Public administrations, regional governments and city councils, in addition to big banks and US investment funds, dominate the rental market in Spain, according to research by the Civio portal, made public today, which presents detailed data from seven Autonomous Communities.
Thus, in Andalusia, according to Civio, a total of 58,997 rented homes in Andalusia have megaholders as landlords, defined as entities that accumulate more than 50 houses.
In the most populated Community, 191 companies and entities have direct ownership of these properties, which depend on 156 business groups or administrations. These accumulate nearly 30% of the approximately 198,900 rented homes with a deposit deposited that there are in total in this Community.
The Junta de Andalucía is the largest landlord in the region, along with the City Councils of Seville, Málaga, Cádiz and Jerez, but the weight of the banks CaixaBank, Unicaja and Banco Santander, and the American investment fund Blackstone, are also important.
Catalonia
In Catalonia, CaixaBank is, today, the second landlord. It has rented at least 5,064 homes through six dependent companies.
Total, In Catalonia there are 321 companies or entities that are direct owners, each of them, of more than 50 homes rented and dependent on 286 large corporations or public administrations.
There are a total of 69,910 rented homes, 9.6% of the 728,142 homes rented with a deposit deposited in Incasòl, according to data provided by this entity.
But these nearly 70,000 properties are highly concentrated: more than half of them are owned by just ten entities.
If we look at the number of rented properties, The Generalitat of Catalonia is in first place, with 10,731 rented homes. They are followed by CaixaBank and the Barcelona City Council, with 5,064 and 4,809 homes. The American investment funds Cerberus and Blackstone have almost 5,500 rented homes.
Madrid
As of December 31, 2022, in the Community of Madrid there were a total of 512,412 property rental contracts with a deposit deposited in the Social Housing Agency. Of these, 118,859 properties, 23.2%, are owned by companies with 50 or more rented properties. Of these homes, more than half are in the hands of only ten business groups or legal entities.
In the Community of Madrid, a total of 374 parent companies control 23.20% of the rental property stock through 463 subsidiaries.
If the number of rented properties is taken into account, the largest landlord is the Community of Madrid, with 21,549 rented properties. It is followed by the American investment fund Blackstone, with 13,125.
Castilla la Mancha
In Castilla La Mancha, 4,941 rented homes have mega-holders as landlords with 50 or more rentals. There are 22 entities or companies that depend, in turn, on 14 business groups or public administrations. They accumulate almost one in every three rented homes in this community.
Almost half of these homes are owned by banks, especially Unicaja, which is the main landlord in the region, even ahead of the Community Board of Castilla-La Mancha, which appears as the second landlord.
Unicaja adds nearly 1,600 homes rented through Banco de Castilla-La Mancha and Liberbankentities of which it took control in June 2021, and especially of Mosacata, a real estate company dependent on Liberbank.
They are followed by Banco Santander, with 434 rental homes, and CaixaBank, with 214. For their part, American investment funds accumulate more than 600 rentals, the vast majority of which are homes owned by the Blackstone subsidiary Testa Residencial.
Aragon
In Aragón there are ten entities that are direct owners of more than 50 homes. They accumulate less than 2% of the more than 96,800 rented homes in this community, a panorama opposite to that of the Community of Madrid and Catalonia, where megaholders concentrate 23.2% and 9.6% of the rented homes.
Basque Country
In the Basque Country there are 22 companies and public entities with more than 50 rented homes in the Basque Country. These megaholders concentrate 13,207 accommodations, more than 17% of the 75,000 rented homes in the Basque Country, according to the latest rental market report published by the Basque Government. And the vast majority of them are public housing.
According to the data of Civio, seven of the 22 megaholders in the Basque Country are public administrations or companies that depend on them. There are nearly 11,100 accommodations, 84.5% of all rented homes in the hands of mega-holders and almost 15% of all rentals in the Basque Country, a proportion that doubles that of the Community of Madrid, where public entities concentrate the 6.2% of all rentals, and five times that of Catalonia, where it barely exceeds 2.7%.
The largest landlord in the Basque Autonomous Community is the Basque Government itself, with more than 6,800 homes rented through three dependent companies. They are followed by the City Council of Bilbao —3,350— and that of Donostia —869—.
Balearic Islands
In the Balearic Islands, a total of 4,592 homes are owned by megaholders, entities that accumulate more than 50 lease contracts. They are about 21% of the 22,103 homes that are rented in this community.
They are owned by only fifteen entities. Half of them are public housing, the vast majority in the hands of Ibavi itself and the rest of Palma City Council. The remaining 2,334 belong to 10 business groups through 13 subsidiaries, which are the ones that have direct ownership of the homes.
The vast majority of homes rented by private entities are not from real estate agencies, but from financial entities. And half of them are from the Blackstone investment fund. Another 558 are from CaixaBank, according to Civio.
