House prices rose 20.5% in 2025, while wages edged up just 1%. The Balearic Islands and Madrid are where buying a home demands the greatest financial effort.
Buying a home in Spain is becoming increasingly difficult. In 2025, a worker had to devote the equivalent of 8.4 years of their full gross salary to purchase an 80-square-metre second-hand home, according to a study by Fotocasa and InfoJobs.
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The figure represents a sharp deterioration in housing affordability compared with the previous year. In just 12 months, the effort required to buy a home increased by 16 months’ pay, rising from 7.1 years in 2024 to 8.4 years in 2025.
Behind this worsening lies the growing gap between wages and house prices. While advertised wages rose by 1% in 2025, the price of second-hand housing jumped by 20.5%, reaching an average of 2,879 euros per square metre.
“Spain is going through the worst housing affordability crisis in its history. Never before have citizens had to put so many years of pay towards buying a home,” says María Matos, Head of Research and spokesperson for Fotocasa.
Madrid and the Balearic Islands, the least accessible markets
Regional differences remain very pronounced. The Balearic Islands are the autonomous community where it is hardest to access housing. There, a resident needs to devote 15.1 years of their full gross salary to buy an average home, equivalent to 181 months’ pay.
Madrid is close behind, where the effort required reaches 15 years’ salary. It is also the region where the situation deteriorated most in 2025: the time needed to buy a home increased by 34 months compared with the previous year.
Regions such as the Canary Islands and the Basque Country also exceed ten years of salary, while Catalonia is approaching that threshold at 9.4 years. At the other end of the scale are Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura, where buying a home requires around four years of gross pay.
Only 17 provinces allow a home to be bought with less than 5 years’ pay
At provincial level, the Balearic Islands again top the ranking, with 15.1 years of salary needed to buy a home. They are followed by Madrid (15 years), Málaga (12.9 years), Guipuzcoa (11.7 years), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (11.3 years) and Barcelona (10.2 years).
By contrast, Jaén is the most affordable province in the country. Its residents need three full years of gross salary to buy an 80-square-metre home. Ciudad Real, Teruel, Toledo, Zamora and Ávila also stand out, where the effort remains below four years.
According to the study, only 17 Spanish provinces allow a home to be bought by devoting less than five full years of gross salary.
A widening gap between wages and housing
The authors of the report warn that rising wages are not enough to offset the surge in the property market. “The 1% increase recorded in 2025 falls far short of the rise in house prices,” says Mónica Pérez, Director of Communications and Studies at InfoJobs. In her view, this gap is forcing people to devote more and more years of work and savings to buying a home of their own.
The study concludes that housing is gradually slipping out of reach of households’ purchasing power, especially in the most overheated markets, where the effort required to buy a home virtually doubles the national average.
