You are missing that Spain's economy is not growing like the USA's.

Spanish wages grew only 2.7%/yr L10Y [1], and its nominal GDP/capita looks completely flat [2].

This explains why the city is affordable for international tourists but not locals. Regardless, a high "tourist tax" would probably be better for their economy than an outright ban.

[1] https://www.ine.es/jaxiT3/Tabla.htm?t=59150

[2] Compare https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=spain+gdp+per+capita+10... vs https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=USA+gdp+per+capita+10+y...

At 2.7% that's 2.7% and .7% growth faster than wages.

Let's look at the bay's wage growth[0]: 11% (or ~1%/yr) from 2010-2020, but they removed CPI-U inflation[1], so it's something higher (annual was ~1-3% in that time period). Which puts the bay area housing at 5%+ higher growth, 2x to 7x worse than Spain.

So, once again - Spain is doing well when it comes to housing prices. Tourism frustrates locals because they think it's increased their housing costs wildly - but in fact it's because their economy is switching to a tourist economy unless they find an industry to grow.

[0]: https://bayareaequityatlas.org/indicators/income-growth?year... [1]: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SA0&output_view=pct_...

I don't follow your calculations; It appears you're doing arithmetic with CAGRs from three different date ranges (2010-2020, 2012-2019, and L10Y).

An apples-to-apples comparison illustrates my point:

L10Y cumulative change in:

Bay Area rent: +46.0% [0]

Bay Area wages: +45.7% [1]

Vs:

Barcelona rent: +70% (if we believe TFA)

Spain wages: +30% [2]

Or:

Cumulative 2010-2020 change in:

Bay Area rent: +57% [0]

Bay Area wages: +34% [1]

which also looks bad (but not as bad as Barcelona L10Y). Indeed, there were lots of complaints about housing costs in SF then.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUURA422SEHA [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06418840500000003 [2] https://www.ine.es/jaxiT3/Tabla.htm?t=59150

Yeah I didn't have good data sources, and took shortcuts on the math.

I guess it just doesn't look bad to me in terms of their real estate, thanks for pointing me to these better data sources.

For comparison, 2012-2019 in SF was 88% growth over 7 years, or >9% year over year growth.