At 31 years old, Rafael Villanueva lives in Vigo, in his grandmother’s old house. He settled there after purchasing the share that belonged to his parents, uncles and sister. “I needed more space than I had in my previous apartment,” he says by phone. That other apartment, “two rooms, but small”, was also his. “It cost me 145,000 euros and I renovated it little by little.” He did it while renting in Madrid, where he had tried to buy but couldn’t “because it was prohibitive for someone on a normal salary like I had,” he says. After completing the renovation, he rented it for two years before moving in permanently. “The dizziness got worse with the second purchase,” he admits, despite the fact that to carry out both operations he enlisted the help of his family and used the savings he had accumulated.
Ismael Kardoudi is 45 years old and in 2023 he purchased an apartment in Comillas, in the Carabanchel neighborhood, in Madrid. “It cost me 140,000 euros,” he says. “I had to throw everything away, yes,” he explains. After 15 years of renting and having been able to save little by little as his salary increased, he decided to take the step of purchasing. “In Spain we all want to be owners,” he jokes. “With rents going up, there comes a time when you have to think about it. Even though I’ve always felt dizzy, especially because of the insecurity that comes from thinking you won’t be able to pay everything, now I think I wish I had done it sooner,” he admits.
The cases of Rafael and Ismael, however egregious they may seem in a context where house prices are skyrocketing, do not represent an anomaly. In fact their group, that of solo buyers, is on the rise. According to data from Fotocasa Research, the analysis platform of the real estate portal, almost a third of home buyers are people who live alone (32%), a volume that is seven percentage points higher than that of two years ago. From 25% in 2023, it grew to 31% in 2024, and in the last year it increased by one point more. If we take into account the group that has not yet done so, but has it in mind, the percentage increases: those who have purchased or intend to do so themselves have gone from 23% in 2018 to 38% in 2025.
Are singles buying more homes because there are more of them than before? Partly. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the representativeness of people without partners compared to the rest (married, widowed, separated or divorced) has remained relatively stable, even if in recent years the fluctuations that have occurred have been in an upward direction: if at the beginning of 2020 they represented 34.6%, five years later the volume has grown to 37.8%. “We are witnessing a profound transformation of the social model,” says María Matos, director of studies and spokeswoman for Fotocasa. “According to INE projections, within a few years there could be 7.7 million single-person households in Spain (currently there are 5.5), becoming for the first time the most widespread type of household in the country,” adds Matos.
Unforeseen situations
And apart from the various behavioral changes that societies transform due to the simple passage of time, unexpected situations can cause alterations in the short and medium term. “The pandemic has made us understand how vulnerable we are,” analyzes Antonio Cano, professor of psychology at the Complutense University and former president of the Spanish Society for the Study of Anxiety and Stress (SEAS). In his opinion, although the loneliness experienced by many people has pushed them to seek greater company, for many others “the opposite has happened”. “It’s nothing new that more and more people are living alone. It’s been happening for 20 or 30 years and that’s why many have left their fears behind and embarked on this adventure,” adds Cano.
Mariano Urraco, professor of Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid, indicates another profile of potential solo buyer who decides to take the step, even after an unexpected event: individuals who live as a couple and this relationship is over. “When an established couple breaks up and both individuals are well settled in the place where they lived, it is normal for them to look for a residential alternative in that same place,” he underlines. “This causes the increase in individual homes,” he adds. “By the age of 20 it is possible for many relationships to break up, but not for there to be an apartment in between. When this happens at the age of 30 or 40, it is more common to have to leave the shared house and find an independent one.”
The Fotocasa Research study also investigates what happened in 2020, when the coronavirus was rampant. According to their data, the share of tenants living alone began to grow in the period immediately following the pandemic, going from 15% in 2021 to 18% in 2023. An increase which, however, did not occur in the following years, given that in 2025 it stood at 16%. The leap, in many cases, occurred from individual rental to purchase, even if the profile of those who decide to do so is made up of some particularities.
Purchasing power
Ricard Garriga, general manager of Trioteca, a digital platform that compares mortgages from different banks, indicates: “We are talking about people with high purchasing power, young people and with a clear preference for fast, simple and 100% processes. online“This economic independence allows them, for example, to sign transactions faster than a couple. “They do so, on average, 10 days earlier”, specifies Garriga. The records of this company indicate that the volume of singles taking out a mortgage already represents 40% of the total, and that these are “informed buyers, who value their time and who want to pay fairly”.
Both Rafael and Ismael had savings from long professional careers. However, to become owners they also needed external support, in addition to banking. “I received an inheritance that helped me buy my first apartment,” admits the former. “In the last few years of renting I stayed in the house of a relative who offered me a convenient price. Otherwise it would have been impossible for me to save money”, explains the second.
According to the latest available data, families allocate on average 24% of their income to paying the mortgage and 38% to rent. “I worked for a long time in a financial company and I knew how bad people had been during the years of the great crisis of 2008. That’s why it was difficult for me to dare. But now I’m very happy”, concludes Ismael.
