Spain are world champions. But do they build better too?

The starting position

The Netherlands had a housing shortage of 396,000 units in 2025, equivalent to 4.8% of total stock. Production fell for the third consecutive year: roughly 80,000 homes added, permits issued for 86,000, against a political target of 100,000 per year. That target has not been met for years.

Spain faces the same problem, but on a different scale. The Banco de España now estimates the housing shortage at 700,000 to 750,000 units. CaixaBank Research puts the accumulated deficit at more than 730,000 homes. For context: Spain has nearly five times the population of the Netherlands, but a housing shortage that is almost twice as large in absolute terms. Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Málaga and the islands are the hardest hit, accounting for nearly half of the national deficit. The average free-market price rose 10.4% year-on-year in Q2 2025 to €2,093 per square metre.

Spain is not a housing construction paradise.

But on several points, it plays more offensively than the Netherlands.

What Spain does differently

More apartments, fewer single-family homes. Two thirds of Spaniards live in an apartment. In the Netherlands, the majority of the population lives in a single-family home: detached, semi-detached or terraced. In Spanish cities, stacked living is the norm. Projects of 300, 500 or 700 units therefore fit more naturally into the existing urban structure. The Netherlands tries to combine urban growth with the housing preferences of a village: individual front doors, parking spaces, low densities. That costs space and time.

Housing by target group, not as one market. In Spain's larger cities, the market is increasingly making a clear distinction between standard rental, student housing, flex living, co-living, serviced apartments, senior living and care real estate. For investors and operators, that makes it easier to develop a product for a specific group. In smaller cities like Málaga, that distinction is less sharp and the market remains more mixed. But the direction is clear. In the Netherlands, a student, expat, first-time buyer, recently divorced parent and temporary worker regularly compete for the same small rental unit.

Capital that picks a direction. The Spanish living sector attracted approximately €2.5 billion in investment in the first three quarters of 2024, accounting for 31% of all Spanish real-estate transactions in that period. The contrast with the Netherlands is stark. In 2022, 32% of all private investment in new Dutch rental housing came from abroad. By 2025, that had fallen to 1%. The share of foreign buyers in the Dutch residential sector dropped to 4% in 2024, while almost €1 billion in foreign capital simultaneously left the market. The introduction of the Affordable Rent Act, higher transfer taxes and uncertainty about future regulation are the primary causes. International capital is choosing Spain. The Netherlands is pricing itself out of the market.

Industrial construction as ambition. The Spanish government is investing in modular and industrial housebuilding to increase production. That is a political choice the Netherlands has also been debating for years. But the comparison is more nuanced than it appears: the Netherlands currently builds approximately 16,100 homes industrially per year, well ahead of Spain's estimated 4,000. The Netherlands is actually among the European leaders in industrialised housebuilding. The difference is not in the technology. It is in the speed and scale of rollout. As long as every municipal project is redesigned, re-tendered and re-debated from scratch, the economies of scale remain theoretical.

What Spain has not solved

The public rental stock in Spain amounts to less than 2% of total housing. In the Netherlands, that figure is approximately 34%. Rents have risen sharply. The Spanish government announced a €7 billion investment programme in 2026 to address affordability. The Banco de España estimates that 1.2 million new homes are needed by 2030, of which 800,000 in the affordable segment and 400,000 social rental units.

Spain has not solved its housing shortage. But it does show that scaling up is possible when you accept higher urban densities, organise housing by target group, involve operators early in projects and give international capital room to move.

The question the Netherlands asks too rarely

The Netherlands governs toward one number: 100,000 homes per year.

The better question is: which 100,000 homes do we need?

A housing market is not a collection of separate buildings. It is a chain. When students, first-time buyers, families and seniors can each find the right product, multiple homes come into motion. That is worth more than hitting a production figure with the wrong mix.

Spain are world champions in football. On the housing market, they are not there yet.

But on several points, they are playing more offensively than we are.

This is the first article in a series in which TEN compares European housing markets with the Netherlands.

Sources: ABF Research, Primos forecast 2025. CBS Housing Production Data 2025. Cushman & Wakefield, Spanish Living Investment Report Q3 2024. Banco de España, annual economic report 2025. CaixaBank Research, housing market analysis April 2026. Capital Value / ABF Research, investment report 2025. StiVAD, foreign real-estate investment in the Netherlands 2025. Spanish Ministry of Housing, investment programme 2026.