Spain Sees Shift in Foreign Rental Demand as Moroccan Interest Declines

Increasingly, foreigners are looking for rental homes in Spain. At the end of 2022, 14.9% of the rental demand in the country comes from abroad, indicates the study published this Wednesday, which has noted in recent years a drop in applicants from Morocco, Colombia and Venezuela in favor of those from Poland, Canada and Norway.

The same trend is observed in Alicante, where a drop in British applicants for rental housing is noted in favor of Germans and French. American and Dutch applicants, for their part, have taken the lead over Italians, the document points out, noting that Dominican applicants are also no longer part of the list of countries from which the most searches are made to rent a house.

The real estate portal Idealista explains this paradigm shift by the occurrence of the health crisis linked to Covid-19, which has favored the rise of teleworking and a growing interest in the rental of properties. Most foreigners are looking to rent a house in the areas where they plan to buy one: the coastal and tourist enclaves.

Thus, foreign demand for rental housing exceeds 20% of the total in certain Mediterranean provinces and archipelagos, while it does not reach 5% in the provinces located in the center of the peninsula and in certain regions of the north. In detail, Alicante comes first with 30.3%, followed by Santa Cruz de Tenerife (29.6%), the Balearic Islands (27.8%), Malaga (26.9%), Las Palmas (24%).