Barcelona Grapples with its Housing Crisis...

Barcelona Grapples with its Housing Crisis by Don Quijones • Feb 8, 2018 • 29 Comments Local tenants vs. global capital in search of assets. By Don Quijones, Spain, UK, & Mexico, editor at WOLF STREET. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Spain has become a difficult country for many tenants. In the most populous provinces rents are rising ten times faster than salaries. In its two biggest cities, Madrid and Barcelona, they’re rising 30 times faster. In 2017 alone 36,138 rental contracts at an average monthly price of €873 were signed in Barcelona, a city where 65% of under-30-year-olds earn less than €1,000 a month.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Barcelona City Council – which is run by the leftist mayor Ada Colau, a former housing activist – has decided that enough is enough. The council has halted renovation works on two buildings on grounds that the developers were carrying out major reworks without requesting the appropriate authorisation. Both developers — an investment fund and a real estate company — began the work with permits only for minor alterations when in fact they were completely renovating the buildings.--- READ more:https://wolfstreet.com/2018/02/08/how-real-estate-mobbing-investment-funds-fuel-barcelonas-housing-crisis/