For the price of one square metre of housing in Madrid, you can buy almost two in central Mexico City and nearly three in Buenos Aires, Bogotá or São Paulo. But higher property prices do not necessarily mean a heavier burden on local wages. The key question is how much of their income locals need to spend to afford a home. If you compare rents with wages, the gap shrinks and in some cases even flips. In the Madrid region, renting an 80-square-metre flat at December 2025 asking prices would have absorbed 71% of the average gross salary advertised on InfoJobs that year, according to a study by Fotocasa and InfoJobs. In Buenos Aires, a two-room apartment comes to almost 80% of an average worker's income.
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