The rental war is intensifying in Palma, with 64 families competing for every flat that comes up for rent, according to data published on Tuesday by the property website Idealista for the second quarter of 2025; in the first quarter of this year, the figure was 57. The report indicates that, taking the large markets as a reference, the Balearic capital is only surpassed by Barcelona, where 95 families are interested in each property rental advertisement published.
Palma is followed by Madrid, with 44 interested parties for each flat to rent, and San Sebastián and Bilbao, both with 41. The national average is 38 families for each property that comes onto the rental market. Valencia and Málaga are at approximately these levels, with 38 each, while Seville, with 36, and Alicante, with 30, are below.
Apart from the cities with the most rentals, Vitoria holds the record for the number of families interested in each rental, reaching 109 contacts. It is followed by Barcelona, Guadalajara (80 families), Tarragona (75), Pamplona (72) and Lleida (70).
At the opposite end of the scale are Salamanca and Cáceres, with only nine families competing for each property, followed by the cities of Ourense (12), Ceuta, Granada and Segovia (14 families in the three cities); while in Córdoba and Badajoz, 15 families are competing.
Francisco Iñareta, spokesperson for Idealista, says that ‘competition between families for access to housing is at an emergency level, especially in large markets.’ In his view, “the rental measures approved in recent years have created uncertainty among landlords, which has led them to withdraw their properties from the market in many cases, thus increasing the level of competition.”