A country of small owners

BarcelonaThe so-called vulture funds and, by extension, what are also termed large holders in terms of housing, have been in the spotlight throughout the week following the debate opened both socially and politically by the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal in Madrid. But, do large holders really have that much weight in the Catalan and Spanish housing market? Can they set the price of rent? In reality, the structure of housing ownership suggests that their weight is rather relative because, despite the investments made by some relevant funds after the bursting of the real estate bubble, the fact is that the stock of housing in the hands of large holders is rather small.

Searching for and finding the data is not easy, as there are different statistics that collect them, but only partially. However, by searching in the cadastre, the Bank of Spain, the Notarial Council, and other sources, it can be concluded that in the State there is only 2.4% of housing in the hands of owners who have more than ten properties. If we consider as a large holder those who have more than five homes, they would only concentrate the ownership of 9% of the stock.

Mind you, the Mediterranean coast and the Balearic Islands, and also the Community of Madrid, are where a higher percentage of homes are concentrated in the hands of large owners. For example, in Barcelona and the Balearic Islands, 6.1%; in Girona and Lleida, 5.9%; in Madrid, 5.3%; in Tarragona, 4.2%; and the three provinces of the Valencian Community, between 3.1% and 3.7%. Toledo also stands out, with 5.3%, as an extension, due to its proximity, of the Madrid model.

In Catalonia, the Urban Property Chamber presented a report based on cadastral data from Catalonia, the province of Barcelona and the Catalan capital with an explicit objective: to determine whether this data supports the narrative of a supposed speculative concentration linked to large investors. According to the Chamber's study, in Barcelona there are 529,881 cadastral holders –natural or legal persons– associated with 706,624 residential cadastral references. The average is 1.33 references per holder. 95.97% of the owners are natural persons and they concentrate 89.56% of the properties, while private legal entities represent only 3.04% of the holders and accumulate 8.1% of the properties.

With this data, the Chamber concludes that there is no widespread speculative concentration of residential property and that the housing problem is explained above all by structural factors of supply, regulation, and demography.

The Barcelona Housing Observatory (OHB) has also studied the concentration of property in the Catalan capital. The OHB study starts from a different approach than that of the Property Chamber, cross-referencing the alphanumeric database of the cadastre with the Municipal Cadastral Register, and finds that in 2025 in Barcelona there were a total of 525,440 owners and estimates that the housing stock is made up of 792,884 cadastral properties for residential use.

According to this data, the average number of homes per owner stands at 1.5 units –a value similar to the 1.33 from the Chamber–, taking into account that 83.5% of owners only have one home, but they concentrate 55.3% of the stock.

Who owns the apartments in Barcelona? The difference is especially marked between types of owners. Natural persons, who represent 96.3% of the holders, have an average of 1.3 homes. On the other hand, legal entities –3.7% of the owners– concentrate 15.2% of the stock and have an average of 6.2 homes per holder. Within this group, companies accumulate 12% of all homes in the city.

A recent Supreme Court ruling does not allow stating which companies accumulate the most properties. The Government has the decree in the oven to create the Registry of large property holders, which Parliament approved creating in March 2022. According to the draft, which is still pending final approval and to which ARA has had access, the Housing Agency wants to be able to publish on its website the corporate name –the equivalent of the name– and the tax ID (NIF) of the legal entities considered large property holders. But the Supreme Court has decided that revealing this data, which affects legal entities, not individuals, who are protected by data protection law, represents a "prejudice to public safety." With the corporate name and the tax ID of the large holder, anyone can perform a search in the Property Registry and obtain the exact address of the apartments in the hands of that legal entity, a fact which, according to the high court, increases "significantly the risk of illegal occupation."

Although there may be some changes, in 2023, the Civio Foundation, based on Incasòl data, conducted a study on who the largest housing owners in Catalonia were. The Generalitat occupied first place, with more than 10,000 apartments; followed by CaixaBank, with more or less half; and third place was occupied by the Barcelona City Council, with just under 5,000 apartments. Next were two North American funds, Cerberus and Blackstone, with just over 2,800 for the first and 2,500 for the second; and following them was Cevasa, a listed Catalan company with a long history in the rental business, with almost 2,200 apartments.

The price hike

The experts consulted, however, doubt that the current concentration of housing in the hands of large holders is the cause of the rise in rental prices, both in Catalonia and in Spain. "Scarcity is what makes prices go up," explains Òscar Gorgues, manager of the Urban Property Chamber of Barcelona. "It is a planning problem," says Carme Trilla, president of Hàbitat 3. The general director of Amat Immobiliaris, Guifré Homedes, considers that, although it has grown in recent years, the funds "have a small percentage" of housing, both in Catalonia and in Spain.

They also do not believe that the funds have the capacity to drive up prices. "They [the funds] do not have the capacity to make rent more expensive," says Trilla. In her opinion, "the hole is in tourist apartments, seasonal rentals, and room rentals," explains the expert. For Gorgues, "there is no [fund] that can be dominant in the market." In fact, Gorgues asserts that the stock is dominated by small owners because buying apartments has historically been "a resource for the middle class to save." Guifré Homedes, for his part, points out that, in addition, in Catalonia "they have no influence because the rental market is regulated."

Furthermore, Homedes indicates that the funds are already withdrawing, not only because the rental price has been regulated, but because "they have already completed their investment cycle." In fact, they bought when prices were cheap due to the bursting of the bubble and now they are selling. Homedes highlights that, to a large extent, they bought assets from Sareb (the bad bank), and considers that it would have been better for these apartments to remain in the hands of the administration. "It has been the great lost opportunity to have a public housing stock," he asserts.