Why the large US investment funds opted for buying houses in Spain and what role they have in the housing crisis

Some large investment funds in the United States stand out among the largest housing holders and have acquired prominence after having broken into the Spanish market in the last two decades.

Signatures such as Blackstone, Cerberus and Goldman Sachs, among others, landed in Spain in the years in which the difficulties in access to housing were accentuated.

Spain has for decades a destination desired by foreign buyers for their warm climate, their quality of life, their security and their tourist attractions. It is the second country in the world that receives the most foreign visitors a year, only behind France.

Large areas of its coastline and the Balearic and Canarian archipelagos have been the place of permanent residence for foreigners, mainly from northern Europe, who chose to retire there instead of in their countries, where it rains more, it is colder and the cost of life is generally higher.

To this we must add the thousands of houses and apartments that in recent years have ceased to be habitual housing to become tourist or seasonal apartments in which foreign visitors are housed.

In addition, Spain has been a great immigration receiver in recent years. With 1.2 million more foreign residents since 2022, those who arrive from outside have contributed 84% of the increase in the population that has occurred in the last three years, contributing to the increase in housing demand.

In that context, the properties have experienced a pronounced revaluation and the local market has been revealed as an attractive pole for international investors with large amounts of available capital, such as the great US funds.

Economist Raymond Torres, from the Spanish Analysis Center Funcas, told BBC Mundo that “the market in Spain is characterized by a very strong demand, which makes it very attractive to investors from other places that are sure that they will be able to sell the good they have acquired and that prices scale year after year.”

Indeed, the price of housing increased by 12.2% in the first quarter of 2025, the largest increase in 18 years, according to data from the National Statistics Institute.

There are already 11 years accumulated up and the latest figures reveal that the rise in prices is being accentuated.

According to Spanish government data, only in 2023, non -residents from outside the European Union bought around 27,000 houses and floors in Spain.

But the landing of the great US funds occurred when reality was very different.

The great global financial crisis of 2008 struck the Iberian country, which saw the so -called real estate bubble bursting in which he had lived since the 1990s.

Several of the country's main banks had to be rescued with public money in programs negotiated with the European Union to avoid bankruptcy of the banking system and, urged to clean up their balances, got rid of the homes that had lost part of their value or had been delivered by owners who could no longer pay the mortgage.

In that context, the Spanish market presented unique opportunities for foreign capital and the great US funds were able to acquire large housing portfolios at reduced prices than in the subsequent years, as the country recovered, they did not stop rising.

It is difficult to give an exact global figure of how many properties the US funds in Spain have.

In response to a BBC Mundo application, Blackstone replied that its residential portfolio comprises 22,000 units distributed in different local subsidiaries.

An investigation of the Civio portal identified the firm as the second largest homemade in Spain, with about 19,600 rented homes, most of them in Madrid.

Caixabank, one of the great Spanish banks, led the list of home owners for rent.

The Civio report also identified the real estate manager CBRE and the Fund Cerberus, both Americans, such as other of the main housing owners for rent.

The figures show that these large capital firms have gained presence in recent decades. At present, more than 9% of the homes that are rented in Spain belong to large private holders, although that figure also includes Spanish entities.

Access to housing appears as the main concern of Spaniards in the surveys carried out by the Center for Sociological Research, a state agency.

Together with short -term tourist rentals, foreign housing owners have recently become the target of those who seek the guilty of the problems of access to housing in Spain.

The Spanish president, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, has been one of them.

“Only in the year 2023, the non -residents of the European Union bought in Spain around 27,000 houses and floors. They did it, not to live in them, not for their relatives to live, they did it mainly to speculate, earn money with them. Something that, in the context of shortage that we live, obviously, we cannot allow,” said Sanchez in January of this year.

In April, his government ended the program that granted residence permits in Spain to foreigners who made real estate more than 500,000 euros (about US $ 569,870), and which led to the concession of 22,430 visas until 2023.

And its party promotes a law that includes the creation of a special tax that could reach 100% of the value of the property for buyers outside the European Union, although it is not clear how it would apply to the Spanish subsidiaries of foreign funds and some experts have indicated that with their current writing new construction homes would be exempt.

“In recent years we have received lots of complaints from people who lived for rent in houses owned by Blackstone and other great funds on the periphery of Madrid and they found that at the end of their contracts they wanted to duplicate them and sometimes until it triples the price of rent,” Pablo Pablo Pérez, of the Subscribe union of Madrid, told BBC world.

The reputation of the great US funds was also damaged when the former mayor of Madrid, Ana Botella, was sentenced to sell below its market value more than 5,000 public homes from the City Council to Blackstone and Goldman Sachs in 2013, a sentence then revoked by the Court of Accounts.

“Blackstone has the equivalent of 0.08% of the total stock of Spanish housing and has not bought any residential assets in the last 7 years. Consequently, insinuate that we have or have had any impact on the local market is misleading. More Blackstone Europe.

From the Fund they also point out that they stand out for being “a stable long -term supplier”, since its rental contracts are seven years extendable, a minimum duration requirement for companies that rent housing since the Government reformed the Law of Urban Leases in 2019.

For the economist Raymond Torres, “foreign funds are not responsible for the problem of housing scarcity; what happens is that they benefit from it”, since they have the capital to acquire a very demanded good and upward value.

But the origin of the problem, according to this and other experts, lies in the lack of available homes.

After the outbreak of the real estate bubble, the construction of housing in Spain was stopped and only very recently has begun to give slight symptoms of recovery.

“Simply, there is not enough land to build and when built it is not for the segment of social housing, but for the free market, with prices that many people cannot reach,” adds Torres.

The economist believes that “there has been an oversight of administrations and very little public housing has been built,” a diagnosis endorsed by the official data themselves.

If in other countries of the European Union, such as France, the United Kingdom, Sweden or Netherlands, more than 15% of households are protected housing, in Spain they are less than 2.5%.

President Sánchez announced in July last year a plan to build 43,000 affordable rental homes, but opposition parties say that similar promises already breached before.

To this is added the problem that many of the homes that are built under public protection in Spain end up with the years passing to the free market and beyond the reach of the population of less resources, and a law of the land that, according to experts, full of bureaucratic obstacles and uncertainty the urban developments, thus discouraging the promoters.

Regulatory changes to achieve a more efficient market, public investment and coordinated policies between the different administrations are what experts claim to solve a complex and pressing problem for the Spaniards.

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