13.2% of Spaniards live in homes with delays in mortgage, rent and bills.

13.2% of Spaniards live in households that are accumulating delays in paying their mortgage, rent or bills for essential services, such as electricity, water or gas. This is a higher percentage than that of other neighboring countries, such as Germany, France, Italy or Portugal and also exceeds that recorded by all the states of the European Union (9.2%). The data is extracted from the latest edition of the ‘Housing in Europe’ report published annually by Eurostat, the European statistics office, and which offers a perspective of what happened between 2010 and 2022 in this area.

From the evolution of this indicator in just over a decade, it is clear that in 2020, marked by the most severe effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the percentage of Spaniards residing in a home with delays in paying bills increased. shot up to 13.5% (from 8.1% in 2019). Although, it would not reach its ceiling until the following year, when it stood at 14.3%, compared to the 8.9% it reached on average among the Twenty-Seven.

The data is surprising because it assumes that in 2022 there was a higher proportion of people in this situation than in 2010 (11.7%), a year in which the economy stagnated and did not fully take off from the first recession caused by the financial crisis and in which the unemployment rate stood at 20.33% at the end of the fourth quarter, according to the Active Population Survey (EPA).

It is true that the European Central Bank reduced interest rates to 1% in 2009 and kept them there until April 2011, while last year they ended the year at 2.5% in the midst of the fastest rise since the creation. of the euro (the report only includes a part of that rally, given that it falls outside the year 2023). But it is also true that the percentage of variable rate mortgages is much lower now than a decade ago and that the delinquency rate has fallen sharply in this period and remains in the minimum zone, based on the information published monthly. . and the Bank of Spain.

And it is also surprising because Eurostat points out in its report that there are only five countries in which the data worsened last year in relation to 2010. Spain is one of them and the rest are Denmark, Germany, Greece and Luxembourg. The pandemic took its toll on the Spanish economy due to its exposure to the tourism sector and services. The exit came with force, but the energy and inflation crisis and the consequences of the war in Ukraine soon arrived. Inflation averaged 8.4% last year, affecting the purchasing power of households, despite the deployment of extraordinary measures approved by the Government to address it.

Indicators on housing affordability

Delays in payment of bills is one of the indicators that Eurostat uses to check whether housing is affordable in the Member States, but it is not the only one. The report also looks at the rate of overload or excess housing costs, which shows what proportion of the population lives in a home where its total expenses (mortgage) represent more than 40% of their disposable income. For a In the same country, statistics offer disaggregated data for urban and rural areas.

Last year in the EU as a whole, 10.6% of the population in cities lived in such a home, while the corresponding rate in rural areas was 6.6%. The highest rates of excess housing costs in cities were observed in Greece (27.3%) and Denmark (22.5%). In the case of Spain, 11% of the population in cities and 4.7% of those in rural areas had to dedicate just under half of their available rent last year to housing.

The same statistic reflects how rental prices have risen without pause since 2015, although in national territory they did so at a greater rate than in the European Union as a whole until 2020 and then the escalation has been more intense in the size of the partners. . Europeans. “There has been a constant increase in rents in the EU between 2010 and 2022: in total 18% during the entire period,” notes the report, which warns that this increase affected all Member States except Greece (-25 %), with the largest ones affecting Estonia (+210%), Lithuania (+144%) and Ireland (+84%).