Of the 381,997 rental listings recorded during the period studied, 44.2% were for entire homes offered as a primary residence.
Listings for individual rooms and seasonal rentals combined outnumbered those for entire homes offered as a primary residence before Royal Decree-Law 29/2026 was approved. The finding comes from a report by Spain’s Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and the 2030 Agenda, which analyzed listings published on idealista between March and September 2026 across 53 provincial capitals.
Of the 381,997 listings recorded during that period, 44.2% were for whole-home residential rentals, 47.7% were for individual rooms and 8.1% were for seasonal rentals.
Counting properties instead of listings changes the breakdown. Residential rentals accounted for 68.4% of properties, while 19.1% were offered as shared homes rented by the room and 12.5% as seasonal rentals.
The study, coordinated by Javier Gil, a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Spanish National Research Council (IFS-CSIC), found that seasonal rentals were particularly prevalent in certain urban markets.
Madrid, with 7,397 listings, and Barcelona, with 6,708, together accounted for 45.5% of all seasonal rental listings across the cities studied. Each had more than three times as many as third-ranked Valencia, which recorded 2,043. They were followed by Málaga (1,654), Seville (1,258), Santander (1,153) and Granada (1,078).
Seasonal rental listings outnumbered residential listings in some cities. In San Sebastián, there were 147.1 seasonal listings for every 100 residential listings. The ratio was 107.1 per 100 in Cádiz and 79.6 per 100 in Santander, according to the report.
Seasonal rentals are more common in strained housing markets
The report also found that seasonal rentals made up a larger share relative to residential rentals in cities officially designated as strained housing markets. The median ratio was 31.2 seasonal listings for every 100 residential listings in those cities, compared with 9.3 per 100 in cities without the designation.
San Sebastián had the highest ratio, at 147.1%, followed by Barcelona (67.5%), Bilbao (37.5%), A Coruña (35.1%), Pamplona (31.2%), Vitoria-Gasteiz (21.4%), Girona (18.2%) and Tarragona (17.3%). Lleida was the sole exception to the broader pattern, at 6.1%.
The report suggests that some landlords may be using seasonal contracts to sidestep residential rental rules.
The difference in asking rents was modest. The median asking rent per square meter for seasonal rentals was 2.2% higher than for residential rentals, and the gap was similar in strained housing markets.
The report identifies the applicable lease rules as the main difference between the two types of rental. During the period studied, seasonal leases had no minimum term or mandatory extensions. They were also exempt from rent caps in strained housing markets, except in Catalonia, where those caps began applying to seasonal rentals in January 2026.
Royal Decree-Law 29/2026, dated October 6, seeks to address this by requiring a genuine, verifiable reason for a temporary lease, limiting the length and successive use of such contracts, and extending residential tenant protections and rent caps to seasonal rentals.
The report says the measures’ effectiveness will depend on whether the rules remain in force and whether authorities can verify that properties are being used as declared. The pre-reform data provide a baseline for assessing how the changes affect the rental market.
