[bprieto]

This is exactly the case.

Here in Spain it takes months, even a year to get a judge to evict a tenant that has stopped to pay rent. In the meantime, you need to keep paying for utilities or you will be fined, not the person not paying their rent. Even when you get them out, you could find a destroyed property, just for the sake of it, and you have to pay for the repair work. So just one stroke of bad luck with a tenant will make you lose years of profits.

The laws are extremely weighted in favour of the tenant: there is a minimun contract of five years, that the tenant can broke just telling the renter a month before, but the renter can't. Just a few weeks ago, the government approved a new law so if the renter is a company and not an individual, the minimum contract period is 7 years, and in this time you can only rise your price to keep with the official inflation index. So basically investors are tying themselves for seven years with these contracts. Of course they have the option to sell, but selling a property with a tenant that has the right to live there for years with a fixed price is difficult, so you'll need to sell for a lower price.

At the end all of this regulations makes the renters very careful, so they prefer to have their properties empty or wait months to find a suitable tenant. And that means that the price is higher and only people who can show they have an stable high paying job are able to rent.

[alexgmcm]

And yet here in BCN the market is crazy.

The agency parasites are the worst - charging 10% of the annual rent just for giving you the keys and printing a copy of the contract.

I was fortunate enough to be able to rent my flat from a family friend, who was afraid of okupas if it was left empty.

That said I live far-out from the centre (which I prefer) and it is still much more expensive than when I arrived just 4 years ago.