The increasingly impossible mission of finding a home in Spain for less than 500,000 euros

Spain’s housing market is undergoing a deep transformation that goes far beyond a simple price increase. Over the last five years, average property prices have risen by nearly 50%, and this surge is having a very clear effect: affordable housing is steadily disappearing from the market.

According to data from Idealista/data, more than 60% of listings in 2020 were priced below €200,000. By 2025, that figure has fallen to just 37.6%. In other words, in only five years, over 22 percentage points of “affordable” supply have vanished, while demand remains high and new supply struggles to keep up.

At the same time, higher-priced homes are gaining ground. Properties priced above €500,000 now account for 23.5% of all listings—double their share five years ago. This shift does not necessarily mean that more luxury homes are being built, but rather that cheaper properties sell much faster and spend far less time on the market, leaving more expensive homes to dominate listings.

The root cause is structural: a chronic lack of housing supply. When demand exceeds supply, lower-priced homes are absorbed almost immediately, and the market increasingly reflects what remains unsold. As a result, finding a property below certain price thresholds is becoming increasingly difficult, especially in major cities.

This trend does not affect all regions equally. While many provincial capitals still have a majority of listings below €200,000, their share has dropped sharply. Cities such as Pontevedra, Albacete, Valencia, Granada, Guadalajara and Málaga have lost between 30 and 40 percentage points of affordable housing supply in just five years.

In the most pressured markets, the situation is even more extreme. In San Sebastián—Spain’s most expensive city—homes below €200,000 have virtually disappeared, representing just 1.7% of current listings. Palma shows a similar pattern, with only 4.4% of properties in that price range, down from 18.8% in 2020.

Madrid and Barcelona clearly illustrate this shift. In Madrid, affordable homes have dropped from 31% of listings in 2020 to just 12.1% today. In Barcelona, the figure stands at around 14%, while the share of homes priced above €500,000 continues to rise.

In fact, in several large cities, paying more than €500,000 is no longer the exception but the norm. In San Sebastián, Palma and Madrid, more than half of all properties for sale exceed that threshold. Barcelona and Málaga are following the same path, with sharp increases since 2020.

Overall, the message is clear: affordable housing is not only becoming scarcer, but also more short-lived. Unless supply increases meaningfully—particularly in high-demand areas—this dynamic will continue to push prices higher and make access to housing increasingly difficult for a growing share of the population.