Earning more is not enough: house prices in Spain rise faster than wages
Annual pay differs by about €10,000 between Spanish regions, but a 90 m² home can cost up to €383,000 more. In the Balearic Islands and Madrid, buyers need over €129,000 saved for a deposit.
Published on 16/09/2026 - 16:00 GMT+2
In Spain, earning a good salary does not necessarily make it easy to buy a home. An analysis by iAhorro reveals wide disparities between regions: while salaries vary by around 10,000 euros a year across Spain, the price of a 90-square-metre home can differ by almost 383,000 euros.
The biggest hurdle is the money that has to be saved before applying for a mortgage. To buy a 90-square-metre home, the buyer has to put down around 30% of the price for the deposit and other costs. In the Balearic Islands, that comes to about 144,000 euros, compared with 29,000 in Extremadura and 30,000 in Castile-La Mancha.
Prices account for much of this gap. A 90-square-metre property costs around 480,000 euros in the Balearic Islands and 431,000 in Madrid. By contrast, in Extremadura it is about 97,000 euros and in Castile-La Mancha around 100,000. So a higher salary does not always offsetthe cost of housing.
Savings also make the difference. If a family sets aside 35% of its income to save for the deposit, in nine regions it could gather the money needed in less than five years. These are Galicia, Navarra, Aragón, La Rioja, Murcia, Asturias, Castile and León, Extremadura and Castile-La Mancha.
At the other end of the scale are the Balearic Islands, Madrid and the Canary Islands. In these territories, five years of saving would not be enough to reach the price of a 90-square-metre home. For someone buying alone, the effort is even greater: they would need to save for 14.2 years in the Balearic Islands, 10.7 in Madrid and 10.1 in the Canary Islands.
For iAhorro's Head of Communications, Laura Martínez, quoted in a statement, the main problem is not so much paying the mortgage as pulling together the money to get started: "The hardest part is managing to save."
According to the analysis, young people and buyers living alone are those who find it hardest to overcome this first barrier.
