Spain is planning to introduce a 100 percent tax on the value of real estate purchased by non-European Union residents as the government seeks to address the countryʼs housing emergency.
This was reported by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
“The West faces a crucial challenge: not to become a society divided into two classes: rich landowners and poor tenants,” he said.
Residents of countries outside the EU bought 27 000 real estate properties in Spain in 2023. Sanchez emphasized that “not to live”, but “to earn money on them”.
The prime minister has not yet announced when he will submit this proposal for approval to parliament, where he has often had difficulty gathering enough votes to pass legislation.
Pedro Sanchez has proposed many measures to make housing in Spain affordable for local residents, including tax exemptions for landlords who provide affordable housing, the transfer of more than 3 000 homes to a new state housing authority, and higher taxes on apartments for tourists.
- Spain is actively fighting against overtourism. In June 2024, Barcelona banned short-term rental of apartments for tourists due to the rapid increase in housing costs for locals. Barcelona will also increase the tax for cruise ship passengers to reduce the flow of tourists. And even earlier , activists placed signs on the beaches of Mallorca that warn in English that the “beach is closed”. At the same time, there is a clarification in Catalan — “there is no danger, the beach is open”.
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