The “boom” of apartments in garages and basements is turning into luxury chalets for private university students

Moreover, the presence of universities in peripheral cities, such as Villanueva de la Cañada (Alfonso), is a silent shift that has already begun to be noticed in the portals of the main offers. The students consulted confirm another fact: small investors buy large chalets to rent by room. In this case, the owners do not reside there, but buy houses and rent them out, with offers of up to 12 rooms; on many occasions, they are divided after renovation.

There are also many student residences in single-family buildings, and they have a special license for these facilities. They are integrated into the urban space with newly built dormitories and similar schools, which are usually the most expensive option, although they include services, for parents from outside the province who send their children for training in these centers on the outskirts of Madrid, especially private centres. A walk through El Bosque leaves behind this niche market that is growing from strength to strength.

It’s afternoon on Almonte Street, Siguela Street, Bidasoa Street… The roads have little traffic and are very quiet at that time but a stone’s throw away from faculties such as Physical Education, Medicine and the main building of this private educational complex. It is best known to younger audiences as the location of Las Encinas, the school where the series “Elite,” which aired on Netflix, was set. The comings and goings of children become more noticeable as lunchtime approaches. Capital buses that surround the city and transport them to their places of residence.

However, behind some of the walls of the semi-detached houses on Tira Street, there are some details that change the apparent similarity between the houses. In one of them, where the garage door should be, we see a window with transparent curtains that allow light into a space not prepared for habitation. It is one of the chalets whose owners generate about 800 euros of additional income by renting it out as a small apartment.

Some of these studies are promoted on the Idealista.com portal. When consulted by this newspaper, company sources explained that everything is a reflection that “there is a need for housing in Madrid and throughout Spain.” “At the moment, in Villaviciosa de Odon we have 43 apartments for rent. The situation is so tense that a child arriving in a new area finds it difficult, because prices are very high and competition is great from families who want a home. On the one hand, if you rent an apartment to students, you might suspect that they will be throwing parties, for example. But since the students stand behind the agreement with their parents, the owner has less fear that whoever will live there will remain a holder of the lands,” explains the expert. Fear of seizure, in one form or another, is another element, in addition to the lack of supply itself, which is responsible for the unattainable prices on the real estate market in general.

All the sources consulted agree that “there is little space to rent in an area like this, where there are so many students”: “Finding an apartment, ‘in itself’, is complicated, and if you are a student it is even more complicated, both in Villaviciosa and elsewhere, because the market is in a state of emergency.”

Little natural light

We went to the exact address where the next apartment was advertised, just down the street in the El Monte urban area. It is one street from one of the main entrances to the European University: “A studio on the ground floor of a chalet with a single entrance, an equipped kitchen, and a bathroom.” The landlord is at the door, and when asked by ABC if he rents the garage, he flatly denies: “No, the garage is there,” he says, pointing to the green gate to put cars in, from which a woman watches. It is a large property, with a garden area to the right of the door, quite dilapidated, the main house is somewhat above ground level and small basement windows can be seen below. In fact, what has been enabled as an apartment is not an individual parking lot, but an underground space, very scarce in natural light.

The photos in the ad leave no doubt: a small kitchen with a cement and brick table; A small bar typical of houses of this type, in the basement; On some shelves there is a coffee maker, a microwave, a few cups and a small ceramic hob with an extractor hood that reaches the double plasterboard ceiling. In the supposed space of 45 square metres, there is an open-plan living room and sleeping area separated by a bookcase, as well as a small bathroom. They receive 800 euros per month. And it’s not the most expensive: most of these “housing solutions”, to use the typical euphemism, are for at least 1,200 dwellings.

Not far away, three students wait for the autumn rain to cool at noon. “I know people who live in places like this. And this is not something that only happens in Villaviciosa – explains Fernando, a 26-year-old studying at the European Championships in Madrid. I’m from Villanueva de la Cañada and I have a colleague who rented a garage like this. I went there to see him and it was like a dungeon: a small, dark room… He was from Villafranca del Castillo, but he lived there because he was looking for something cheap, and he wasn’t even a student; Although I know these things are usually for college students. When you see ads online, you immediately realize that they are basements or something similar, because the spaces are very small, the windows are from garages and some of them have a shared bathroom. This young man attributes this to the fact that his municipality includes the Alfonso

Miguel, 24, explains what is happening in his municipality of residence, from which he goes and comes to Villaviciosa every day to study, like the third in the group, Beatriz, from Humanes: “In Tres Cantos, something similar started happening to us. They rent apartments to students for 1,500 euros because they have just opened a higher center for audio-visual studies next to the Netflix headquarters. “It’s a shame what’s happening.”

Habitability is questionable

A consultant from the Pisos.com portal complains that these types of accommodation “do not always meet the requirements for habitability”: “What we notice is that when there is a university nearby, for example in the south of Madrid, more tension is added to the rental market. Prices rise. There is everything, but each method has advantages and disadvantages. He outlines the following examples for their daily working life: “Families are more interested in the home and provide more continuity in the contract. If you rent to students, you get more profitability (by charging for per room), but there are more sales and more home care is required. These differences are also noticeable between tourist rentals and short-stay rentals.

Further afield, in El Bosque, there are large estates, such as luxury villas, in which this type of accommodation is also promoted in some cases. Rooms here are usually similar to those in townhouses, and people also usually live with the owners’ families, even though they are independent. The main difference is that tenants can also enjoy shared services such as garden and swimming pool.

Although everything reeks of instability (“There are always some families who, despite having a large property, may go through an economic downturn and there they find help,” as they say in the real estate business), there are advertisements that boast about what they offer. Others point out some of the shortcomings directly: “It has no windows,” explain some owners on Idealista.com. The advantage for them over those who buy a building and turn it into a home is that their chalets here carry a certificate of occupancy for their entire area, without the need for a special permit requiring certain characteristics.