The highest residential rental yield in Spain currently is 4.7% in the Catalan province of Lerida, according to figures from the web portal Idealista which indicates that despite the falls in recent years property prices in Spain are still too high relative to average personal incomes.

Las Palmas in The Canaries and Málaga are next in the list with 4.5% and 4.3% gross rental yields respectively, implying that it would take around 22 years of rental income to pay for the average property.

The lowest yields meanwhile are in the North of Spain at just 2.9% in the Galician province of La Coruña, so the average property would cost approximately 35 years at the current annual rent.

The data from Idealista was calculated on rental yields per province for the period Q1 2011 dividing the average rental asking-price by the average sales asking-price in terms of €/m2.