The measure was one of a dozen unveiled on Monday by the country’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, as the government seeks to quell mounting anger over housing costs that have soared far beyond the reach of many in Spain.
Sánchez sought to underline the global nature of the challenge, citing housing prices that had swelled 48% in the past decade across Europe, far outpacing household incomes.
“The west faces a decisive challenge: to not become a society divided into two classes, the rich landlords and poor tenants,” he told an economic forum in Madrid.
The proposed measures include expanding the supply of social housing, offering incentives to those who renovate and rent out empty properties at affordable prices and cracking down on seasonal rentals. In Spain just 2.5% of housing is set aside for social housing, a figure that lags drastically behind countries such as France and the Netherlands, said Sánchez.
Just make it so the dwelling has to be occupied by the owner for 9-10 months a year. Every month it is unoccupied, the owner has to pay the value of a monthly rent as tax multiplied by the number of months it has been unoccupied -->
month 1 = rent x 1 month 2 = rent x 2 month 3 = rent x 3
I think that’ll be hard to ignore for most landlords - foreign or not.
Brutal, I love it
Occupancy is hard to monitor and easy to fake though. Purchases are impossible to miss and are a single point of enforcement as opposed to an ongoing burden like you’re suggesting. Though I do appreciate the spirit of your plan.
The people that wanted to have an additional, part time residence in Spain that could afford it would simply pay it.
Really? A cute little apartment in the center of Madrid that would normally cost 3k a month?
Months Nominal Rent Rent Accumulated total % of original value 1 3000 3000 3000 0,15% 2 3000 6000 9000 0,45% 3 3000 9000 18000 0,90% 4 3000 12000 30000 1,50% 5 3000 15000 45000 2,25% 6 3000 18000 63000 3,15% 7 3000 21000 84000 4,20% 8 3000 24000 108000 5,40% 9 3000 27000 135000 6,75% 10 3000 30000 165000 8,25% 11 3000 33000 198000 9,90% Let’s say they bought it a 2M€. You sure they would want to let it sit empty for 9-11 months a year?
On the surface it seems like a good idea: if the home isn’t going to be your primary residence you pay extra—a lot extra—to curtail a housing shortage caused in part by foreigners buying and inflating.
That said… if the issue there is anything like it is here in the states, the buyers will have more than enough capital to buy anyways and just pass the cost along to tenants… making the problem worse?
See below, the idea is for rent control to take care of that, which is part of the package. Along with the government supposedly planning to build their own company to compete.
If they were able to manage getting this implemented, which is dubious for political reasons, it probably would work, but it’d take at least a few years and there are many ways the increasingly anarchocapitalist conservative forces around it can disrupt it. We’ll see. As a model for other places… it’s probably a good place to start looking, it just needs a legal framework where you can deploy all of it (rent control, direct government development and rental, fiscal pressure on speculative property purchases). Just one piece alone probably won’t do it.
rent control
Rent control is such a poor substitute for building massive amounts of social housing. I wish it would stop taking up oxygen in the debate already so that we can focus on effective solutions instead
You’re literally replying to a comment about rent control being part of a multi-pronged approach, one that INCLUDES building massive amounts of social housing, not a substitute for anything.
Sounds like you want building to be the ONLY prong, which wouldn’t work for anyone except the developers that would get to build and thus profit more.
Literally just building more houses does work though.
Not in itself, no. With no additional levers, developers will just build more luxury condos and “investment properties”, since that’s what’s most profitable.
You need to be MUCH more specific than just “build more houses” to solve the affordable housing crisis.
There’s significantly more empty homes already than there are unhoused people, but unaffordable homes existing doesn’t help.
Science has shown that even just building high-end housing will lower housing prices across the board: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119022001048?via%3Dihub
They take the money from the rich people, lowering prices in the middle class, lowering prices for the lower class.
That’s one study specific to the circumstances of Helsinki, not a universally agreed on law of commerce.
The bigger issue is that it’s quite easy to “hide” that you are foreign. To do so, simply set up a holding in Spain that buys the house on your behalf.
The legislation being proposed also has a bunch of regulation regarding Spanish holdings buying property, including rent price controls. Depending on how you look at it, forcing foreign groups to set up shop domestically and be restricted by that regulation is the entire point of the tax hike.
Spanish media were reporting recently that some existing rental holdings were starting to dump real estate in response to the rent control, at least in Barcelona.
The bigger problem will be whether the legislation package passes in Parliament, where it needs support from conservative regionalists and then gets implemented at the autonomy level (think states, if you’re American), which is largely controlled by conservatives.
I’d have assumed that the majority of landlords were EU citizens… then remembered about Brexit.
That’ll upset the brexiters, and they’ll howl about the mean Spanish government…
I remember back during the Leave Referendum that many Briton pensioners living in Spain voted Leave “To keep the Spaniards from entering ‘our’ country” and later were very suprised that they themselves were also impacted and had to apply to live in Spain (and apparently after the end of the transition period some even got expelled from Spain because they couldn’t be arsed to register and became illegal immigrants).
That is the most Brexit thing I’ve ever heard. The audacity to complain about the Spanish in your country while the British loudly and palely swarm Spain every summer.
Yeah, I was an EU immigrant in Britain at the time and the Delusions Of Grandeur of the locals were really placed in sharp relief and some of those were pretty shocking. These were especially bad for the Brexiters but for example many Remainers claimed that the UK should “Stay in the EU and shape it from the inside” (so a “we Britons know best than the rest” view, and remember that the Leave Referendum happenned after the UK Government demanded from the EU, once again, even more special treatment and was told “No”).
In Britain the mindset that led to Brexit had been heavilly pushed by the Press and Politicians for decades, so this outcome wasn’t totally unexpected. In fact I only know about Britons being expelled from Spain after the end of the transition period since they didn’t register, because some British newspapers which had supported Brexit published outraged pieces about how Spain was expelling Britons), so even after the whole Brexit thing was done, at least part of the Press still pushed (and Britons still believed) the whole idea that Britons should have special treatment even whilst not reciprocating it.
As I see it Britain and Britons are suffering from one hell of a post-Imperial Hangover, which makes it very problematic for them to cooperate with other nations in any format other than “purelly competitive and always trying to gain an advantage over others”, so they were always the odd one out in the EU and, frankly, De Gaule was right when way back he did not want to let the UK into the EU.
post-Imperial Hangover
LOL 100%
Tbf, most of the complaining was about Poles and Romanians.
Mostly because they were the lower income additions to the EU, and the absolute poverty wages being paid in the UK farming and construction industries would have seemed like a fair deal to them.
Oh and this cunt who convinced his empty headed followers that millions of Muslims would be coming here under EU rules from famous EU member, Syria.
I agree with the measures I hope they address companies doing it too as it could be a loophole.
We were thinking about a move to Spain soon and in years to come possibly renting out the home we buy and live in South America to be closer to family.
I imagine in this case , as a non EU resident despite being an EU citizen the tax would apply.
I’d guess so, and that makes sense to limit the people wealthy enough to buy property and not live in Spain
Not saying you’re a rich landlord
I hope there is an exemption for people buying houses that they reside in full time. This type of policy is incredibly anti-immigrant otherwise.
Yeah, that’s what I thought too. But also it says “resident” so I guess you don’t have to be a citizen to buy a house?
Yeah, it would only apply to people from outside the EU that also don’t reside in Spain.
Source (in spanish): https://www.eldiario.es/economia/ventajas-fiscales-alquiler-asequible-limites-extranjeros-no-residentes-sistema-publico-garantias-nuevas-medidas-vivienda-gobierno_1_11959199.html
Non-EU residents. Right there in the title. If you are residing in Spain then you are a de facto EU resident.
Ffs.
Spain is adjacent to non-EU areas. Gibraltar is technically British and Morocco definitely isn’t in the EU… and when you go a couple of countries further there’s loads more.
Point being, no idea why you think Immigrants only come from the EU. Dominicans love moving to Spain… as do loads of people in countries of latin america.
A non-EU resident that moves to the EU becomes an EU resident. I think you might be mistaking this to be about non-EU citizens.
If you’re immigrating you have to finish a process before you become a resident. My wife wasn’t a resident for a full year until after we got married and she did the process. This means if she spent her money to buy a home during that time she would have been subject to the 100% tax.
This is what I mean. You can buy a house and live in it before you are a permanent resident. You can buy a house on a fucking visa and move in to the house and only later get whatever immigration document gives you lawful resident status.
I get it, now. I was mistaken.
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You can rent for some time until you have your residency solved/accepted.
My wife is on year 4 of the immigration process in the US. She’s still dealing with people misunderstanding how work authorization works with recruiters when applying to roles. She applied ages ago to get the condition removed from her permanent residency. This is even working for years at major companies and making 6 figures. We also bought a home after she started the process.
I know and understand that the US immigration process is not the same as what is in Spain or any other country, but bureaucratic bullshit exists everywhere and you don’t know the gotchas until you go through it yourself.
Saying someone needs to complete a process that can easily take 5+ years in some cases is just not realistic or fair. You shouldn’t be forced to rent, it leaves you ripe to being exploited as an immigrant often by people who are xenophobic and bigoted.
There are ways to change the dynamic of landleeches but screwing immigrants isn’t the solution. Everyone needs a place to live, nobody needs a place to rent out or to leave vacant as an investment. There should also be exceptions for things like commercial properties e.g. things zoned for business use. Shouldn’t be fucking an immigrant over for opening up a gas station or restaurant to make ends meet because the locals are too xenophobic to hire foreigners (a huge issue all over the world.) ___
Can we get this in Washington State please.
Spotted the savvy European investor.
we need this in berlin too
And everywhere else. Along with banning corporate ownership of residential property and banning short term rentals.
Banning them just sounds so…bureaucratic. cant we just eat them?
Up to them. I’m willing to compromise with a ban.
All this 100% tax will do is stop the slightly less wealthy non-EU residents that are currently buying houses. People that can will just pay it despite the tax if they want it bad enough.
It should be non-Spain but ok i guess, lets keep letting the rich countries in EU destroy our chance at a home…… (which i assume by fare are the most prevalent)
The problem is that there are EU freedom of movement rules. It would be hard to justify Spain-only in the face of those rules
Yes, I think you can live and work in Spain indefinitely if you are from the EU.
So someone could be living in Spain for decades with an EU passport. It would make sense for them to be able to buy a main residence.
Which, to be honest, is one of the many things fueling anti-EU sentiment at the moment. Immigration being the biggest one.
Not really. Spanish residents only. Not citizens. So you can freely move into Spain and reside there. Once you reside there no 100% tax on buying a house. This should have nothing to do with freedom of movement.
Do that there, do that here, Do that everywhere. Better for you and me, From see to sea.