More than 40,000 listings and only six affordable apartments: renting in capital cities on a young person's salary is almost impossible.

Among more than 40,000 rental listings from all of Spain's provincial capitals, only six met the theoretical price limit that would be affordable for a young person. The Spanish Youth Council (CJE) warned this Tuesday that a young person who wants to live alone would have to spend, on average, 92.3% of their salary on rent: three times more than the threshold established by the Housing Law. Affordable housing for a young person, the same study calculated, should cost a maximum of €351 per month. That same Tuesday, EL PAÍS searched Idealista, Spain's largest real estate website, for apartments that met this requirement. The results make it clear that finding something like this in the current real estate market is more like a pipe dream than a real possibility.

An apartment in Lleida that doesn't even have a photo and a "studio" on the fourth floor without an elevator in Ourense are two of the needles appearing in the real estate haystack for up to 350 euros a month. Four more are added: one in Córdoba, one in Cuenca, one in Granada, and another in Jaén. The latter is the only one offering more than 30 square meters to the potential tenant. And then there are no more. There seem to be some possibilities in Albacete, Murcia, Almería, Cádiz, and Santander. But clicking on it reveals the trick: the "apartment rental" advertised in the headline of one of the ads transforms into a "seasonal rental for students by room." At least it says so in capital letters and on the first line. It's clear that, with a young salary, there may be no choice but to share.

But it's not easy either. Victoria Ramos, 29, says she's been looking for a two-bedroom apartment with a garage in Oviedo for a whole year to move in with her boyfriend, Daniel. They both have steady jobs—she as a kitchen assistant and he as a painter—and earn a combined income of about 2,800 euros a month. But almost everything they find is beyond their means: "We'd have to give up a lot of things," she laments. They started searching on real estate websites, but says desperation has also led them to try their luck on other sites like Facebook. When they've seen potential opportunities, after submitting pay stubs, employment records, bank deposits, or undergoing a review to purchase default insurance, they've felt left out: "We always get to this stage and then no one answers."

If more than one salary comes into the home—based on the average income of a household headed by a young person—the CJE establishes a maximum tolerable amount of 692 euros per month. The results when searching on Idealista improve somewhat, but are still not encouraging: only 6.2% of the 40,071 listings in provincial capitals fit this parameter. And in some of them, the supply is very limited (fewer than five listings) or completely nonexistent.

The latter is the case in Vitoria and Valencia, where no apartment is priced below €700. This is only €8 more than the threshold, and for that effort, you can qualify for a pair of studios in the Valencian capital, measuring 15 and 17 square meters. In nine other cities, there are opportunities to rent without overspending, but they are remote. In Barcelona, only 0.04% of all listings meet the requirement; in Palma, 0.1%; 0.2% in San Sebastián; and 0.3% in both Madrid and Bilbao.

In the opposite situation, there are four areas where more than half of the real estate offering is made up of properties within the reach of a young household: Zamora (75%), Palencia (64.1%), Ciudad Real (51.1%), and Badajoz (50%). These percentages seem sufficient to overcome another obstacle that arises upon closer analysis: the proliferation of advertisements where the fine print includes requirements such as "single studio," "maximum one person," or even "couples prohibited."

Scams and deceptions on platforms

Being one of the few young people who pay around 30% of their income on rent can mean resigning yourself to precarious conditions. That's roughly what Sara Ajanif and her partner pay for one of the eight rooms in an apartment in Madrid. It took them two months and a scam to find a place that would accommodate two people and was within their budget: "When you get into the housing world, you discover that many of the ads are from gangs taking advantage of young people who are in need and in a hurry," says this 29-year-old teacher.

Hunting for the cheapest prices means having to use all five senses in every search. Despite searching only in the "housing" category, there are plenty of ads for rooms in shared houses or residences. Sometimes, spaces appear that don't seem to meet the minimum habitable conditions. The cheapest listing found in Valladolid is a "mezzanine studio," which consists of "a single multifunctional space" and "a separate kitchen and bathroom." A convoluted way of describing what looks like an empty storage room with a glass door.

Faced with this hostile outlook, Ajanif and her partner opted to save because they didn't want to throw away their plan to buy a decent home, rather than "small spaces in almost isolated areas and in fairly average conditions," she explains. "We decided to live like this temporarily, with the aim of being able to buy, but we know this will take a long time, even though I have the privilege of having some savings because I've been working since I was 16 and can have a certain income," she explains. For Ramos and her boyfriend, it's simply unthinkable: "If you don't have the money to pay the rent, how are you going to have the 20% the bank is asking for a down payment?" the young woman asks.

Extended search

In addition to sharing, or simply accepting overcrowding, another strategy to reduce housing costs is to move away from the main centers, where housing tends to be more expensive. But the gap between the real estate market and the material reality of those under 30 becomes evident when analyzing the total Idealista listings in each province. Only 0.5% of the 82,064 homes advertised throughout Spain remain below €351 per month.

In 13 provinces, not a single apartment appears for less than this price. And in nine other provinces, only one is listed. In the Balearic Islands, the cheapest property, incorrectly assigned to the "housing" category, is for a "spacious room in a hotel with a pool in Capdepera" for 500 euros per month. In Madrid, the most affordable listing is asking 490 euros per month for a villa in Mangirón, 71 kilometers and about 50 minutes by car from the capital. The trend is similar in most of the remaining provinces, leaving Jaén as the only one where the rate of properties with affordable rents for young people reaches double the figure (15.3%) and is also close to the capital.