A large and highly fragmented sector
Spain has some 60,700 companies working in real estate on behalf of third parties. In 2025 they billed €9.4 billion, 9.3% more than the year before, and agencies took more than 92% of that figure, according to DBK.
It is a large market and, at the same time, a highly atomised one. New players keep arriving: in the first half of 2025 alone, 10,637 new agencies were set up. More agencies for the same number of owners means more competition for every property.
When the listing appears, the race has already started
According to idealista, in the second quarter of 2026, 7% of the homes sold on its portal were listed for less than a week. In Madrid, 11%. In those cases, anyone who was not there before the listing simply misses out.
At the other end, 36% took between three months and a year to sell, and 11% more than a year. That is where you find the owner who listed convinced that selling alone was easy and who, after weeks of calls and viewings with no result, ends up cutting the price or giving in to the first agency that calls.
Selling badly costs too
OCU, Spain’s consumer organisation, studied 60 agencies in five cities in early 2026. Sales commissions ranged from 2% to 6% of the price, with an average of 5%. In Madrid, every agency consulted overvalued the flats, by between 5% and 10% according to OCU’s estimates.
A price set badly at the start is paid for later in weeks on the market and in price cuts. That is why owners need a data-based valuation before listing, not after.
Less supply, more competition for every owner
The supply of homes for sale fell by 11% in Spain in the last quarter of 2025 and by around 10% in the first quarter of 2026, according to idealista. Madrid city is an exception: listings there grew by 17% in that quarter. Even so, across most of the country there are fewer properties for more agencies.
The thesis: get there earlier, and with permission
Before a listing goes live there are almost always signals: a change in the owner’s life, a financial situation, a family decision. Some of that information is public. The rest is held only by the owner, who shares it only in exchange for something useful, such as an honest valuation of the property.
That is the thesis behind ATLAS, the platform we are building at Caelum: spot in time which properties are about to come to market and offer the owner advice before the listing. Always with their consent: no agency contacts anyone who has not authorised it.
For owners, it means selling better and with less strain. For agencies, conversations that arrive in time. For the market, fewer listings that drag on and fewer forced price cuts.