Buying a home in Malaga now requires more than ten years of full salary

Cristina Vallejo

Malaga

Wednesday, 9 April 2025, 11:08

Buying a home in Malaga today would require 10.6 years of full salary according to a study that relates average salary data from job offers on the InfoJobs platform to average prices of properties up for resale on Fotocasa.

In 2024 the price of housing for sale in Malaga closed at 3,836 euros per square metre. This means that, taking into account the average gross salary recorded by InfoJobs in the province, which in 2024 was 28,911 euros, the people of Malaga have to dedicate 10.6 years of their full salary to paying for an 80-square-metre home at an average price of just over 306,000 euros.

This figure contrasts significantly with that for all Spain where, for a home purchased in 2024, 85 months of gross salary, or 7.1 years, is needed. The equation in this case is formed by an average gross salary of 27,060 euros and an average house price of 80 square metres of just over 191,000 euros. Before the pandemic, in 2019, the number of years of salary needed to buy an 80-square-metre house was only 5.8.

In the countrywide ranking Malaga province is in third place for the highest number of years of full salary required to pay for a resale property (not a new build), behind only the Balearic Islands (13.5 years of salary of 27,327 euros gross per year for an average house price of around 4,600 euros per square metre, making an average 80-square-metre house cost over 367,000 euros) and Madrid (12.2 years of an average salary of 28,075 euros per year needed to pay for the same size of property, costing 342,272 euros on average at a rate of 4,278 euros per square metre).

After Malaga comes Guipúzcoa, where buying a second-hand property of the same size, costing around 300,000 euros, swallows up ten years of full salary that in 2024 amounted to an average of around 29,800 euros.

The report published by Fotocasa also highlights that "access to home ownership continues to move away from the purchasing power of the people." It stresses that "the proportion of salary that buyers have to sacrifice to access housing is increasing year on year" as the price of housing "rises at a faster rate than salaries." "This is a worrying trend: although incomes have improved slightly, the cost of housing has grown almost three times faster," said María Matos, research director and spokesperson for Fotocasa.

"The average gross annual salary of 27,060 euros offered in the vacancies published on InfoJobs in 2024 has increased by more than 800 euros compared to the previous year. A rise of 3.1% which, compared to the 2.8% variation in the CPI [consumer price index], reflects a slight improvement in purchasing power", states InfoJobs, but the price of resale properties has risen by more than 8% in Spain as a whole, and by more than this figure (double-digit rates) in Malaga.

Ciudad Real is the province with the lowest average price per square metre in the country and where its residents require only 2.8 years of full salary to pay for their home. Other provinces where it takes less than five years of salary to buy a house are Jaen (3 years), Ávila (3.5), Zamora (3.6), Cáceres (3.9), Cordoba (also 3.9), Teruel, Ourense, León, Toledo and Almeria (all at 4 years), Castellón, Badajoz (both at 4.2 years), Albacete (4.3), Huelva, Murcia (both at 4.4 years), Lleida, Soria (both at 4.5 years), Lugo (4.7), Burgos (4.8), and finally Palencia and Huesca (both at 4.9 years).