🚨 Welcome to Props — The Bubble's real estate newsletter. You're here because Spanish real estate is fascinating, insane, occasionally enraging, and — if you have a little money and play it right — profitable. Every week we bring you the data, the deals, the people making it happen, and the ones making it worse.
So sit back and enjoy! And send your tips, comments, suggestions, and all-cash offers to ian@thebubble.com.
Can Spain fix its housing problem by decree? Or does it need us?
There's one story in Spanish real estate this week — the eviction by judicial order of Maricarmen Abascal, who was forced out of the apartment where she had lived for 71 years.
The sight of a tearful Maricarmen being forcibly removed on a stretcher set off protests in Madrid — "fury", in the FT's words — first in front of Madrid regional presi Isabel Díaz Ayuso's €6.3m penthouse attic, and then in a march of tens of thousands and, finally, in a tent encampment that continues in the city's central Puerta del Sol.
The explosion of fury was set off by Maricarmen's eviction, but it wasn't about that, or at least not just that. (There are worse tales — like Olga, a 52-year-old who committed suicide five months after being evicted from her home of 20 years in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, near Barcelona.) It was born of widespread anger at a property market that for generations served as a kind of ally, a tool that allowed people to find stability and some wealth and start families. But that recently has become something to be feared — a predator. 🧌
Why? The fears are many.
When your lease ends, your landlord demands a 100% increase to re-up your contract. “It's the market price. 🤷♂️ Sorry.”
The only apartments you can find are 11-month pisos de temporada, meaning you have to gird yourself for possible annual moves.
A fund buys your building and kicks you out when your lease expires, in preparation for selling your place.
The price to buy anything has risen so high you can't imagine saving enough for the down payment — not to mention the monthly mortgage checks, which have shot up alongside inflation from the 🍊 Menace's adventure in Iran.
You'll never leave your childhood bedroom in your parents’ home.
You'll definitely never start a family.
Now, there's been a happy ending of sorts (at least for Maricarmen). She accepted a new rental contract offered by the business that bought her apartment, and will return to it at the same rent. And, in the face of public fury, the PSOE-led government passed two decree laws to offer some protections to renters like Maricarmen and young people looking to buy.
But the decrees are band-aids. Spain’s housing crisis is structural, deeper, and decades in the making. We want to know what you think actually fixes it — bold ideas, half-baked theories, things that worked elsewhere, anything. Send your best thinking to ian@thebubble.com, and we’ll run the most thought-provoking responses next week. Don’t be shy.
Let's look at what we're facing:
