Catalonia faces another year of housing crisis without major changes. He assures the real estate sector, which maintains that legislative changes such as the regulation of seasonal rentals will not improve the situation of short-term tenants. Ensuring that the entry of this formula into price regulation will lead owners who use it to avoid rent ceilings and sell floors before returning to usual rental. In this sector, it remains to be seen whether prices will continue to rise or rise again, as happened in the last quarter for which there is data. Concerning sales, experts and professionals in the real estate sector hope that prices will continue to increase because new work is not enough to meet growing demand driven by demographic pressure.
The real estate market has other open fronts. The possible regulation of seasonal rentals in Congress, or the open debate on the possibility of prohibiting speculative purchases: if there is a fear of inverters, the sector will regret it, while it will celebrate the collectives that defend the right to housing. They even point out that in 2026 150,000 rental contracts will end.
In the meantime, the Salvador Illa Government’s project to gain 50,000 public floors will move forward with competitions to build the first package of 14,500 in 324 solar panels offered by 116 municipalities. The Generalitat is also awaiting the launch of the first contingent of 40 inspectors who will ensure compliance with the legislation on tenants (out of a total of 100 agreed with the communities). The college of architects and the promoters’ employer request that their doubts about the offers be resolved. The following are the industry’s voices on the outlook for 2026.
Seasonal rentals at regulated prices. The president of the Colegio de APIs and jurist Montserrat Junyent explains that seasonal rental floors must be set at a regulated price (by applying the official index) both in the event of renewal of contracts and if they are rented for the first time. Pero is convinced that “owners who fraudulently use the season, as a stage before selling it and while waiting for the legislation to be changed, will decide to sell it”.
Doubts before the new regulation. In Forcadell real estate, its rental manager, Àlex Vázquez, reveals that the new regulation is still not published in the DOGC and predicts that “we will surely have interpretations: when in doubt, we will have more questions than answers” laments in the face of a new development that amounts to years of legislative frenzy. “With tenant regulation, the only tenant who wins is the one who has a contract in force; the one who wants access to a tenant is the one who has the real problem,” he warns.
Tenants are demanding fines to comply with and expand the regulations. Tenants Union spokesperson Carme Arcarazo warns that the key to lowering rent prices is compliance with regulations, which involve inspections and fines for housing. The organization builds on the process, since February, of regulating seasonal rental and housing in Congress with “a text agreed with the PSOE, PNV, ERC, Bildu and Podemos”. The “Falta Junts” have the majority, they admit. At the same time, he celebrates that there is an open debate about speculative purchases and the argument that fear of cases or inverters reduces the market: “Whether the owners or inverters retract or move forward, it would be positive: if someone sells, someone else can buy it and the law requires it to be more affordable.”
Portals that warn of a “drastic” reduction in rents. The director of studies and spokesperson for Pisos.com, Ferran Font, points out the “drastic reduction” in rental floors and assures that “excessive regulation has led to a feeling of lack of protection among owners which, in the case of the seasonal tenant, will lead them to abandon: it will be difficult for them to break away from their usual tenant. At the same time, the sector “has undergone a year and a half of meteoric sales, part of which can be explained by sales of seasonal rentals”.
“Solvent tenants facing a population excluded from the market”. The professor of applied economics at Pompeu Fabra University José García Montalvo paints a bleak picture of accessibility both at the sales level (with rising prices) and at the buyer’s level. “Only the most solvent tenants will be able to afford few accommodations in rentals that are selling,” he predicts, in the face of “the total exclusion of the most deprived populations: young people, migrants or single parents”. García Montalvo envisages a “rental market as broken and tense as in recent years”, the result of “fuzzy measures that do not understand that the lack of supply is not a suggestion of loss of seasonal rental and profitability, nor a risk of loss or difficulty in recovering the property”.
Idealistic: low price, minimum offer and “elite” rental company. The spokesperson for the real estate portal Idealista, Francisco Iñareta, estimates that in 2026 villa prices “will moderate in Catalonia both for sale and rental”. In rental through rent control and regulation of seasonal rental and housing. “The result, however, will be disastrous for the market: the available supply will further decrease, to historically low levels, and competition for access to the few available housing units will be fierce”, predicts and speaks of a process of “elitization of the tenant”, because “the overqualification of the demand will increasingly address a greater number of people and families and will condemn without access to a large segment of the population which has not had problems for the moment”.
Developers awaiting construction tenders. The president of the promoters’ employer, APCE, Xavier Vilajoana, believes that “the bases for the years to come will be pongan” and asks “that the competitions be flexible and allow large, muscular companies, but also small ones, with knowledge of the territory” to be present. Vilajoana also counts on the promised gililization of procedures and licenses or in which the announcement of the increase in the density of new neighborhoods comes to fruition. “The construction sector has many pillars that must be continuously activated,” he summarizes.
Architects celebrate the fact that “finally, the machine starts”. The dean of the College of Architects, Guim Costa, welcomes the fact that the administration is restarting a machine that had sat idle for decades. If the forecasts come true, architects find themselves faced with massive project and work targets, “floors or free spaces available and protected, rental and purchase”. Costa hopes the administration’s efforts will ease the housing shortage after 15 years of marriage and a population that has grown by 1.5 million people and an influx of foreign buyers.
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