Young Spaniards cannot leave home: they are forced to spend 92% of their salary on rent if they want to live independently.

Accessing homeownership requires 14 years of full salary for young people in Spain

Becoming independent in Spain has now become an almost impossible task, driven by the constant rise in housing prices. Whether buying or renting, the real estate market presents major challenges for those who want to move out, especially if they plan to do so alone.

Although the median salary of young workers rose by 11% in 2024, reaching €14,046.52 annually, and youth unemployment dropped to 19.1%, a large share of young people continue living with their parents—not due to age, but because of an insurmountable financial barrier.

The data confirms it: at the end of last year, the average rent for a home stood at €1,080 per month, while the median monthly youth salary was €1,170.54. This means that a young person wishing to live alone would need to allocate 92.3% of their income solely to rent—an absolutely unsustainable figure.

This is highlighted by the latest Youth Emancipation Observatory from the Spanish Youth Council (CJE). The report also notes that those who choose to share an apartment must spend 35% of their monthly salary on rent—still above the level recommended by experts.

Buying a home: an almost unreachable goal

The situation is even more complicated for those who want to buy a property. The average sale price reached €197,210 in the second half of 2024. As a result, a young person would need to devote their entire salary for 14 years to purchase a home. Just the down payment requires €59,000—around 30% of the property’s total value—equivalent to four full years of wages, a figure far beyond the reach of most.

The majority of young people who do move out choose to rent, accounting for 57.9%. Few live alone, and more and more are sharing homes, since renting individually would consume nearly their entire income for a property they don’t even own.

Youth emancipation at historic lows

The rate of young people achieving independence is at its lowest point since 2006: only 15.2% managed to leave the family home between July and December 2024, representing 102,203 fewer young people compared to the previous year. This figure is 11 points below the peak prior to the 2008 crisis and 3.5 points below the level before the pandemic.

The decline is not uniform across all regions. Canary Islands and Catalonia are where youth emancipation has fallen the most, indicating that moving out is even more difficult there. By contrast, only Galicia and Cantabria registered a slight increase, of around half a percentage point.

Young people working and studying at the same time

Although many young people are employed, only 26.4% can afford to live on their own. In other words, nearly three out of four salaried young people still live in the family home. In addition, 35.5% of those aged 16 to 29 were combining work and study at the end of 2024—a much higher figure than the 2% who were neither studying nor working.

For all these reasons, the Spanish Youth Council is calling for greater public intervention in the housing sector, stressing the responsibility of public administrations to reverse this situation. They insist that without new measures and coordinated efforts, youth emancipation will continue to deteriorate, especially in large cities such as Barcelona, where housing access problems are even more acute.