Spain's Housing Decree Suspends Evictions Until 2030 and Bars Purchases Below 70% of Value
Spain's Real Decreto-ley 26/2026 appeared in the official gazette on 30 September, suspends evictions of vulnerable households until 2030 and took effect on 1 October.
Spain published a new housing decree law in its official gazette on 30 September 2026, and it took effect the following day. Real Decreto-ley 26/2026, dated 29 September, suspends eviction proceedings against vulnerable people who have no alternative housing until 31 December 2030, and it bars certain entities from acquiring housing for less than 70 percent of its appraised market value until 31 December 2028.
The instrument runs to 20 articles across six titles, with two additional provisions, two transitional provisions, one repealing provision and eleven final provisions. It appeared in gazette number 241 and occupies pages 127818 to 127913.
Three dates carry most of the weight
Three deadlines define how long the core measures last. The restriction on below-value acquisitions runs to 31 December 2028. The suspension of evictions in vulnerable situations runs to 31 December 2030. An extraordinary limit on updating the rent of existing tenancies runs to 31 December 2027, the shortest of the three, and sits in the first title alongside the tenancy extension.
A fourth date works differently. Tenancies of a habitual residence that are due to end before 31 December 2028 can be extended in annual increments by up to two additional years. That clause reaches contracts signed long before this decree existed, which is why it sits among the final provisions rather than the articles.
Seasonal and room lettings are pulled back under the leases law
Article 3 rewrites the 1994 urban leases law, and the change with the widest reach concerns two contract types that had drifted outside it. Any temporary or room-letting contract that lacks an express cause establishing the tenant's real and demonstrated need for temporary housing converts automatically into an ordinary habitual tenancy, with the security of tenure that carries.
Room lettings get a second rule of their own. Where several partial contracts run simultaneously on the same dwelling, their combined rent may not exceed the rent of a single contract for the whole dwelling. Both changes attack the same practice: where the ordinary tenancy regime became costly for landlords, contracts were relabelled as seasonal or split room by room. The decree removes the benefit of the label and leaves the substance of the arrangement to decide which rules apply.
Thirteen instruments rewritten at once
The decree does not stand alone. It amends the 1994 urban leases law and the 2023 right-to-housing law, the two pillars of Spanish rental regulation, and reaches well beyond them: civil procedure under the 2000 act, personal income tax under the 2006 law, value added tax under the 1992 law, the local government finance law, the 2009 law governing listed property investment companies, a 2023 decree law, the 2019 mortgage credit contracts law, the 2015 insurance law, the 2023 securities markets law, the 2003 public assets law and the 1954 law on mortgages over movable property.
That spread tells you where the government expects behaviour to shift. Touching income tax and value added tax means the incentives around letting change alongside the rules; reaching the listed property investment company regime and the securities markets law points squarely at the corporate vehicles through which large residential portfolios are held. As a decree law rather than an ordinary act, it is already in force but still requires ratification by parliament.
Where the decree meets Spain's own numbers
Glopra's Spain row, captured on 28 September 2026, records a national average asking price of 3,390 US dollars per square metre and an average asking rent of 17.50 US dollars per square metre per month. The annual change in the national house price series is 12.8 percent. Spain carries a bubble-risk score of 61, in the elevated band, with total transaction costs of about 15.3 percent of the purchase price.
One of Glopra's own tax figures bears directly on the decree's reach. Spanish rental income is taxed at 19 percent for owners resident in the European Union or the European Economic Area, who may deduct expenses first, and at 24 percent on the gross rent with no deductions at all for owners resident outside it. Because the decree amends the personal income tax law, non-resident landlords are one group whose position may change, and the two rates start from different bases, so the same headline change would not affect them equally.
A caution on reading any of this as a price signal. The 12.8 percent annual increase was recorded before this decree existed, and the measures work on tenure security, contract classification and purchase eligibility rather than on price directly. Nothing in the text sets a purchase price, and the decree still needs parliamentary ratification, so its final shape is not settled.
Sources: Boletin Oficial del Estado https://www.boe.es/diario_boe/txt.php?id=BOE-A-2026-20266; Boletin Oficial del Estado https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2026-20266