WITH working from home on the rise across the modern world and given a major boost by the pandemic, the need to live close to the office is rapidly reducing – and has already been floated as a possible solution to stemming the exodus of childbearing-age inhabitants in Spain's most remote rural parts.
Based upon the notion that, as long as an office employee has access to internet and a computer, he or she can work anywhere in the world, UK-based property insurer CIA Landlord carried out a survey to see which European cities Brits would choose to live in if they could carry on with their jobs from home.
The answers were based upon various criteria, but these included being able to make their money go further and increase their savings if they were still earning in pounds sterling.
And Madrid has come out top.
Its points in favour cover regular, cheap flights to and from various destinations in the UK, a wide range of restaurants and bars with great food at a low cost, and plenty to do off duty including arts and entertainment, culture, shopping and tourism.
The only downside to Madrid, among those surveyed, was the cost of rent – the average tenant in Spain's capital pays around €990 a month, a price that can drop to a third or even less out in the provinces, even in densely-populated, lively coastal areas.
Buying property in Madrid or anywhere in Spain continues to be a much cheaper option than renting, and although tenancies are on the increase, the country has a far greater culture of owner-occupancy than the European average, with the most recent figures showing that well above 80% of Spanish homes are lived in by people who either own them outright or have a mortgage on them.
This said, the CIA Landlord study found that for British home-workers living in London, the cost of renting in Madrid did not seem particularly high to them and even represented a significant saving.
If cost of living was the only consideration, the outright winner would have been the Albanian capital of Tirana, where the average monthly rental is £270 (about €325) and a one-way public transport ticket is about £0.30 (€0.36), but other criteria were also perceived as important and Tirana ended up fourth on the list.
This said, quality, good-sized rentals in large, bustling towns, coastal hotspots and provincial capital cities in Spain – let alone those in more remote areas – are easy to find for far less than the Tirana average; see over 1,000 properties for let between €100 and €500 a month here.
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