For the first time, Malaga City Council has decided to limit new short-term rental licenses to properties with a separate entrance. A measure aimed at limiting the proliferation of tourist rentals in this city, which is very popular with visitors.
These last years, Malaga has experienced an explosion in the number of tourist accommodations: 846 in 2016, compared to 12,000 in 2024, almost fourteen times more in less than a decade., according to data from the public body Costa del Sol Tourism. This is one of the reasons why, according to some experts, the price of housing, both for renting and buying, has increased – in recent years the city has always occupied the first places in the rankings of real estate prices – and also the eviction of residents from different neighborhoods, as the Malaga Tenants’ Union has repeatedly denounced.
“Even with a good average salary, you can’t pay rent and live here. It’s mission impossible“, deplores a retiree she meets in one of the shopping streets of the city center. Another passer-by is alarmed by the fate reserved for the city’s young residents. “We know that tourism is the lifeblood of our city. But when our children are looking for an apartment or a house to live in, the search for a rental becomes crazy, let alone buying a place to live!”.
Among the Spanish cities with more than half a million inhabitants, the Andalusian city has the most tourist apartments : 2.7% of all its properties are intended for visitors, while the national average is 1.33%.
With these new restrictive measures, Malaga joins other tourist cities and territories that have promoted similar measures such as the Balearic Islands, San Sebastian, Barcelona, Gijón, Madrid, Seville and even Valencia.
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