Rent in Barcelona rises some 5% from last year

If it feels like rent has gone up in the Catalan capital, it’s not just your imagination: the last year saw an increase of 5.03% reaching a monthly average of €949.86, according to the Chamber of Urban Property of Barcelona. But which neighborhood you live in makes all the difference.

Where it’s least expensive to rent

Take, for example, the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi neighborhood, one of the more upscale in the capital: here, rent sits the highest, at €1,319.55 (at an increase of 2.14%), while the cheapest rent can be found in Nou Barris: €680.88, an increase of 7.94%.

But rents have gone up all throughout the city. The biggest jumps in prices in annual terms were seen in Nou Barris, preceded by the old town central district of the Ciutat Vella (8.53%), Sant Andreu to the north (6.68%), and Horta-Guinardò to the west (5.31%).

Fewer spaces on the market

In this third trimester, the entity looked at the 13,727 rent contracts and compared them to the same period from last year. Rent per square meter stayed at the same price as the year before, €13.61, and this increase in overall price could be explained by larger properties being rented out.

But while the flats themselves may be bigger, there are fewer of them. Only 2,068 flats were incorporated into the housing stock for rent in the first nine months of the year – the lowest number since 2007, warned the Chamber of Urban Property. And why are there fewer flats for rent? The Chamber posits that this is because landlords consider that they can get more if they put their property up for sale.