Metropolitan House Plans 740 Homes Next Year Around Barcelona
Metropolitan House plans 740 homes around Barcelona next year and thousands more within three years. Also: VPO demand, prices and modular building.
Housing developer Metropolitan House plans to build three thousand five hundred homes in the Barcelona metropolitan area over the next three years, its president, Rafael Angulo, told the local outlet Metrópoli Abierta. About 740 of them are due in the coming year, spread over roughly 20 developments between El Masnou and Cornellà de Llobregat.
Angulo gave the figures while describing a housing shortage that, in his view, has pushed many Barcelona families into single rented rooms.
Where the new homes will go
The company listed these towns and sites:
- Cerdanyola del Vallès
- Sant Joan Despí
- Cornellà
- Esplugues de Llobregat, in the ARE Montesa development area
- L’Hospitalet
- El Prat, around the Tres Xemeneies site
- El Masnou
- Sitges
Angulo did not say how many of the new homes will be sold or rented, or at what prices.
Thousands apply for a few subsidized flats
Angulo described VPO (vivienda de protección oficial, Spain’s price-capped subsidized housing) as one of the few ways left for young people to buy a home. Demand far outstrips supply. In the most recent lottery for flats at Plaça de les Glòries, ten thousand five hundred people applied for 200 homes, he said. In El Prat de Llobregat, 100 homes sold within a month.
Subsidized does not mean cheap. In Barcelona, VPO flats now cost between two hundred fifty thousand and three hundred thousand euros, according to Angulo.
What it means for renters and buyers
Angulo puts Spain’s housing deficit at a million homes and says the country would need two hundred thousand new units a year to keep up with current needs. He called housing “a pillar of well-being” and warned about people who reach old age still renting. “You can’t retire paying rent because it eats your pension,” he said.
He also compared today’s room rentals with the shacks that stood in many Barcelona neighborhoods when he first came to the city. Those shacks have disappeared from view, he argued, because the families now live in rooms.
For residents, the developer’s plan adds new supply mostly outside Barcelona itself, in the surrounding towns of the metropolitan area. The lottery figures show how many applicants each new batch of VPO flats draws.
A push for factory-built homes
María Jesús Puerta Angulo, an engineer and Metropolitan House’s general coordinator, wants Spain to build more homes from modules made in factories, then transported and assembled on site, a method already used in countries such as China. She proposes four or five factories placed so each covers a delivery area of 300 kilometers.
“Instead of builders, we will have assemblers,” she said. She argues the method would standardize the work, shorten building times and give tighter control over materials, and expects it could be in place in Spain around 2030.
Source: Metrópoli Abierta
