Renting, and even more so buying, housing at current prices means throwing away a lot of money. This is especially true for those who lead a bachelor, lonely lifestyle and are looking for a small area for temporary residence. In addition, buying a home in Spain today is very difficult due to the huge competition among buyers. In some regions of the country, shopping is almost impossible, as the markets are almost completely under the control of foreigners or wealthy Spanish buyers.
But a new trend is emerging in the Spanish market, trying to work for people with modest savings, those who just need a roof over their heads. We are talking about selling rooms. One of the pioneers in this market is the startup Habitación.com, which has already received an award for its activities – the 29th SeedRocket Entrepreneurship Campus Award. Selling rooms works just as it sounds. The buyer buys a specific number of square meters, a room equipped for full-fledged living. Renting such properties will cost approximately 400 euros/month, at least in the case of Habitación offers.
From an investment point of view, buying a room and then renting it out can bring a return of 6% to 8% per year, according to Habitación. The company also promises to take care of all the care and maintenance of housing and residents, including insurance, if an investor turns to their property. Moreover, the startup promises to buy the room from the investor if he cannot find a client for it – a buyer or a tenant.
The idea is simple and attractive; for many people, it is more than enough to have the opportunity not to overpay for unnecessary square meters of housing and simply buy or rent a room with all the amenities. However, some experts are skeptical about this idea and its ability to establish itself as a full-fledged product in the market. Doubts are raised about the ability of such products to withstand market fluctuations or problems within the provider companies themselves. They generally see such an innovation as a rather sad evidence of the drift of an overheated market into increasingly dubious areas. The emergence of sometimes barely legal forms of housing and the transformation of everything, even rooms, into investment assets.
But for those people who do not care about markets, they do not have large savings, but need housing here and now, the trend is the sale of rooms, which in a sense become communal housing, is profitable now more than ever. Such phenomena will only become more numerous if the market continues to transform into another playground for investors and simply super-rich buyers, especially foreigners. Spain's youth are often unemployed or have little savings, but are increasingly in need of a roof over their heads. A roof that is becoming increasingly difficult to find on the traditional market today. The trivialization of such unusual forms of housing will only increase.