Access to housing has become a true labyrinth for young people in Spain. Since 2019, donations from parents to children to facilitate the purchase of the first home have notably skyrocketed, with an approximate accumulated growth of 36-40% until 2024, and with figures that continue to increase in 2025 until reaching 225,000 acts, according to data from the General Council of Notaries.
In the last year, donations in Spain have grown by 12.8%, surpassing the average growth rates of the EU, which is usually around 5%.
In this way, Spain is among the European countries with the highest growth in donations from parents to children, a phenomenon that has intensified due to the housing crisis that makes it difficult for young people to access their first home, as highlighted by the General Council of Notaries.
Growth by autonomous communities in 2025
The rebound in donations has not been homogeneous throughout the country. According to journalistic reports and notarial data, Baleares leads the percentage growth, with an approximate increase of 35% in 2025 compared to 2024.
Catalonia, for its part, registers an increase of 23%, above the national average (~13%), while Madrid, Andalusia and Valencian Community continue to be the communities with the largest absolute volume of donations, although their percentage growth is more moderate.
Experts in this matter maintain that, where housing is more expensive or access more complicated, the resulting equation is that family donations skyrocket, reflecting the structural dependence of young people on their families.
The tax consultancy TaxDown -which has provided this information exclusively to Democrata (March 2026)-, poses a scenario where a father donates 500,000 euros to a 30-year-old son for his first habitual residence. This table shows us how the tax burden varies notably by autonomous communities:
Spain facing Europe
In most European countries, family donations are not used as a primary tool to access housing. For example, in Germany, France or the United Kingdom, donations are usually patrimonial or inheritance-related, with limited exemptions and without linkage to housing purchase. In the case of the European average, year-on-year growths rarely exceed 5 %, far from the 15 % that Spain registered between 2023 and 2024.
Only in countries with high prices and scarcity of supply, such as Netherlands or Switzerland, specific increases are detected, but they do not reach the relative volume that Spain registers.