According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in its biennial report “Regions and Cities: Overview 2026”, housing prices in major Spanish urban centres are 24.9% higher than the national average.
Price gap between areas
The report states that, across OECD countries, housing in urban centres is on average 27% more expensive than the national figure, while in peripheral metropolises it is 15% cheaper, and in areas outside functional urban zones it is 34% cheaper.
In Spain the urban premium is 24.9%, i.e. slightly below the OECD average. In urban peripheral areas prices in Spain are 23% below the national average, and in areas outside functional urban zones they are 38% lower.
Financial burden on buyers in metropolises
The report notes that residents of large metropolises typically need substantially more years of income to buy a home than those living elsewhere, since higher prices are partly offset by higher incomes.
In Spain the greatest financial burden is recorded in the Málaga–Marbella and Palma de Mallorca areas, where buying a home requires 4.52 and 4.33 years of income respectively compared with the national average. In Madrid and Barcelona the cost exceeds the national average by 2.7 and 1.6 years respectively, while Castellón shows a negative gap of 4.8 years, yielding a difference between the extremes of roughly nine years.
Housing supply and vacant dwellings
In Spain the gap in the share of vacant housing between urban centres and areas outside functional urban zones was one of the largest among analysed countries: in cities this indicator was 8 percentage points below the national average, while in remote areas it exceeded the average by 14.6 percentage points.
Since 2011 housing supply in large metropolises has grown more slowly than the population, despite generally higher initial prices. “These differences reflect a larger housing shortage in urban centres, where many people move for work or study, and where building is often constrained by land scarcity, regulations and local opposition to development,” the OECD report says.
The average mortgage amount in Spain rose by 9.7% to 174 866 euro, and the average interest rate on new mortgages stood at 2.98%.
