourist rental properties via platforms like Airbnb.
“The underlying idea is to demonstrate that managing affordable housing is profitable and that there’s no need to overcharge,” ministerial sources briefed El País, stressing that the public company’s offering will be aimed at a broad cross-section of the population.
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However the company is looking “especially [at] young people who are working, but not only them, and those who, despite having increasingly better income levels, find housing difficult because it involves a disproportionate financial effort,” the sources added.
To this end, the ministry has put out to tender a project for the ‘Integrated Management System (SIG)’ that will be used to classify and administer all properties on the platform.
El Diario reports that the final details will depend on proposals submitted by companies once the tender specifications and conditions have been published, which could even expand on or improve on the initial idea put forward by the government.
The ministry estimates that the portal will be operational sometime between the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026.
READ ALSO: Why Spain’s rural holiday lets are unlikely to be targeted by crackdown on Airbnb
