Finding a rental apartment in Mollet del Vallès seems like a treasure hunt. No sign of offers in the windows of real estate offices in the city center. Inside, there is no better luck. “To rent, sign up on the waiting list,” they explain in one of them. Among the information they request are marital status, salary, or possible guarantees.
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The situation is similar on online portals. On Idealista, there is a single permanent rental listing in this city 15 kilometers from Barcelona, one of the 22 that will stop having regulated prices from March next year. It is an 83-square-meter apartment for which they ask for a rent of 1,261 euros per month, when the average rent was 721 euros in the first quarter of the year in the municipality, according to the latest data from Incasòl.
This is by no means an isolated case. The housing shortage is widespread throughout the urban conurbation of the major Catalan cities. Hence, in 2024 the Govern decided to declare a total of 271 localities as tense residential market zones. Now, it sees signs of improvement in 22 of them, although it has extended the caps in the rest and included another 53.
The assessment made by the experts consulted is identical: regulation has stopped the intense price increase of the last decade, but problems finding housing persist.
Among the cities leaving regulation, Lleida is the most populated. Its average rent is below that of the set of tense zones, with 558 euros compared to 876 euros – see attached graph –.
The mayor of the city, Fèlix Larrosa (PSC), positively values the effect of the price cap during this time, while celebrating the municipality’s exit from the regulated market. “It is recognition of the management we are doing to increase the residential supply in Lleida,” he says. The involvement of city councils is essential to boost the supply of affordable housing. The Paeria has granted licenses to build 1,125 homes in the last three years and in 2026 they will grant another batch to build 400 social rental apartments, Larrosa adds. At the same time, it has made 11 plots available to the Generalitat’s pool, with capacity for 300 homes, in addition to approving tax breaks.
“Rents have stopped rising, but no new supply is coming in; the market is paralyzed,” laments a real estate agent
These advances in the housing stock have also been taken into account by the Generalitat to lift the rent limitation.
Granollers and Mollet del Vallès have also just approved urban plans to increase the supply of public apartments. Meanwhile, in these municipalities of Vallès Oriental as well as in Lleida or Reus, demand far exceeds supply. “We were surprised that Granollers and Mollet leave regulation; it is true that prices have been contained, but no new rentals are coming in, the market is stagnant,” says Àlex Vázquez, director of Rental Housing at Forcadell, with offices in these two cities.
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In Reus, another large locality that will stop having price caps, with 111,000 inhabitants, rents have dropped on average by almost 6%. The data also show a slowdown in the rental market: contracts signed in Reus during this period have decreased by 13%.
In the capital of Baix Camp, a dynamic city with a strong commercial, cultural, and industrial fabric, changes have indeed occurred in the market but not to everyone’s liking. The real estate sector applauds the end of public limitations and predicts that the interest of housing developers and investors will recover, who will again see options to do business with good profitability through renting.
“Investors will be able to have better profitability; in fact, we ourselves had stopped managing some sales intended for investment because with the rental reference index, the numbers did not add up and the profitability was insufficient,” states Joan Pàmies, manager of the real estate agency Finques Pàmies, based in Reus.
Sergio Nasarre, professor of Civil Law, founder of the UNESCO Chair of Housing at URV, also foresees a “very strong” increase in the supply of rental apartments, “very low and until now hidden in Reus because owners did not want to put their apartments on the market.” Nasarre also predicts an “incredible” increase in demand from residents of nearby municipalities with controlled rent due to the “border effect.” On average, he emphasizes, the rental supply has dropped by 20% in a “completely paralyzed market.”
“Leaving the tense zone recognizes municipal management,” says the mayor of Lleida, Fèlix Larrosa
But there is also concern about the expected price rebound. The mayor of Reus, Sandra Guaita (PSC), maintains that regulation has been an “effective tool to facilitate access to housing.” The City Council has completed the construction of the municipal affordable housing development in the Riera complex. The rental price of these 48 new homes will be between 350 and 500 euros per month.
Not far from Reus, in Vila-seca, on the Costa Daurada, the opposite transition will now take place, as the municipality is included in the tense zone. The mayor, Pere Segura (Junts), applauds the Generalitat’s decision although he regrets that “it comes late.” The average rental price in his city has risen by 21% in the last two years. With 25,000 residents but a population that multiplies in summer, Vila-seca has a very strong housing demand due to its great dynamism, especially thanks to tourism and the chemical industry. Martorell (Baix Llobregat), one of the few cities in the Barcelona area that was left out of the caps in 2024, will also move to the regulated market.
