In Spain little is built, there is almost no building land left and the bureaucratic procedures necessary to start the works continue to represent an insurmountable obstacle. These three mantras have flooded the real estate debate for some time, and people on both the supply and demand sides resort to them. Are they real? Partly. There is more construction underway than a few years ago, although it is being completed at a slower pace; and more land is being mobilized for construction than last year, but bureaucracy has not been streamlined enough to ensure that work can begin sooner. The different players involved in the sector share the same diagnosis: although the score has changed slightly, the music, for the moment, continues to sound the same.
Statistics from the Ministry’s Observatory on Housing and Territory show the two speeds at which construction is currently moving. While 31,179 vacant homes started to be built in the first quarter of 2025, the highest volume in this (and any) period in the last seven years, only 18,642 were delivered, the lowest total in the first three months of the year since 2021. With sheltered homes the behavior was the same: 3,237 obtained official qualification, more than at the beginning of 2024; but only 2,497 received the final one, fewer than the previous year.
The slight brightness of some of these statistics pales in comparison to the records of 2024. The total materials execution budget – the indicator that reflects planned investments in construction projects – for that year was 6,426.95 million euros, 17.8% more than the previous calculation, according to the Observatory’s Annual Bulletin. Of this entire item, 4,881.57 million (76%) concern residential building concessions, including new constructions, extensions and renovations. A volume that represents 18.3% more than that intended for 2023.
Thanks to this small lift the landscape of many cities has once again been filled with cranes. “It’s not a bad time to be an architect,” says Sigfrido Herráez, principal of the college. Official of the Architects of Madrid (COAM). “We have as much work now as before the pandemic,” he acknowledges. In his opinion, the building land not yet mobilized is “pure speculation”. “The price increases every day and there are many owners who have no incentive to get rid of it now, because they think that in the future they will be able to get more. I think it would be necessary for many to become aware of the situation we are going through,” he adds.
Despite these small steps, the spreading crisis of access to housing has fueled the bonfire of old and new demands in the face of a problem that has become chronic. While official data shows an effort to improve the pace of construction after the sudden halt caused by the Great Recession of 2008 – the 665,000 homes started in 2006 continues to mark a currently unattainable milestone – the speed of construction is out of sync with the population growth that has occurred over the past two decades. In numbers: after the financial crisis the census grew by one and a half million people and there is currently a demand for over 600,000 houses, according to estimates by the Bank of Spain, which will increase by 100,000 more every year.
“Legal uncertainty prevents us from going faster,” says Xavier Vilajoana, president of the Association of Entrepreneurs and Builders of Spain (APCEspaña), and an active participant in the construction of public housing. “You know when you start a job, but not when you will finish it,” he admits over the phone. “It costs more to obtain the license than to build the building,” adds Pedro Fernández Alén, president of the National Construction Confederation (CNC), the sector’s employers’ association. Both believe that the lack of skilled labor in the sector is another of the frayed remains of the problem.
start again
Both Vilajoana and Fernández Alén consider the Territorial and Urban Redevelopment Law of 2015 to be a brake, since this law establishes that if an urban plan is approved without the essential procedure (for example, without environmental assessment or without public information), it is considered null and void. That is, if a relevant study or document is missing, the procedure is stopped and, moreover, it goes back to the beginning.
“For a piece of land to become buildable, it is necessary to present all this complementary information, such as some sectoral reports. Any deficiency in them is a reason for total paralysis, since they do not allow them to be corrected and move forward. If we add to this that the Administration can take months or even years to provide these partial studies, it means that the lands take a terribly long time before they are buildable”, complains Vilajoana. “To give people an idea of the impact that bureaucracy has: the average time to convert land into building land is 16 years,” he reports.
The desire to reform the law has manifested itself at different times in recent years, all with unsuccessful results. The last one was made by the government at the beginning of 2024, which ended up withdrawing it at the last moment after not obtaining sufficient support either within the coalition or among the other parties. “The government has been instructed to invent a story in which the villains are hedge funds, when the big holders represent only 4.3% of total ownership,” says economist Gonzalo Bernardos. “Everything we see in housing policy is parliamentary arithmetic. Even if everyone agrees on the reform of that law, no one wants to give this victory to the opponent,” he adds.
The Ministry of Construction underlines that in recent years, thanks to European Next Generation funds, “construction has been reactivated” in Spain, although “we must take a further step forward”. “Although a cruising pace of over 100,000 homes per year has been achieved, population growth due to the good economic situation and new lifestyles mean we need a bigger push,” says a ministerial spokesperson. This impulse will come, as indicated, with the next State Housing Plan, which will allocate 40% of the total 7 billion to the promotion of new affordable homes. “Building more is just as important as building well; that is, building affordable housing that ensures access to housing for the social majority,” he adds.
