How Much You Earn Renting Your Madrid Flat by Rooms (vs. Traditional Renting)

If you own a flat in Madrid, the first decision that changes your profitability is not the neighbourhood or the renovation: it is how you rent it out. The same three-bedroom flat can earn €1,200 a month on a traditional lease or over €1,900 rented by rooms. Year after year, the difference is huge.

In this article we explain it with real numbers and no fluff.

Traditional renting: comfortable but limited

You rent the whole flat to one person or family under a single contract. Advantages: a single point of contact, less management and, on paper, stability. The problem is the income ceiling: you charge what the market pays for "the flat", not for each room.

In areas like Tetuán, Carabanchel or Vallecas, a 3-bedroom flat currently sits in a range of €1,100–1,400/month. And when the tenant leaves, you have the whole flat empty until another moves in.

Renting by rooms: more income, more management

Here each room is a separate contract. In Madrid, a furnished single room with bills included usually rents for €450–650 depending on area and size. That same 3-bedroom flat can generate €1,500–1,950/month.

What is more, the risk is spread out: if one person leaves, you still collect the other two. The flat is almost never completely empty.

A comparison with numbers (3-bedroom flat, mid-range area)

• Traditional: €1,250/month → €15,000/year gross.
• By rooms: 3 × €575 = €1,725/month → €20,700/year gross.
• Difference: +€5,700/year, 38% more gross income.

But beware: renting by rooms has more costs

Let us be honest. Renting by rooms earns more because it also involves more work and more cost:

• Bills included (electricity, water, gas, internet): €150–250/month.
• Furnishing and maintaining the common areas.
• More turnover: move-ins and move-outs, cleanings, check-ins.
• Almost daily management.

Even after deducting all of that, the net profitability is usually still clearly higher. The key is that the management does not eat your margin or your time.

What if I do not want to manage anything?

This is the question most owners ask. The good news: you can keep the profitability of renting by rooms without touching a thing. With a professional management model (or a guaranteed-rent model), a specialised company handles tenants, contracts, bills, cleaning and incidents, and you receive rent every month.

At AdastraHouse we do exactly that: we optimise the flat, rent it by rooms, and you get paid without worrying about the management. If you want to know how much your specific flat would earn, we can give you a realistic figure.

Conclusion

Renting by rooms is not for every flat or every owner, but when it fits, the income difference is hard to ignore. The most expensive mistake is to assume that "renting is renting": it is not. Before signing a traditional contract, calculate what it would earn by rooms. You may be leaving thousands of euros a year on the table.