Murcia, Málaga, and Seville are positioned as the best commercial cities in Spain, in terms of the occupancy rate of their commercial premises, way ahead of the expected best of Barcelona and Madrid, in the ranking of the 12 cities analysed. Alicante is way behind Murcia in the chart.
In the report prepared by the economic observatory EIXOS and the multinational Deloitte, the commercial premises market of the 12 Spanish cities with more than 300,000 inhabitants has been analysed: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Zaragoza, Málaga, Alicante, Murcia, Seville, Bilbao, Palma, Las Palmas, and Córdoba. Together, they add up to a total population of 10 million inhabitants, approximately 20% of the Spanish population, and a park of 253,000 commercial premises, around 25% of the total park of commercial premises in the country.
Depending on the location of the premises, the study has determined that, of the total 253,000 premises, 20% have one excellent location (grade A), 37% a good location (grade B), 25% have a regular location (grade D) and the remaining 18% have an unfavourable or bad location (grades E and F).
Murcia led the way with 89% (excellent or good) vs 9% (unfavourable or bad). In second place was Málaga with 85% and 8%, respectively, then Seville with 84% vs 8%.
As a regional neighbour of Murcia, Alicante didn´t quite make the top 10, landing in eleventh place with just 23% classed as excellent or good vs 13% unfavourable or bad.
The regional capital, Valencia, took tenth place, with 41% and 4%, respectively.
In addition, the cities of Murcia (94.74%), Seville (88.22%), Las Palmas (85, 65%), Córdoba (85.07%) and Málaga (84.81%) are those with the highest occupancy rate of their commercial premises.
The study also analyses the role that the stock of empty commercial premises could have in increasing the residential supply in the main Spanish cities. Of the 253,000 premises in the 12 cities analysed, only around 10,600 empty premises that are difficult to occupy or persistent vacancies that could obtain the habitability certificate have been identified to be occupied for residential purposes. A figure that only represents 4% of the total stock of premises and 0.11% of the total stock of housing in the cities studied.
The conclusion that can be drawn from these data is twofold: on the one hand, persistent empty premises are not a systemic problem in the main Spanish cities; On the other hand, the impact of converting all the persistent empty premises in the real estate market into housing would be small (less than 1%) and punctual (until they were exhausted). Therefore, the report concludes that the persistent empty premises in the 12 cities analysed are neither a systemic problem nor are they the solution to the problem of homelessness.
