Madrid
CNN
—
Spain’s prime minister is calling for far-reaching measures to ease the country’s housing crisis, including a tax of up to 100% on property purchases by non-EU buyers.
“There are too many Airbnbs. What is missing is housing,” Pedro Sanchez said on Monday, proposing a series of new measures to help tenants and house hunters.
“In 2023, non-residents outside the European Union bought around 27,000 houses and apartments in Spain, not to live there, but mainly to speculate and make money. With the housing shortage we are experiencing, we clearly cannot allow this,” Sánchez said at a housing event in Madrid.
The tax of up to 100% on property purchases, which would apply to British and American buyers among others, would be much higher than current levies in Spain.
The proposed measures, which the Spanish coalition government will submit to Parliament, also include higher taxes on people renting apartments for short stays so that they “pay taxes as they should, as a business”, Mr. Sanchez said.
Tourist apartments have proliferated in Spain, one of the world’s top tourist destinations, particularly on the country’s Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, as well as in cities like Barcelona and Madrid.
Gilmar, a major Spanish real estate company, told CNN in a statement that it was “skeptical of the plan” announced by the prime minister, in part because it lacked details on how it would be implemented. Gilmar added that “the type of property purchased (in Spain) by third-country nationals is very different from the type of housing the country needs to resolve this crisis. This measure is just for show and will have no impact.
The project could also face obstacles in parliament, where Sanchez’s minority government has yet to win approval for his 2025 budget. His coalition partner, the left-wing Sumar party, has welcomed the housing proposals but declared that they were not sufficient.
“We want much more,” said Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun, a senior Sumar official.
The government is already taking steps to improve housing supply. That involves putting a recently created public housing agency in charge of 3,300 housing units and 2 million square meters of land available for new housing construction, Sanchez’s office said in a statement.