Is Spain's €30k rent-to-buy scheme actually viable?

In mid-September, Sánchez announced in Congress an aid package of almost €30,000 per person that will be allocated to rent-to-own programmes for young people struggling to get on the property ladder.

Market experts, however, have already cast doubt on how realistic the idea will actually be and whether or not it can help young people in Spain.

When announcing the scheme, Sánchez, whose government has committed to trying to resolve housing market issues during its second term, stated that: "We're going to create a new rental aid system with an option to buy of almost €30,000 so that young people can live in a permanently protected home for years and eventually acquire it."

READ ALSO: Spain to give young people €30,000 to rent a home with option to buy

Spain's Ministry of Housing has stated that the aid will be used to pay for subsidised housing, and the rent paid will be an advance payment toward the purchase. It is also designed to prevent speculation, so if the owner wants to sell the property in the future, they must do so at an appraised price and to a person who meets the same requirements.

Encouraging though the announcement may be in theory, in reality experts wonder if it's viable at all, and much of it comes down to market supply — namely that there aren't enough properties for the scheme to work.

According to data from Spain's leading property website Idealista, between 2018 and 2025 only 632 subsidised housing units were produced for rent-to-buy in the whole of Spain, while in the last 15 months barely 65 units have been started.

Crucially, Idealista notes that "these properties make up the current total stock of homes that would be susceptible to being bought by young people with the €30,000 in aid that the government will give. Moreover, in the first quarter of this year - the latest data available - not a single rented-to-buy home has been started in the country as a whole. Nor is there any sign of finished units."

In the case of subsidised rental housing with option to buy with provisional qualification (i.e. they are still under construction and, therefore, could be eligible to benefit from the measure in the future), the balance is even more worrying: just 1,182 units built since the beginning of 2024 until last March and and 65 units in the whole of 2024.

Clearly, Sánchez's big idea needs construction to back it up. Carolina Roca, President of the Madrid Association of Real Estate Developers (Asprima), says that "the aid announced for the State Housing Plan has, once again, a conceptual error: we have a problem with the supply of subsidised housing and not the demand. The State Housing Plan should be aimed at increasing the construction of subsidised housing, so the aid should go to supply rather than demand. What sense does it make to give €30,000 in aid for a figure for which only 65 homes are built per year?".

Miguel Córdoba, an economist at CEU San Pablo University, doesn't see much sense in the proposal either: "No matter how much you offer these kinds of subsidies, you are not going to avoid the housing shortage. You will simply spend more public money… If there is no affordable housing to rent or to buy, it will hardly be rented or bought," he adds.

Furthermore, there's also some uncertainty as to whether or not the aid will be tax exempt or not.

Reports in the Spanish press suggest that it will not automatically be exempt from Personal Income Tax (IRPF) and legal sources warn that, unless the legal text expressly establishes it, the aid could be considered a capital gain or return on capital, as it is a direct subsidy from public funds.

Similarly, the junior coalition partner in Sánchez's government, far-left Sumar, has already expressed its concern about how viable the measure really is, describing it as an "empty gesture" and "aesthetic measure".

Second Deputy PM and Minister of Labour Yolanda Díaz has criticised the move, arguing that "rental assistance is a direct transfer into the pockets of landlords", and that "the urgent need is to lower prices, and this measure goes in the opposite direction".

READ ALSO: How Spain's govt will be a guarantor for defaults on rental payments