Spain's housing promises: 180,000 homes, a million homes, and what was actually built

Miriam González put housing promises at the centre of her launch speech for Democracia 21 in Madrid on 10 October. Among the ten problems she listed was the auction of figures, 180,000 homes here, a million there, from parties that have already governed. According to The Objective, she accused the PP and the PSOE of promising housing "como si fuera una tómbola", as if it were a raffle. It is a fair target, and it can be tested. Both numbers have an author, a date and a record to check them against.

Where the numbers come from

The smaller one belongs to Pedro Sánchez. On 25 April 2023, in the Senate, he announced that the government would make about 183,000 homes available for affordable rent. The figure was a sum: homes from Sareb, the bad bank, projects to be financed with ICO loans, and homes the transport ministry already had in its affordable rental plan. On 18 December 2023 he raised it to 184,000 public and affordable rental homes over the parliament. El Debate, which reconstructed the figure in October 2024, reported that by 31 July that year 59,879 homes were signed or under development, and counted about 10,000 homes actually delivered or managed in the first year and a half, most of them existing flats rented to vulnerable households. In September 2025, on a visit to a development of 530 affordable rental flats under construction in Málaga, the government said more than 80,000 affordable rental homes had been built.

The larger one belongs to Alberto Núñez Feijóo. In Seville on 21 October 2026, next to Juanma Moreno, he presented the PP's housing plan: a million homes over the next parliament, a land law, an anti-squatting law and a reform of the law on apartment buildings, all three approved by the cabinet within his first 100 days. The land law would bring all usable land onto the market and add a 90-day positive administrative silence. He added tax deductions for landlords and tenants who extend leases with rises below inflation, and tax breaks for buyers under 40. He told his audience not to vote for him in four years if he hasn't delivered, which is exactly the kind of commitment a counter can hold him to.

What the official data say

The cleanest public series is the housing ministry's quarterly statistic on free and protected housing, which counts final certifications of protected homes, the paperwork a protected home gets when it is finished. In 2024 there were 14,371, up 62% and the highest since 2014. In 2025 the figure fell 22.7% to 11,104. Of those, 4,046 came from public promoters, regional or state, and 7,058 from private ones. The ministry warns that its method leaves out some public housing, homes funded by the EU recovery plan among them, so the true public figure is somewhat higher. Even so, two years of certified protected homes add up to about 25,000. Set that against 184,000 and you get a sense of the gap between the headline and what shows up in the national statistics.

For the market as a whole, the Banco de España's 2025 annual report, published in June 2026, estimates a housing deficit of about 750,000 homes accumulated between 2021 and 2025, up from roughly 600,000 in its 2023 estimate. In 2025 alone, about 240,000 new households were formed and about 92,000 homes were completed. Feijóo's million in four years means around 250,000 homes a year, close to three times the 2025 completion rate. The deficit is real and the need is large, so the size of the ambition is defensible. The question for voters is how the construction industry, the land supply and the permit offices get from 92,000 to 250,000, and how anyone will know whether it happened.

Here the trouble is that each promise is counted in a different unit. "Enable" a home, sign an agreement for it, finance it, start it, finish it, certify it, hand over the keys: each of these is a different number, and governments of every colour report the one that looks best that month. The 80,000 homes the government cites, El Debate's 10,000, and the ministry's 25,000 certifications all describe parts of the same policy and none of them can be added up cleanly. Opposition parties do the same when they cite the lowest one. A million homes promised by a party in opposition has, for now, no counter at all.

Counting in keys

The left has the point that matters most for the people waiting. Spain needs a public promoter that actually builds protected homes for rent and keeps them protected, with land, money and a mandate, and it should be judged by how many it finishes. A state that only announces leaves the young and the low-paid on the private market. Our piece on Spain's social housing against Europe shows how small the public stock is.

The market-liberal tradition brings the discipline. Count outputs, put a price on each pledge, and keep it inside what the budget can carry. Most of Spain's certified protected homes in 2025 were built by private promoters, so the fastest route to more keys is letting private builders and cooperatives deliver on public land under clear, stable rules where the numbers add up, and clearing the permit queue that our article on three years of paperwork describes.

And then something neither side tends to propose, because it binds whoever governs: a public, independent housing delivery tracker. Every housing pledge made by a government or a party gets registered with its number, its date and its definition. An independent body, AIReF or a unit with the same statutory independence, publishes every month how many homes have been started, finished and handed over to tenants or buyers, region by region, public and private, using one definition throughout. Keys handed over is the headline unit. Much of the raw material already sits with the ministry, the regions and the public promoters; the tracker joins it up on one public page.

Put together, that gives a position. The state builds through a public promoter, private builders deliver on public land with rules that pay, and every promise, from 184,000 to a million, is measured against one counter that no party controls. Democracia 21's own pledges, like keeping rent at €350 for a young person earning €1,300, would go on the same page. Parties could still promise big numbers. They would just know that the tracker will show voters, month by month, how many homes actually got built.