Real rental prices, percentiles and housing mix in Lavapiés. (officially Lavapiés-Embajadores)
Median rent
€1,500/month
Mean: €1,682/month
Price per m²
28.2€
Madrid: 26.8€/m²
Median size
50 m²
Madrid: 62 m²
Listings analyzed
460
Idealista listings
Prices, percentages and counts are calculated from Idealista listings of the last few months.
Lavapiés, officially Lavapiés-Embajadores, is the most multicultural corner of Madrid and the cheapest way into the centre. The streets fall away downhill south of Tirso de Molina, past restored corralas, small theatres, grocers and restaurants from half the world, and a mix of accents you will not hear anywhere else in the city.
It is where students and new arrivals land, in the same stairwells as madrileños who have lived there for forty years. The median rent is 1,500€, exactly the city median, but check the square metres before celebrating: that buys a 50 m² flat rather than the 65 m² city median, which is why the price per square metre, 27.4€, sits above the Madrid average. You pay less per month because you rent less flat.
If you want street life at any hour, an international crowd and a location you can walk out of in any direction, this is it. What you accept in exchange is old housing, stairs, small rooms and noise. It is a good first address in Madrid and a hard one to raise a family in.
Transport: metro lines L3 and L5 (Embajadores), L3 (Lavapiés), L1 (Tirso de Molina, Antón Martín), plus the Cercanías commuter rail at Embajadores.
45% of rental flats in Lavapiés have one bedroom, followed by 28% with two bedrooms. Studios make up 15% of the supply, and flats with four or more bedrooms, 6%.
Lift. 55% of rental homes here have a lift. Barely half the flats have a lift. This is the oldest housing stock of the ten neighbourhoods here, narrow buildings and converted corralas where walking up is still normal.
Private landlord or agency. 13% of listings are posted by a private landlord, against 87% that come through an agency. As in most of Madrid, the supply is dominated by agencies.
The median rent in Lavapiés is €1,500 a month. Most flats let for between €1,200 and €1,900 a month: a quarter of the supply falls below €1,200, and another quarter goes above €1,900.
Per square metre that works out at 28.2€/m². Applied to real floor areas, a 50 m² flat lands around €1,410 a month, a 70 m² flat around €1,970, and a 90 m² flat around €2,540.
Against the city as a whole, Lavapiés sits 6% below the Madrid median (€1,600/month), where the median price per square metre is 26.8€/m².
In Lavapiés, only 10% of listings go below 20.0€/m². If you find a 70 m² flat at €1,400 a month or less, it is below the 10th percentile for the neighbourhood.
That does not make it a scam, but it is worth checking before you go any further. A price well below the local market is the single most common red flag in rental fraud.
For reference, the 25th percentile in Lavapiés sits at 24.2€/m². Below that, the price is good for the area without being anomalous.
We check that our sample can support a trend before publishing one, and right now it cannot. At the number of listings we analyse per period in Madrid, splitting that same data in half at random already produces swings of more than 15%, with no change in the market at all. Any percentage we published would describe the size of our sample rather than rents.
The prices on this page are unaffected: a median needs far less history than a trend does. We will publish the change again once we can compare two long periods on the same coverage.
Looking for a flat in Lavapiés right now? The good listings are gone within hours. Our Idealista apartment alerts notify you the moment one matching your search goes live, before everyone else sees it.
The median rent in Lavapiés is €1,500 a month, which works out at roughly 28€/m². Most flats let for between €1,200 and €1,900 a month. These figures come from 460 Idealista listings over the last few months.
We do not publish a price trend for Lavapiés yet. We check that the sample supports one, and for now it does not: the change we would calculate falls inside the margin of error of the sample itself. The median and percentiles on this page are sound.
55% of rental homes in Lavapiés have a lift. Barely half the flats have a lift. This is the oldest housing stock of the ten neighbourhoods here, narrow buildings and converted corralas where walking up is still normal.
Expect to be asked for your NIE (Número de Identificación de Extranjero) if you are a foreigner, your last few payslips or proof of income, your employment contract, and increasingly a bank guarantee or several months of deposit. None of it is a legal requirement of the contract itself, but applicants who turn up without the paperwork ready lose the flat to someone who has it. Assemble the folder before you start viewing.