Spanish Student Housing: Protests Incoming

Continuing the rabbit hole into housing today. On my radar is an article from Reuters discussing the under-supplied student housing market in Spain.

A wave of Gen Z protests has engulfed Asia in recent weeks, and it's not hard to imagine one in Spain when young folks realize they've been completely priced out of student accommodations by wealthier international students. There are 117,000 beds for 622,000 students needing a place to stay, and that lags significantly behind European counterparts, meaning developers are rushing to fill the gap.

Just like with price diffusion caused by short term rentals like AirBnB though, which I've written about here, there's going to be a knock-on effect clustered around universities as well. Locals will not be happy about that, especially the younger ones -- imagine the average Spanish student having to sit for 90 minutes on 2 buses and a metro just to get to school while they watch their international counterparts live it up in the city center?

Unless the government steps in to regulate the price action, existing protests around mass tourism will easily merge streams with anti international student protests, eventually ballooning into general "everyone get out" protests that we've seen across Europe this summer.