Someone is looking for an apartment to rent in San Sebastián de Los Reyes. One of new construction and no more than three rooms. The Idealista portal offers a nice 85 square meter apartment in an urbanization on Avenida Arribes del Duero, in San Sebastián de los Reyes, for 1,284 euros per month. According to data from the real estate portal, another 62,780 interested parties have reached this offer, of which 5,833 have saved it among their favorites. But there is a problem: the advertiser is Park View Madrid and it does not exist, behind this name is the management company Sogeviso. And who is Sogeviso?, promoter of Plan Vive, the affordable housing offer of the Government of the Community of Madrid. In other words: public housing advertised on the largest Spanish private real estate site in Spain.
The Vive Plan is Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s flagship measure to improve access to housing in Madrid. Community spokesmen describe it as a success in every respect. For example, in the last key handover in Móstoles, on November 17, they celebrated the fact that 5,175 houses had already been handed over. However, it is not said that one of the concessionaire companies, Sogeviso, had to resort to a restyling to look for tenants to live in its complexes in San Sebastián de los Reyes and Tres Cantos because the reception among the neighbors is very far from what was expected. Sogeviso is the creator of Park View Madrid, a site that hides the public ownership of the homes it advertises. A desperate form of marketing to put more than 130 empty houses on the market. And the last step was to announce them on Idealista too.
“Since the Plan Vive brand was burned, they tried to renew it with this Park View thing to impose the same thing on us. It’s a joke. They are deceiving once again. Those houses should go through the public administration, not through a real estate portal,” says Narciso Romero, who was mayor of San Sebastián de los Reyes between 2015 and 2023 for the Socialist Party and is now the group’s opposition spokesperson. “If it was affordable housing, it would really be filled immediately. It’s disgusting that they keep talking about what they sell as affordable housing. Paying 1,400 euros to live on public land? Are we crazy?” he is indignant. “It’s a failed model, which doesn’t work. The fact that they advertise on Idealista is the height of this nonsense,” he adds.
According to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, today these advertisements in which public housing is offered without explaining what it is about do not constitute illegality. On the other hand, “when the law on customer service is approved and comes into force, which we are promoting and which has already been approved by Congress and awaits the return of the Senate, it will be mandatory to have to say that it is public housing as long as it affects the price”, they say. For its part, the Ministry of Housing classifies these misleading advertisements as “the latest example of the failure of Plan Vive”.
The actual employment figures for the Vive Plan are, in general, unknown. Both Sogeviso and Avalon, another of the private operators that manages the marketing of the houses, do not offer information in this regard. In San Sebastián de los Reyes, however, there are more specific data. On the one hand, at least 122 of the 488 houses in the Tempranales area are empty. Furthermore, “of all the people who reside in the Plan Vive de Sanse, only 27% are residents of the municipality. 73% come from outside. This means that these houses are not needed by the people here, they cannot afford them”, says Narciso Romero again.
An important note that can be consulted on the Sogeviso website is the number of houses rejected in each promotion, i.e. the number of people who, having obtained a house, ended up giving it up. Of the total of 5,258 rejected homes, 43% – 2,283 – belong to San Sebastián de los Reyes, almost double compared to November 2024. Tres Cantos, for its part, accumulates another 1,056 rejected homes. All entries indicate the “unaffordable” prices of the Vive Plan.
While the apartment advertised on Idealista in Arribes del Duero is rented for 15.11 euros per square meter, another property with similar characteristics – three bedrooms, garage, garden, swimming pool – costs 9.77 euros per square meter. The real estate agencies consulted that operate in the area say that Plan Vive “has not taken away customers”. “They are at free market prices, they don’t really pose a threat. Furthermore, we don’t charge either the IBI or the community for them,” explains a real estate agent who does not want to reveal his identity. “What these prices encourage is a repopulation of the city. If you only let a medium/high purchasing power profile into these houses, you ensure that the neighborhood fills up with families with a profile that interests you. A profile which, obviously, is the profile of your voters”, complains Narciso.
In Tres Cantos, for its part, the lack of transparency is even greater. Idealista also advertises two Plan Vive property listings in the municipality via Park View. Among the dossier of questions that Federico Mas, deputy spokesperson of the Por Tres Cantos municipal group, brings to every plenary session of the city council, there are some that he repeats ad nauseam. “Why do you allow our neighbors to pay the IBI while companies get a 25% bonus? Why don’t you worry about the maintenance of these defective houses? It’s a regulated scam”, asks the councilor of the Popular Party, Ana Isabel Pérez Baos, who has the answer as prepared as Federico: “that they go and complain to the Community of Madrid, that’s their problem”.
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