Buying a home in Spain now requires more than 8 years' full salary
Buying a home in Spain is becoming increasingly difficult. In 2025, a worker needed to devote in full the equivalent of 8.4 years of gross salary to buy an 80-square-metre second-hand home, according to a...
Buying a home in Spain is becoming increasingly difficult. In 2025, a worker needed to devote in full the equivalent of 8.4 years of gross salary to buy an 80-square-metre second-hand home, according to a study by Fotocasa and InfoJobs.
This figure represents a sharp deterioration in housing affordability compared with the previous year. In just 12 months, the effort required to buy a home increased by 16 months' pay, rising from 7.1 years in 2024 to 8.4 years in 2025.
Behind this worsening lies the growing gap between wages and house prices. While advertised wages rose by 1% during 2025, the price of second-hand housing soared by 20.5%, reaching an average of 2,879 euros per square metre.
"Spain is going through the worst housing affordability crisis in its history. Never before have citizens had to devote so many years of their salary to buy a home," says María Matos, head of Research and spokesperson for Fotocasa.
Madrid and the Balearic Islands, the most unaffordable markets
Regional disparities remain very pronounced. The Balearic Islands are the autonomous community where it is hardest to access housing. There, a resident needs to dedicate 15.1 years of full gross salary to buy an average home, the equivalent of 181 months' pay.
Madrid is not far behind, where the effort required reaches 15 years of salary. It is also the region where the situation worsened most in 2025: the time needed to buy a home increased by 34 months compared with the previous year.
Other regions where more than ten years of salary are needed include the Canary Islands and the Basque Country, while Catalonia is approaching that threshold with 9.4 years. At the opposite end of the scale are Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura, where buying a home requires around four years of gross salary.
Only 17 provinces allow a home to be bought with less than 5 years' pay
At provincial level, the Balearic Islands once again top the ranking with 15.1 years of salary needed to buy a home. They are followed by Madrid (15 years), Málaga (12.9 years), Gipuzkoa (11.7 years), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (11.3 years) and Barcelona (10.2 years).
By contrast, Jaén is the most affordable province in the country. Its residents need three full years of gross salary to buy an 80-square-metre home. Ciudad Real, Teruel, Toledo, Zamora and Ávila also stand out, with the effort required remaining below four years.
According to the study, only 17 Spanish provinces allow a home to be purchased by allocating less than five full years of gross salary.
A widening gap between wages and housing
The authors of the report warn that the rise in wages is not enough to offset the surge in the property market. "The 1% increase recorded in 2025 falls far short of the rise in house prices," says Mónica Pérez, director of Communications and Research at InfoJobs. In her view, this gap is forcing people to devote more and more years of work and savings to accessing home ownership.
The study concludes that housing is gradually slipping further and further away from the purchasing power of households, especially in the most overheated markets, where the effort required to buy a home practically doubles the national average.
