The regulation of rents in 140 municipalities in Catalonia in March 2024 resulted in a drop in prices of 4.9% in Barcelona and 1.9% in the rest of the municipalities that will enter the regulation until June this year. Where rents were not regulated, however, they increased by 6.6%. The regional minister of the Generalitat, Sílvia Paneque, explained this in Parliament this Wednesday. The source of the data is the guarantees for the new contracts that the owners deposited in Incasòl in the second quarter of this year, compared to the first quarter of 2024, when rent containment began to be applied.
These data suggest a moderation in the fall in prices. And in some cases, like in Barcelona, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat or Badalona, they even report an increase in rents in the second quarter of this year compared to the first. In Barcelona, new contracts went from 1,087 euros between January and March to 1,135 euros between April and June. In L’Hospitalet the increase was from 810 to 848 euros and in Badalona from 876 to 996 euros.
A quarter ago, the balance of the first year of regulation was stronger: price reductions had been 8.9% in Barcelona and 4.9% in all regulated areas. One explanation for the increases is that before the housing law came into force, prices increased a lot, which would explain why renewals of older contracts had more moderate prices.
Regarding ongoing contracts, the councilor specified that “in the second quarter of 2025 there was a positive balance of 2,285 regular rental contracts in force in Catalonia”. And he updated the general data by specifying that “since the start of the containment of rents there have been a total of 14,124 more homes”.
Paneque underlined in summary: “The containment measures work. It is true that there are no spectacular drops, but they contain the galloping market that we had before the regulation.” The homeowner also recalled that the accumulated inflation during the regulatory period was 3.5%. With the positive balance of rental homes, he wanted to deny the speeches that warned of a decline in supply resulting from regulation: “The rental market is active and functions normally, despite what some sectors and parliamentary groups have stated.”
