Looking for an apartment has become a kind of extreme sport, a marathon where prices rise faster than the spirits of those who browse real estate websites every morning. Amid this unique odyssey, the Spanish government has just launched a new tool to try to give renters some breathing room: Casa 47, a public search engine designed to help users find and apply for affordable rentals quickly and easily.
The platform has already kicked off with an initial offering of 800 homes spread across the entire country, 93 of which are located in Catalonia. The goal is clear: to offer a pool of affordable housing that guarantees stability, ensuring that tenants do not have to spend more than one-third of their income on the roof over their heads.
Leases to Put Down Roots
One of the major innovations introduced by Casa 47 is the length of the leases. Gone are the days of annual renewals or short-term leases: the homes listed on the portal will offer an initial term of 14 years, which can be extended up to 75 years. The idea, as Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez explained during the presentation, is to provide “realistic rents for real wages” as opposed to what he described as a veritable “obstacle course.”
The catalog of this new public search engine is expected to grow in the short term. In addition to the 800 options available at the service’s launch, another 1,500 homes throughout Spain will be added soon. The monthly rent for all these apartments will be calculated based on two key factors: the property’s specific characteristics and the economic situation of the municipality where it is located.
Permanent protection against speculation
To ensure that this housing pool fulfills its social function in the long term, Casa 47 properties will be permanently protected. During the announcement, Sánchez emphasized that these homes “will never be a business opportunity for a select few, nor will they be removed from the public housing stock when the economic or political cycle changes.”
The prime minister also defended the nature of the project against potential criticism, acknowledging that some will label the measure as interventionist. “It is, and proudly so, because the market is broken: a market that excludes hundreds of thousands of families from an essential right is a market that doesn’t work,” he stated, adding that there is evidence that current housing regulations help keep prices in check and increase the available supply.
