Is Barcelona back on the menu for British homebuyers?

Marion and David Dowson have been holidaying in Barcelona for 20 years and often talked about having a home there. Last summer, the couple from Newcastle finally bought a two-bedroom apartment in the Eixample district, where they are enjoying the America’s Cup regatta.
“The Catalan independence put us off buying, but it really makes sense to do so — we’ve been seven times already this year,” says Marion, 56, who has five grown-up children with David, 68. “We love the fact we can walk or cycle everywhere, along with the great restaurants and the shopping. We are thinking of chartering a small yacht to see the [regatta] races up close.”
For the next couple of months, the Mediterranean city will be filled with wealthy race participants and high-end visitors for the famous yachting event, many of whom will stay in apartments, boosting the city’s buoyant holiday rentals market.
Yet this comes at a time when Spain’s most visited city is having a summer of “tourism-phobia”, with water-pistol-toting locals targeting visitors this month.
The city’s mayor, Jaume Collboni, has announced an increased tourist tax for cruise passengers who contribute to overcrowding, following last month’s promise to ban tourist rentals by 2028.
Yet while the backlash over tourism and the proliferation of Airbnb lets simmers on, the city’s housing market has bounced back, having been rocked by the Catalan independence crisis of 2017.
In the first quarter of 2024, sales to foreign buyers were up 17.5 per cent in Barcelona city, though down by 15 per cent in Catalonia as a whole, according to land registry data. The total number of sales in Barcelona were up 0.3 per cent, year on year.
“Barcelona was one of the few areas in Spain where the number of foreign buyers increased in Q1, along with Murcia and Cadiz,” says Mark Stücklin of the data analyst Spanish Property Insight. For a decade, its growth in asking prices lagged behind both Madrid and Valencia city, according to Idealista.
This trend is confirmed by Rob Jamieson of the agent Lucas Fox. “We went through a rough few years, not helped by very strict Covid restrictions, but now we are seeing a spike in UK and US buyers looking to be based here, often remote working.”
He says some of the lowest mortgage rates in the eurozone are helping — about 2.7 per cent for a long-term fixed-rate deal.
Like Marion and David, many buyers are spending €500,000 to €600,000 (£425,000 to £510,000) on a centrally located apartment, and applying for a golden visa while they can. The visa grants residency to non-EU buyers with a purchase of at least €500,000, although the scheme is set to finish (the date has not yet been specified).
Pablo Balea Vicente, head of Savills Residential in Barcelona also notes an uptick in the €500k-€1 million property price bracket. He attributes this to recent “frenzied” golden-visa purchases in Eixample and the Zona Alta neighbourhoods of Pedralbes, Sarria and Sant Gervasi.
“Overseas buyers are mainly from France, Switzerland, Benelux, USA, Germany and the UK. We are seeing some investors who left to look at places such as Lisbon, Malaga and Madrid [after the 2017 crisis] now return.”
The investment manager Hans Erickson, based in Palo Alto, California, agrees. In 2021, he purchased a one-bedroom apartment in the super-prime 30-storey Antares tower in the beachfront Diagonal Mar. He rents out the serviced apartment when not using it himself.
“As a mountain and beach place full of healthy people it was a good fit for a Californian,” says Hans, 61. “It’s now a very global place, super-lively as a work and holiday base — and it made sense to get a golden visa.”
Apartments in the tower average €13,000 per square metre, punchy for Barcelona, a city where the average price is €4,424, according to the land registry — but new-build schemes have been in short supply since the previous mayor, Ada Colau, imposed a 30 per cent quota of social housing in developments above 600 square metres. This led to a collapse in home-building and drove up prices.
Few affordable homes have been built as a consequence, when the regional government expected up to 400 per year.
“That policy was a complete failure,” Jamieson says. “The new mayor has said that the 30 per cent rule will be ended.” The agent will soon be selling new-build loft-style projects in the former industrial buildings of the seaside Poblenou start-up district — with licences pre-dating the quota.
The shortage of housing has been exacerbated by new government rent controls, making long-term lets unattractive to landlords, who are changing to medium-term rentals.
“The shift to medium-term lets, lasting 32 days to 11 months, is meeting strong demand from digital nomads and students, but there are now too many listings,” says Pablo Zubicaray of the rentals platform Olaliving.es. “The city needs to sort out the housing crisis rather than creating this tourism-phobia.”
Yet being a tenant is attractive, says Olivia Way, who moved over from Willesden Green in northwest London in 2019 and rents a three-bedroom apartment in Eixample, which she shares with her Venezuelan husband, Mario, 38, and their 18-month-old daughter.
“We have a five-year contract, during which our €1,800 per month rent can’t go up, and it really feels like home,” says Olivia, 29, who works for AirDNA, a data analyst.
“I can walk ten minutes to work, or to the nursery. Buying is much less attractive — there are no first-time buyer benefits, and we’d pay €500,000 for a smaller flat. Not having any outside space is the compromise.”
• In 2021, Barcelona was the first European city to ban Airbnb room rentals of 31 days or less.• Aside from the golden visa, the digital nomad visa and the non-lucrative visa are ways to spend more than 90 days in any 180 in Spain.• Property purchase tax (ITP) in Catalonia starts at 10 per cent of the agreed price.