If the panorama of retirees is complex, that of young people trying to access their first home in Spain is, according to the latest data from February 2026, a real obstacle course. The figures are devastating: the price per square meter has shattered the records of the 2007 bubble, with year-on-year increases of up to 20%.
In cities like Madrid or San Sebastián, the ‘wall’ of necessary savings, some 60,000 euros in advance for a standard mortgage, has become insurmountable for a generation whose salaries have been devoured by inflation.
While the social consensus denounces the lack of supply and job insecurity, there is a dissident voice that proposes a totally different strategy. This is Jon Goitia, architect and real estate investor who already has a portfolio of 15 apartments. Faced with this widespread frustration, Goitia maintains that the problem is not only with the market, but with how young people approach the process. The measure he proposes may be unpopular, but effective: sacrificing immediate independence in order to build an estate.
“It is not convenient to emancipate yourself”
For Goitia, the rush to leave the family nest is the number one enemy of savings. Although he recognizes that many move due to work obligation, he is blunt with those who prefer to do so by choice.
“It is not advisable to emancipate yourself too soon because, of course, if you pay rent… the possibilities of saving are very low,” he explains in Public Mirror. His advice, although it clashes with the common thinking of society, is supported by numbers. In a market where rent consumes almost 80% of a young person’s salary, staying with your parents “gives you a much better starting position.”
Once basic savings have been achieved, Goitia points out the second error: idealism. “Aspiring for the first home to be the one of our dreams… leads to blockage,” he says. His proposal is to buy what you can afford today, even if that is minuscule, just to enter the wheel of the real estate market.
As an example of this, he did not hesitate to contribute his own experience. His first acquisition was not an attic, but “a 23-square-meter house,” in a 19th-century corrala where “the bathroom was inside the kitchen.” He confesses to having paid the mortgage and remembers that he had to adjust to the needs and forget about garages or extras when the budget was not there.
Jon’s tax trick
Goitia’s strategy is not to buy to live there forever, but to see housing as “a long-distance race.” This is where your personal income tax-based financial trick comes into play: the rollover exemption.
“Taxation itself tells us that if you live three years in a house, sell it and reinvest the money in another better house, you don’t pay taxes,” says the architect. And the plan he proposes is very clear: buy a ‘zulo’, renovate it, live there for three years and sell it to make the leap to something better without losing money in taxes.
The coldness of the matter is the key to success. In a market as hostile as today’s, “let’s not even get infatuated with decoration.”