Mallorca is first for housing

ONE in every 25 houses in the Balearic Islands are used for holiday rentals, the highest percentage in Spain.

According to figures published by the National Statistics Institute (INE) for the first three months of 2023, there are currently 20,210 houses reserved for holiday lets of the total of 470,000 properties on the islands.

This means that the Balearics dedicate 4.3 per cent of homes to holiday lets, the highest percentage in Spain, with the Canary Islands in second place with 4.1 per cent.

With regards to Mallorca, 46 of the island’s 53 towns break the regional average with Alcudia as the municipality with the highest percentage – 37.3 per cent of all houses in the town are reserved for holiday lets, according to the INE.

In a related development this week, the Balearic Islands will be the first Spanish region to apply the new national Housing Law.

Regional President Francina Armengol made the announcement during the first meeting of the Balearic housing commission, when the committee also agreed to begin obtaining all the necessary information to request the declaration of ‘stress zones’ in the islands that will enable the Govern to carry out specific measures to improve the housing situation.

The information to be collected includes rental and sales prices of different types of property and their evolution over time, as well as the level of disposable income of resident households.

“We made this commitment because we are aware that the Islands have a huge challenge to ensure that access to housing is a right for residents, and we needed a national framework to move forward,” declared President Armengol to a local news source.

She added that the regional housing law approved in 2018 has already enabled “pioneering measures” to be carried out, including an increase of 74 per cent in public housing and a seven-fold rise in the number of beneficiaries of rental grants.