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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
we need this in berlin too
And everywhere else. Along with banning corporate ownership of residential property and banning short term rentals.
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.
