Casamona in the Media

Casamona in the New York Times

House Hunting in Spain: A Restored Two-Bedroom in Central Barcelona

New rent-control laws and the pandemic downturn have made the Catalonian capital a tougher sell for investors than in years past.

Barcelona, the coastal capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, has not seen housing prices and rents grow at the pace they have in other major European cities over the past decade, said Tine Mathiassen, the founder and director of Casamona Real Estate, a Barcelona agency that caters to foreign buyers.

Faced with a housing shortage, Catalonia’s government enacted a rent-control law in 2020 that effectively discouraged investors from buying and spurred landlords to list their homes for sale, particularly in the city center, Ms. Mathiassen said. Then the pandemic arrived to hamper tourism, which severely reduced the pool of buyers and made it harder still for rental properties to turn a profit.

The colliding factors have made Barcelona a tougher sell for investors than in years past. “I think the sellers have a hard time accepting that the prices have gone down,” Ms. Mathiassen said. Meanwhile, potential buyers worry about rent caps: “They’re not ready to pay more for those apartments.”

Barcelona is still very attractive to foreign buyers, who view real estate as a long-term investment. Prices in the city have struggled to keep pace. Prices have fallen around 20 percent since the start of the pandemic. According to Ms. Mathiassen, prices are likely to have hit rock bottom.

The pandemic has motivated buyers from Scandinavia to purchase vacation homes. Also buyers from America has been growing slowly. This is mainly due to the Golden Visa program in Spain. Foreigners are treated exactly as Spanish citizens and are thus not restricted from buying real estate in Spain. 

To read the full article, please click here.

Casamona in the Financial Times

How a dearth of tourists has transformed Barcelona’s property market

As rents plummet, locals are able to upgrade and some buyers have secured discounts

The rental prices in Barcelona have plummeted since the start of the pandemic. This is mainly due to the landlords that used their apartments for tourists, but now are flooding the market with empty apartments. Rental prices per square meter in Barcelona went down by 16.5 percent. Although this is bad news for landlords, for renters this allows them to upgrade to bigger apartments in better areas. Catalonia also enacted a new rent-control law to curb the rapidly increasing rental prices.

With the prices of houses going down, more foreign buyers enter the market. Tine Mathiassen, founder and owner of Casamona, mentions in the interview with the Financial Times that most of the houses she has sold recently were to young overseas buyers. These buyers have a salary from their home country but choose to live in Barcelona because of the value for money, the relatively low living expenses, and low taxes.

As Barcelona is starting to open up after the lockdown, foreign buyers and local renters are seizing their opportunities.

To read the full article, please click here