Sharing a flat is a common stage in many people’s lives, traditionally associated with youth. For different generations, the first stop after leaving the family home has been a shared dwelling, sometimes with strangers. Today, however, the impossibility of buying a flat due to high prices is leading many young people to prolong this life stage. In this context, the offer of rooms —not the entire dwelling— has emerged as a refuge: this option grew by 17% in 2025 compared to 2024, a year in which the year-on-year increase had already been 22%, according to data from Fotocasa. Some companies even promote the purchase of a room as a way to become a homeowner.
Statistics handled by this portal indicate that the average price in Spain for a rented room in February was 508.69 euros, 0.1% more than in the same month of 2025. However, communities such as Castilla-La Mancha, despite starting with a price substantially lower than the average (300 euros), have shown a double-digit year-on-year growth (10.2%) during this time. Catalonia marks the record, with 626 euros, closely followed by Madrid (600).
At the whim of this phenomenon —and following the mantra of Jack Ma, owner of the giant Alibaba: “Opportunities are where there are problems and people complaining”— some pioneering business initiatives have germinated. One of them has to do, precisely, with the sale of rooms. A kind of intermediate leap between tenancy and ownership that does not require as high an investment as buying a flat. “Since we started in February 2024, we have already sold more than 250 units, including studios,” explains Oriol Valls, founder with Anna Bedmar of the start-up Habitación.com.
Selling rooms of a property separately is not a legal practice. The property registry lists several owners of the property, without further details. And in practice, contracts detail what percentage of the flat each owner has based on the rooms they have acquired (plus a percentage of the common areas). “The purchase and sale operation is carried out by public deed before a notary, with [the different owners] being the titleholders in the Property Registry,” as detailed on their website.
According to Valls, their job consists of mediating between “people who want to sell a flat and people who want to buy a room.” They are not the ones who set the price, but “the market.” This is reached by dividing the total value of the property by the number of rooms, which would be the same if all of them share characteristics and size; or different if they do not. “Right now, no young person wants a flat with three rooms, because they are neither getting married nor having children. What we facilitate for them is that they can buy their first property, and that it serves them not to throw money away on rent; that they generate assets and then decide what to do with them,” Valls insists.
Living in rented accommodation is the reality for two out of every 10 households in Spain, according to the INE. “I’ve been in a seven-room flat for a year. Sometimes cohabitation is a bit difficult,” admits Luis Bustamante, on the other end of the phone. At 26, he came to the capital to study a master’s degree, and now, after finding a job, he hopes to stay “around here” for a while. “I think I’ve already shared a house with eleven different people,” he adds.
According to data from the Pisos.com portal, young people between 16 and 34 years old allocate more than a third of their net salary to renting a room. In Barcelona, this rises to 55.19%; the highest amount ahead of Madrid (53.15%), Palma (52.74%), Valencia (52.69%), San Sebastián (47.42%), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (43.06%) and Cádiz (40.45%). At the opposite extreme are capitals such as Badajoz (18.03%), Cáceres (18.79%), Burgos (21.00%), Palencia (21.05%), Córdoba (21.27%) and Zamora (21.36%).
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“What we are seeing is not a generation that doesn’t want to buy. It’s a generation that can’t even consider it because their income dissolves month by month in rent,” warns Ferran Font, spokesperson and director of Studies at Pisos.com. “Until that changes, the buying and selling market will remain inaccessible to a very wide segment of the young population, with consequences that go far beyond residential matters: they affect couple decisions, birth rates, consumption capacity, and the economy as a whole,” he adds.
Greater effort
Their situation reflects the daily life of many young graduates who, despite having a job, cannot afford to live alone. Luis pays 400 euros for a room in a flat in the Ventas neighborhood, in Madrid. He claims to be lucky, as his is one of the most spacious rooms in the flat, “with a large bed, desk, and wardrobe”; and there are others that are “immensely small,” he notes ironically. Despite this, Bustamante admits that he would not buy a room. “I understand that it’s a way to have something of your own, but I think I would perhaps try to make a slightly greater effort and buy, for example, a studio,” he acknowledges.
A search on Idealista and Fotocasa —which each receive over 11 million visits per month— shows that the offer of rooms is one of the most in-demand currently. On both platforms, the existing offer is more than 40,000 rooms —on Pisos.com, the third on the list, it’s barely 6,500—, and prices (for long stays) range from 50 euros per month for the cheapest (in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona) to 1,066 for one on Calle Mayor, in the center of Madrid.
Rodrigo Merino, 25, has been renting in Argüelles (Madrid) for three years. He shares a flat with three other people, and each pays a different price. His is 600 euros a month. “And it’s the cheapest of the four,” he assures. Merino came to Madrid from his native Córdoba and is currently studying a Master’s in Advanced Museum and Historical-Artistic Heritage Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid, while working as a cultural manager. “I found the room through a portal, and everything happened very quickly, because this is a highly sought-after neighborhood,” he admits. His intention is to return to Córdoba to prepare for a public examination. “There, prices have nothing to do with those in Madrid, and I aspire to find something I can afford for myself,” he anticipates. “The idea of buying a room sounds like aberrant speculation to me, reflecting that everything related to housing has gotten out of hand,” he laments.
Breaking the cycle
Lorena Pérez, in her thirties, lives in Madrid, although she works at a photovoltaic plant in Olmedo, a town in Valladolid. However, from Monday to Thursday, she stays overnight in Arévalo (Ávila), 30 minutes away by car, in a flat rented by her own company. The rest of the week she rests in the capital, in a room for which she pays 360 euros. “Flats are becoming incredibly expensive everywhere, and paying 900 euros just for myself is unaffordable,” she says. “The project I’m on now is temporary, that’s why I like being in Madrid,” she observes. Asked if she would buy a room, she admits she would be interested: “It would be a good solution to break out of this cycle.”
