Council Cencus Reveals High Numbers of "Macro Pisos" in Barcelona

Barcelona Council has released some interesting figures about the ownership of properties within the high rises of Barcelona. The local newspaper 20minutos, reported the news story which revealed that more than 27,000 properties in the Catalan Capital have less than 30m2. The council census includes 73 different neighbourhoods and a total of 805,739 individual properties. The average occupancy of a Barcelona apartment is the surprisingly low figure of 3.



Perhaps the biggest surprise is the number of small properties in the city. The Old Town neighbourhoods of Raval, Borne and Poble Sec had the highest concentration of these often dubbed "macro-pisos". The minimum requirement in Madrid for the issue of the civil licence of living quarters - known as a "cedula de habitabilidad" - is 30m2, and funnily enough, in Barcelona it's an incredible 20m2.

What also seems to surprise is the gulf between some of the properties in such a relatively small city. You can pass from the fairly squashed 20-30m2 in the Raval or Borne to almost 2000 properties which have OVER 250m2 - no surprise to hear that these lie in the Eixample Dreta and the uptown neighbourhood of Pedralbes.

The statistics also shed light on the number of foreign owners in the city with more than 15,400 properties registered to foreign owners - not to mention the number of rentals within the city - being a considerably high number. Again, it's no surprise to discover that the majority of those are located in the Old Town, a hub of immigration, where the highest concentration of old buildings are found. More than 84,000 buildings were built before 1901.

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