How to get a protected rental home

If you have been looking for protected housing (vivienda protegida, or VPO) for sale for a while and it feels like almost nothing comes up, you are not imagining it. In recent years much of public building has shifted to affordable rent instead of sale, and in some regions (comunidades autónomas) that shift is explicit and almost total.

The practical result: if you only look at buying, you are looking at the smallest and most contested part of the protected market. It is worth ticking rental too when you register, even if your end goal is to buy.

• An income limit, as for buying, worked out from the index and the multiple your region sets.
• Not owning another home, with the same specific exceptions.
• Being registered as a resident at the town hall (empadronamiento) or having local ties in the town or region. For rental this is usually stricter than for buying: some regions ask for several years.
• Being on the applicant register (registro de demandantes), with the rental regime expressly ticked.

Some calls for applications (convocatorias) do set a minimum income to make sure you can pay the rent, and they will almost always ask you to prove you can pay, with payslips or your employment history (vida laboral).

The rent on a protected home is not set by the market. It is calculated from the home's maximum legal price using the percentage set by the region's rules, and in several programmes it is also limited to a percentage of the household's income. The benchmark most often repeated in affordable housing policy is that rent should not be more than about a third of income.

Always check what it includes: building charges (comunidad de propietarios), a parking space and a storage room may be charged separately and have their own caps.

Protected rental contracts last as long as the call sets, with extensions as long as you still meet the requirements. That periodic review is the big difference from an ordinary rental: if your income rises above the limit, the renewal may not go ahead or the rent may be recalculated.

• You must keep using it as your main residence (residencia habitual): you cannot sublet it or let someone else use it.
• Some programmes offer the chance to buy the home you live in later; this is not the general rule, so do not count on it.
• Rent-to-buy (alquiler con opción a compra) exists in some developments: part of what you have paid is taken off the price if you use the option in time.

1. Register today, ticking both buying and renting if either would work for you.
2. Tick every town where you really would live, including those in the metropolitan area.
3. Prove any quota you are entitled to: young person, large family, single-parent family, disability.
4. Apply to every call whose requirements you meet, not just the development you like most.
5. Keep your documents and your registration up to date: most people are dropped for administrative reasons, not for failing the requirements.