A housing co-op in Spain is working to address the shortage of affordable homes for families in Valencia, Barcelona and Madrid.
Ginkgo Gestion co-op is helping to develop and manage single-family occupancy homes, which have private terraces and also offer common facilities, such as swimming pools.
So far it has provided homes for more than 500 families and is now looking to expand to Seville and Andalucía.
Ginkgo Gestion was set up in 2014 by architect Ana Saldaña Fernandez, who had been working with housing co-ops for more than 11 years. Its membership now includes architect Lorenzo Agustí Pons, a former mayor of Paterna, a municipality of Valencia.
Mr Pons said house building in Spain slowed after the 2008 financial crisis, sparking a shortage of affordable homes, and Ginko Gestion was formed as a response. The first set of housing units it built in Valencia was sold at €160,000 per unit, below the market price.
The members own and manage individual housing co-ops, which enables them to save costs, and Ginkgo Gestion acts as a housing association, providing them with services.
Spain’s housing market has only just recovered to pre-crisis levels. However, smaller cities are in need of housing developments. Some have become ghost towns with nearly finished real estate projects that have been abandoned. According to a census by the National Statistics Institute, there are 3.4 million empty homes across Spain.
“At this moment the cost of building is going up. It is, therefore, a good time to develop co-operative projects, which ensure the building costs are under control and enable us to offer housing at adequate prices,” said Mr Pons.
“I believe we played an important role in helping to keep housing prices down.”
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This is backed up by figures from Concovi, the Spanish federation of housing co-ops, which estimates that acquiring a home through a co-operative is 20% cheaper than buying from a property developer.
Ginkgo is currently working on nine projects in Madrid, two in Valencia and one in Barcelona. These proved so popular, the co-op needed waiting lists for all of them. Most families who move into the homes come from areas that have been affected by the housing crisis and had to leave their original neighbourhoods. Some of them had not had a home built in their neighbourhoods for 15 years.
Going forward, it plans to focus on smaller projects in towns where housing has suffered through lack of investment.
Obtaining finance for the developments is not an issue, says Mr Pons, due to the fact that co-operatives are perceived as trustworthy institutions by Spanish banks who can also get members of the co-ops to become individual customers.
In the UK, a similar model has been pioneered since 2013 by Lilac co-operative in Leeds via a Mutual Home Ownership Scheme. Borrowing is cheaper because the society, not the individuals, obtains the mortgage.
