A little more than 10 years ago, renting an apartment in Valencia could have been a bargain for more than one person. With an average gross annual salary of 20,878 euros, the ads on real estate portals ranged between 5 and 7 euros/m2. Today, those same apartments have an average price per square meter close to 16 euros.
Thanks to Archive.org’s WayBack Machine tool, we have been able to rescue old screenshots from websites such as Idealista where apartments were advertised for 500 euros near Mestalla or for 740 euros in the area of Cortes Valencianas with 140m2 for the tenant’s enjoyment.
Today, the average rent for a 70m2 apartment in Valencia is around 1,100 euros (15.7 €/m2), a value that can increase depending on the neighborhood where the property is located.
Rents are rising, have salaries gone up in Valencia?
With prices perm2 of rent having doubled in just 12 years in some neighborhoods (8.4% annual increase), how have salaries done so?
According to data from the National Institute of Statistics, in 2013 a Valencian earned on average 20,780 euros. Today, to match the rise in rent he or she should earn on average approximately 45,716 euros. But in 2024, the average Valencian salary was about 24,510 euros gross.
That is, in 2013, a rent of 500 euros represented a rate of effort close to 30%, within the economically assumable range in the so-called “30% rule”. Today, that same rent would cost around 1,100 euros and would represent an effort rate of 53%.
At present, Valencia has not been declared either by the city council or by the Generalitat Valenciana as a “stressed area”, as has happened in Barcelona, where, when this situation was declared, the caps on new rental contracts have been activated.