Madrid (EFE).- Spanish families need almost 8 years of gross salary to buy a home, the highest figure since 2011, and they have to spend the first year more than 33% of their available gross annual income, the highest effort that has been registered since 2014.
Specifically, according to the latest data from the Bank of Spain, in the third quarter of 2022, 7.9 years of gross salary and 33.6% of available annual income were necessary.
With this new increase, since the third quarter of 2011 reached 8 years, there has not been such a long period to pay for a home.
And it is that the number of years required to acquire a home has not stopped increasing since the beginning of 2020, as the price of a square meter in Spain became more expensive and since the middle of that year, more than 7 years are already necessary.
2007, a record year in the midst of the sector’s “boom”
In the third quarter of 2007, before the bubble burst, the all-time record was set with 9.45 years of gross salary to buy a home. On the contrary, the minimum -2.96 years- occurred in the first three months of 1987, the year from which the Bank of Spain has records of this indicator.
If what is analyzed is the percentage of effort involved in a family, it has been above 30% for more than a year and has not exceeded 33% since 2014.
Since the Bank of Spain has quarterly records, the greatest effort was made visible in 1990 with more than 72% of income in the first year. It should also be noted that in mid-2008, in the midst of the real estate crisis, it reached 54.6%, while the minimum was recorded in mid-1999, with 25.3%.
To calculate the financial effort required to buy a home, the Bank of Spain uses the amount of the installments that an average household has to pay in the first year after purchasing a typical home financed with a standard loan for 80% of the value of the floor, as a percentage of the household’s annual disposable income.
Experts believe that as financing becomes more expensive due to the rise in interest rates to deal with rising inflation, the effort of families will be even greater.
And all this despite the fact that the Bank of Spain advises that the annual income allocated to the purchase of a home should not exceed 35% of income.
The price moderates, but is still rising
In the last period analyzed by the Bank of Spain, the third quarter of 2022, the price of free housing rose by 4.7% compared to the same period of the previous year to 1,740 euros/m2, according to data from the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, which uses data from notaries that it later refines for its statistics.
Thus, between July and September, the price of housing marked the second highest price registered since 2011, only slightly surpassed by the one registered in the previous quarter, with 1,740.7 euros/m2.
According to the ministry, in the third quarter the sale of homes moderated its rise to 3.8% and totaled 167,539 operations, the lowest figure so far this year but the third quarter with the most operations since 2007.