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ECURB 2025: Housing Strain Deepens Across Barcelona Metro as Cross-City Commuting Hits 49%

The long-running Institut Metròpoli survey finds price pressures increasingly shaping where people live.

Overview

  • About 77–79% of residents say finding an affordable, suitable home in their neighborhood or municipality is difficult, up from roughly 51% in 2017.
  • Some 49.2% of employed people now work in a different municipality than where they live, compared with around 30% in 1990 and 39% in 2000.
  • Residential mobility over the past five years reached 23.8%—about one million adults—with 69.4% of movers relocating within the same municipality.
  • Economic and housing‑forced reasons for moving rose to 23.9%, and citing price as the main factor in choosing where to live increased from 22.7% in 2022 to 27.9% in 2025.
  • Overall neighborhood satisfaction remains high at 85.8% even as increased turnover has weakened nearby family‑and‑friend support networks.