Price of renting property in Barcelona has frozen at 1000 euros a month <\/p>\n
The price of renting a flat in Barcelona went up by 62.9% between 2002 and 2007. However it remained almost the same last year at around 1000 euros a month. <\/p>\n
According to the department for statistics for the town hall of Barcelona the price of renting a property actually went down by 1% during the last six months of 2008. This decrease which is the largest in the last decade coincides with the fall in the sale of properties and a slump in construction work in the city. According to the Colegio de Aparejadores y Arquitectos T\u00e9cnicos de Barcelona (CAATB), only 12,403 properties were started in 2008 which is a fall of 72% compared to 2007. <\/p>\n
Renting a 92 square metre flat in Barcelona cost 884 euros a month in 2003. Today the average size of a flat is smaller at 74.7 square metres and the average cost of renting is 1,096 euros a month. Last year was the first time that the cost of renting rose above 1000 euros. However during the last six months of the 2008 rents started to go down and the average price of renting per square metre went down from 14.8 euros in June to 14.6 euros in December. <\/p>\n
Jos\u00e9 Garc\u00eda Montalvo, a professor of Applied Economics for the University of Pompeu Fabra, said that this decrease showed the beginnings of a tendency. He said that the price of renting was going down by more than 1%. He also said that in the last quarter of 2008 there had started to be renegotiations between tenants and landlords over the cost of renting, something which was not recorded in any statistics. <\/p>\n