Real rental prices, housing mix and market trend in Malasaña. (officially Malasaña-Universidad)
Median rent
€1,600/month
Mean: €1,811/month
Price per m²
26.7€
Madrid: 24.6€/m²
Trend
Stable
€/m² vs previous period
Listings analyzed
504
Idealista listings
Prices, percentages and counts are calculated from Idealista listings of the last few months.
Malasaña, officially the Universidad neighbourhood, is where most young arrivals in Madrid end up, and the first place nearly every guide names. It revolves around the Plaza del Dos de Mayo: vintage shops, street art, speciality coffee and a density of bars that is hard to match anywhere in Spain.
The tenants are young professionals, freelancers, artists and students, a large share of them foreign. Flats are small, with a median of 60 m², and they go for 26.7€/m², above the city average but below Sol or La Latina. With 504 listings analysed it is one of the busiest rental markets in the centre, which helps, because competition for anything decent is severe.
The case for it is simple: you can walk to Gran Vía, Chueca and Chamberí without touching the metro, and the neighbourhood has a real identity rather than a manufactured one. The case against it is noise. A flat above Calle Espíritu Santo on a Saturday night is a different proposition from the same street on a Tuesday morning. Ask which way the windows face.
Transport: metro lines L1 and L10 (Tribunal), L2 (Noviciado), L1 and L4 (Bilbao), with Gran Vía (L1, L5) five minutes away on foot.
37% of rental flats in Malasaña have one bedroom, followed by 35% with two bedrooms. Studios make up 12% of the supply, and flats with four or more bedrooms, 3%.
Lift. 61% of rental homes here have a lift. Six in ten homes have a lift. Nineteenth-century blocks dominate the streets and many were renovated without ever fitting one.
Private landlord or agency. 7% of listings are posted by a private landlord, against 93% that come through an agency. As in most of Madrid, the supply is dominated by agencies.
The median rent in Malasaña is €1,600 a month. Most flats let for between €1,300 and €2,200 a month: a quarter of the supply falls below €1,300, and another quarter goes above €2,200.
Per square metre that works out at 26.7€/m². Applied to real floor areas, a 50 m² flat lands around €1,340 a month, a 70 m² flat around €1,870, and a 90 m² flat around €2,400.
Against the city as a whole, Malasaña sits 7% above the Madrid median (€1,500/month), where the median price per square metre is 24.6€/m².
In Malasaña, only 10% of listings go below 20.0€/m². If you find a 70 m² flat at €1,400 a month or less, it is below the 10th percentile for the neighbourhood.
That does not make it a scam, but it is worth checking before you go any further. A price well below the local market is the single most common red flag in rental fraud.
For reference, the 25th percentile in Malasaña sits at 23.2€/m². Below that, the price is good for the area without being anomalous.
The price per square metre in Malasaña has held steady over the last few months, moving only 2.1% against the previous period. That is too small a difference to read as a real market move.
Based on 504 Idealista listings in Malasaña analyzed over the last few months. We compare two consecutive 28-day periods, and we measure the change in price per square metre rather than in median rent: median rent rises and falls with the size of the flats posted in a given week, which describes our sample rather than the market. Our history is still short, so these figures describe where the market is right now, not an annual trend.
Looking for a flat in Malasaña right now? The good listings are gone within hours. Our Idealista apartment alerts notify you the moment one matching your search goes live, before everyone else sees it.
The median rent in Malasaña is €1,600 a month, which works out at roughly 27€/m². Most flats let for between €1,300 and €2,200 a month. These figures come from 504 Idealista listings over the last few months.
The price per square metre in Malasaña has held steady over the last few months, moving only 2.1% against the previous period. That is too small a difference to read as a real market move. The comparison is based on 228 listings in the earlier period and 276 in the more recent one.
61% of rental homes in Malasaña have a lift. Six in ten homes have a lift. Nineteenth-century blocks dominate the streets and many were renovated without ever fitting one.
Expect to be asked for your NIE (Número de Identificación de Extranjero) if you are a foreigner, your last few payslips or proof of income, your employment contract, and increasingly a bank guarantee or several months of deposit. None of it is a legal requirement of the contract itself, but applicants who turn up without the paperwork ready lose the flat to someone who has it. Assemble the folder before you start viewing.