The Foundation for Applied Economic Research (Fedea) released an analysis this Monday on the impact of the Housing Law, concluding that while it has helped contain the rise in rental prices in the areas where it has been applied, it has simultaneously caused a sharp contraction in supply and intense competition for each available apartment.
The work, authored by Fernando Pinto, from the Rey Juan Carlos University, reviews the effects of the Housing Law two years after its entry into force, using available information up to the fourth quarter of 2025.
Fedea's study is based on data from Catalonia, the only autonomous community where the rent containment provided for in the regulation was widely implemented starting March 16, 2024.
According to the report, this circumstance allows for a comparison of what happens in the territory where the law is in force, Catalonia and especially Barcelona, with other areas where it is not applied, such as Madrid, which are used as a reference group.
The document poses two questions: whether prices moderate where the regulation applies, as the Government intended, and whether this moderation is accompanied by the effects on quantities anticipated by economic theory when price controls are imposed, which would make it difficult to achieve the law's broader objective of promoting sufficient and affordable housing supply.
Fedea highlights that this work identifies three very clear results and draws some provisional conclusions about the effects of applying the Housing Law.
Firstly, the report verifies that rental prices moderated more intensely in regulated areas. Between the first quarter of 2024 and the fourth quarter of 2025, rents accumulated a 5.7% increase in Barcelona and in Catalonia as a whole, compared to the 8.5% recorded in Madrid and 10.8% in Spain overall.
According to Fedea, the four Catalan provinces show this same pattern of containment, with increases between 3.1% and 5.7%, so this regulated territory shows lower increases than almost all territories used for comparison.
Sharp drop in rental housing supply
However, the 'think tank' warns that the supply of rental advertisements was reduced "intensely" in the regulated area.
The number of rental advertisements fell by 22.2% in Barcelona and 20.5% in Catalonia, while in Madrid it increased by 3.9%. "The Catalan contraction practically doubles that of unregulated territories of comparable level, such as the Valencian Community or Andalusia, where the decline is around 10% and is attributable to the general phase of the market," the study points out.
In parallel to this fall in supply, Fedea also notes that competition for each available dwelling has skyrocketed in areas where the number of advertisements has decreased.
Demand pressure, measured as contacts per advertisement, reached 462 in Barcelona in the fourth quarter of 2025, compared to 103 in Madrid and 135 in the country as a whole.
According to Fedea, Barcelona registered approximately 4.5 times more applicants per dwelling than Madrid. "These are not marginal differences, but rather of an order of magnitude, and they reflect the excess demand that theory associates with a price set below the equilibrium price," the document states.
For the foundation, this combination of results indicates that "the law has not achieved its stated objective of facilitating better access to housing."
"The moderation of rents for tenants already established in protected areas (insiders) coexists with a reduction in supply and an increase in the intensity of competition for available units, which tend to worsen access conditions for outsiders. The adjustment between supply and demand that the price no longer performs occurs through rationing among applicants based on subjective criteria," it argues.
The rise in rent in Spain is not explained by the Housing Law
On the other hand, Fedea maintains that the acceleration of prices observed in the country as a whole cannot be attributed to the Housing Law, given that rent containment has barely been applied in most of the territory.
"Attributing the aggregate price increase to it would be an identification error, because the national data is dominated by territories where the law does not operate. The similarity between the evolution of the sale price and that of new rentals points to a common supply deficit and not to a specific effect of rental regulation," it concludes.