Seasonal rentals in Barcelona have increased by 62% since the peak price peak.

BarcelonaThe number of new seasonal rental contracts has grown by 62% in Barcelona since the price cap came into effect: while 1,449 temporary leases were signed in the first quarter of 2024, a year later the figure is 2,347 contracts for the same period from January to March. This is the largest increase in the last year.

Compared to the last quarter of 2024, the figure is 13.9% lower: 2,727 short-term rental contracts were signed then, representing 26.3% of all new leases signed in the Catalan capital. Now, that percentage is slightly lower, at 24%, but the correlation remains: for every four new rental contracts in Barcelona, ​​one is seasonal.

These data have been published on the rental market portal that the Generalitat is feeding with quarterly data, the day after the Minister of Territory, Housing and Ecological Transition, Sílvia Paneque, announced by surprise some of the rental data for the first quarter, What is the 4.7% drop in the price of new regulated rentals in Catalonia and the 8.9% drop in Barcelona?. Although the government released figures for seasonal rental growth in Catalonia, which has grown 52% in one year, those for Barcelona were not released until this Wednesday.

This latest update allows for a comparison of prices and contracts with respect to the last quarter prior to the price cap, when rents were not subject to the rent containment that came into effect in mid-March. It was first applied to 140 municipalities, which were initially declared stressed areas, and then extended to 271. In the first batch of stressed areas, seasonal rentals grew 56.3% from the cap; in the 271 municipalities as a whole, they rose 46.99%, and in all municipalities that are not part of the stressed areas, seasonal contracts fell 10%.

Tarragona, soaring

By district, the most notable increase in this type of contract, characterized by a shorter duration than traditional rentals (which are 5 or 7 years) and longer than tourist rentals (maximum 31 days), was in Tarragona: in one year, seasonal rentals more than doubled (+113.2%). In the Lleida district, the increase was also higher than in the Barcelona area, at 69.2%. In contrast, in Girona, they only grew by 19.29%, well below the Catalan average, which stood at 52.4%. The seasonal rental data published by the Generalitat (Catalan Government) are not broken down by municipality, beyond the capital.

Paneque said that "if previously seasonal rentals represented 6.1% of all contracts signed, now it is 11%, five points higher," and that this supports the regulation of this type of rental, an issue that is being processed in Parliament, after the Government committed to doing so in an agreement with ERC, Comuns.