Projects Investment · Analysis
Is buying a parking space in Madrid worth it?
2,026 spaces for sale across Madrid, 1,405 real rentals and the net yield of each one.
- Role
- Author
- Year
- 2026
- Tools
- Python · Scraping · Statistics · Leaflet · JavaScript
- Status
- Finished · data from October 2026
How to use it
It is a replica of GarajeInvest, the interactive map I built for the analysis, now with all 2,026 spaces: each one in its place, coloured by gross yield (green above 8%, amber between 6% and 8%, red below). From afar they show as dots; zoom in and each one’s percentage appears. Filter by district, budget, minimum yield and type of access, exclude concessions and click any space to see its details: price, estimated rent, costs, gross and net yield and payback years.
It is not investment advice: the rent is an estimate and listings change. No addresses or links to the listings are published.
Concessions look like the best deal on the map: 8.0% net on average against 3.8% for the rest. Until you read the small print: they are a right of use with an expiry date.
- 2,026
- Spaces for sale analysed across the 21 districts
- 1,405
- Real rentals used to estimate each neighbourhood’s rent
- 3.4%
- Median net yield
- 73
- Concessions detected in the listings
The question
Parking spaces are sold as the quiet property investment: little money upfront, a hassle-free tenant, no renovations. How much do they really yield in Madrid once you subtract what they cost every year, and where are they most worth it?
The first version of the analysis compared 45 spaces in three central districts. This one covers the whole city.
How I did it
- Collect the whole market. A scraper calmly downloads (one request every few seconds) every parking space for sale and for rent in the city of Madrid listed on Fotocasa: price, size, district, neighbourhood, coordinates and description.
- Read the small print. From each description it extracts community fees and property tax (IBI) when they appear, the type of access (ramp or car lift) and whether it is a concession or a right of use.
- Estimate rent from real rentals. Each space’s reference rent is the median of the rentals in its neighbourhood (if there are at least three listings) or in its district. That gave neighbourhood-level rents for 1,921 of the 2,026 spaces.
- Calculate. Gross yield (annual rent / price), net yield ((annual rent − costs) / price) and years to recover the investment. When the listing doesn’t give the costs, a prudent value is used: €20 a month in community fees and €120 a year in IBI.
What comes out
- The median price is €21,000 and the median net yield 3.4%. Eight out of ten spaces yield between 1.6% and 7.0%.
- Cheap yields more. In Villa de Vallecas (median price €12,000) the median net yield is 4.2%; in Centro (€38,000), 3.4%. Rent rises with the neighbourhood, but less than the price does.
- The neighbourhood matters more than the square metre. Puente de Vallecas has the lowest yield in the city (1.4%) because its spaces rent for about €50 a month.
- Concessions are deceptive. The 73 detected yield 8.0% net on average, twice the rest, but they are rights of use with an expiry date: when the concession ends, the space goes back to the city council and the investment is worth zero.
- What isn’t in the photo matters: a narrow ramp or a car lift reduces the number of possible tenants, and a space left empty three months a year eats a quarter of its yield.
What I take away
Going from 45 spaces to the whole market changed the analysis: what looked like an anecdote (concessions) turned out to be a pattern, and another one appeared that wasn’t visible before (cheap yields more). Automating data collection isn’t a luxury: it is what makes the conclusion reliable.