If you are moving to Barcelona, then the first line of your to-do list probably says " Find a place to live in Barcelona! "
Finding rental flats or rooms in Barcelona is really not that difficult, but it does help a lot if you know which websites are good for finding rooms, flats and houses for long term rent in Barcelona.
In this article we have listed comments and links to rental accommodation websites, that we hope will be useful for students looking to rent rooms in a shared flats, for new residents looking for long term furnished or unfurnished rental flats, for overseas residents buying a flat in Barcelona as a second home and for tourists looking for short term holiday flats in Barcelona.
Click on the links below to go down further down this page to the section that you are interested in:
Renting rooms in shared flats is very common in Barcelona. Many young people in Barcelona cannot afford their own flat. They have to either stay at home with their parents, or share a flat with other young people in Barcelona.
For young foreigners, who come to Barcelona to work or study, renting a room in a shared flat is an easy, fast and cheap solution.
The contract for a room in a shared flat will normally be an quite informal agreement with the flat owner.
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The monthly rent is always paid in advance. The normal deposit is 1 months rent. So when you move in, you would normally have to pay 2 months rent and you will get the deposit amount back when you vacate the room, if you leave the room in the same condition as it was, when you moved in.
Rented rooms are almost always furnished. The furnished rooms are usually quite spartan, but you can always visit the Mecca of affordable Scandinavian style, IKEA, to get a few extra things.
In a shared flat you often live with 2-4 other tenants. There is a good chance some of them are native Spanish speakers either from Spain or Latin America, which will help you practise the Spanish that many are learning at Spanish schools in Barcelona.
Sharing with other tenants means your roommates can also help you with lots of other practical things in Barcelona like getting around, where the best Barcelona nightlife is, and other practical tips.
The only downside to sharing is – well, is that you are sharing!
Sharing means everyone has to agree on some ground rules about things like having visitors over, sharing bills, using phones and so on. Reaching agreement on this can be a sometimes painful but useful education in co-existence and tolerance and peace love and misunderstanding!
One way is to walk around the area of Barcelona, that you want to live in looking upwards for signs advertising flats for rent. These are usually long term rentals.
Look for the words “piso en alquiler” or “pis en lloguer”, which both mean “flat for rent” in Spanish and Catalan respectively.
A faster way and one that avoids neck pains, is to visit accommodation websites in Barcelona. This is simply faster and you will get a full description of the flat often with pictures.
For long term rentals in Barcelona, we recommend that you always use rental agencies, unless you are renting from friends or family.
The reason that we recommend this is that the sums of deposit money can be quite big when renting long term and it is simply safer to use an agency and get a proper rental contract.
The usual contract term is for a long term rental in Barcelona is 5 years total with a 1 year minimum period. That means you can leave after 1 year and stay for up to 5 years.
The monthly rent is usually adjusted upwards by a very small amount on an annual basis, but a major price change can only happen after 5 years.
The usual payment terms for a renting a long term flat or apartment in Barcelona are:
-1 month rent in advance, -1 or 2 months rent for the property agency -1 or 2 months of deposit for the owner --------------------------------------------------------- = Total 3 or 5 months rent in total.
The rental terms can of course vary from agent to agent and owner to owner. Some agents charge a % of the first years rent instead of one months rent. You can always try and negotiate your own terms.
Many owners are looking for financially reliable tenants. Generally if you already live in Barcelona and have a job with a contract and official pay slips, then it is enough to show solvency by providing copies of your last 3 months of pay slips and a copy of the previous year’s tax return.
However, if you have just arrived in Barcelona and do not have a job or credit history, then the owner can quite rightly be nervous that you might choose not to stay in Barcelona, or that you might not be able to get a job or that something else could happen that might prevent you from paying the rent.
If you skip town without paying the rent, then the owner will lose money and will have the hassle of finding new tenants.
To try and avoid this and to find the “financially viable” tenants, it is quite typical that owners of flats for long term rent in Barcelona ask future tenants to provide an “Aval bancario" which is a bank guarantee.
If you agree to an “Aval bancario,” then you as the future tenant will have to deposit an amount equivalent to 3-6 or even 12 months rent with a Spanish bank and then the bank can step in with your Aval money and act as a guarantor, should you be unable to pay the rent.
The “Aval bancario” is a really just an extra form of deposit or security for the owner. If you do not want to give the owner an Aval, then you might offer to pay an extra deposit or even pay some months of rent in advance.
The main disadvantage of the Aval bancario is that this amount is usually only returned when you vacate the flat in Barcelona and that could be years. But you could also offer to provide an aval that is only valid for 1 year - not until you leave.
That way the owner has an chance to get to know you. After a year of rent payments perhaps the owner will have greater trust in your ability to keep up the rent payments and you can dissolve the Aval.
Renting holiday apartments in Barcelona has become a very popular alternative to hotels.
Renting an apartment in Barcelona is not much cheaper for singles or couples, but for groups and companies attending trade fairs it provides much more more space and freedom and big savings.
There are many reputable and experienced holiday apartment rental agencies in Barcelona that offer tourist apartments and rent by days flats and apartments in Barcelona.
Buying property in Barcelona can be both profitable and rewarding. Barcelona has seen a dramatic rise in visitors to Barcelona in the 15 years, since the Olympics in 1992 thanks to the world attention the games brought and also to the many low-cost flights into Barcelona, Girona and Reus airports.
As a place to buy a second homes Barcelona is a huge favourite in Europe. Many visitors have become permanent residents of Barcelona or have chosen to buy flats and apartments in Barcelona. It is a great investment which can be used on weekend breaks and rented out by the many short term rental companies when the owners are not using it.
There are many “agencias immobiliarios” (real estate agencies) in Barcelona. We have collected links to the agencies that are recommended and can offer services in English and other languages.
