When Few Own Many Apartments: How the Balearic Islands Are Changing

When Few Own Many Apartments: How the Balearic Islands Are Changing

Key question: How dangerous is the growing concentration of housing on the Balearic Islands for locals and the island culture?

On the streets of Palma, when the morning sun hits the old facades of the Plaça Major and the bakeries start producing croissants, you quickly notice: apartments are not just square meters. They are home, meeting place, business and often the last chance for families to stay near their work, as shown in When Living Rooms Become Bedrooms: How Mallorca Suffers from a Housing Shortage. Current land registry figures show: on the Balearic Islands almost 38,300 apartments belong to owners who own more than five properties. That is around 6 percent of all apartments. Ten years ago it was about 30,700. Particularly notable is the growth of the group of owners with six to ten apartments, while the number of single-property owners is falling.

That may sound like statistics, but it is a landscape change. Someone who buys an apartment may think of return on investment, holiday rentals or expanding a portfolio; this trend is linked to investment funds and speculation discussed in Mallorca in the Stranglehold of Speculation: When Apartments Become Financial Products. When the same hands hold dozens of keys, the rental supply, price levels and the neighborhood change. In alleys like the Carrer de Sant Miquel or on the Paseo Marítimo you notice it in fewer long-term tenants, in more often vacant doors being renovated—not out of love for the building, but in preparation for the next short-term rental.

Critical analysis: concentration creates mechanical effects. More large-scale holdings lead to greater professionalization of letting, and thus to higher turnover. Short-term rentals often displace long-term tenants because daily or weekly returns are easier to achieve, a dynamic described in Why long-term rentals in Mallorca are dwindling — and what could help. At the same time, the market power of large owners grows in negotiations, renovation strategies and price formation, a trend that coincides with rising square‑metre prices documented in Balearic Islands: Housing Becomes a Luxury — Who Will Stay on the Island?. This reduces bargaining power for individuals and local families who still depend on a stable rental market.

What is often missing in public debate: concrete figures behind housing concentration, measures for holiday rentals versus permanent housing, and the question of ownership structures. Who are the owners with six to ten apartments—natural persons, companies, foreign investors? Some analyses point to increasing foreign purchases, for context see Almost every second property in the Balearic Islands in foreign hands – what does this mean for Mallorca?. The broad debate about "too many holiday apartments" swallows the nuances: market concentration can also mean that decisions about housing are made outside municipalities or families. It is also rare to hear how vacancy, speculation and renovation cycles interact.

An everyday scene: a restaurant owner in Portixol washes plates in the afternoon and looks at a street where retirees play boccia on Tuesdays. In the past the boccia players would greet the family next door; today there are often doors with numbers, payment terminals and strange names. The innkeeper sighs, adds sugar to the café con leche and says: "People are not the same anymore; it has become faster and more anonymous." Such small observations show how ownership structures change the social fabric.

Concrete solutions: transparency and regulation are feasible—if there is political will. A publicly accessible ownership register that records when natural persons or legal entities accumulate apartments beyond a threshold would make debates more factual. Complementary rules for holiday rentals could apply: limiting the number of short-term rentals per owner in popular neighborhoods, stricter penalties for illegal rentals and stronger accounting of change-of-use for property tax purposes.

Fiscal levers help: a progressive levy on large property portfolios, directing revenues directly into social housing or support programs for first-time buyers on the islands. Municipalities could also provide incentives for cooperative housing: vacant stock would thus come into local hands, tenant protection rights would be strengthened, and long-term renting would become attractive again.

At an operational level, municipalities often lack staff and digital systems to reliably monitor sales, changes of use and misuse. A uniform reporting procedure for rentals, coupled with fines for violations, would be a pragmatic measure. Equally important: advisory programs for small landlords who often choose the quicker path of converting to holiday rentals—through counseling and incentives they could be retained as long-term landlords.

Conclusion: The numbers—almost 38,300 apartments in the hands of owners with more than five properties, an increase from 30,700 ten years ago—are not an abstract problem. They are an indicator of an economic and social imbalance that is audible in our neighborhoods: fewer children on the playground, more suitcases in front of doors, different supermarket opening hours. There are solutions; they require the courage to regulate, transparency and local politics that does not only look at tourism profits. Otherwise Mallorca risks losing a piece of its neighborhood character, step by step.