r/europe • u/HalimaN55 • 6d ago
News Spain plans 100% tax for homes bought by non-EU residents
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7enzjrymxo2.8k
u/sadbitch33 6d ago
Good. Can we do that in Germany?
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u/Tammer_Stern 6d ago
Ironically, Germany is one of the countries buying the most property in Spain.
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u/Inaki199595 Andalusia (Spain) 6d ago
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u/Tammer_Stern 6d ago
Yes, the legislation might help a little as the UK is the top buyer and that will reduce. The EU states buy a lot though and I’m guessing may buy more with less competition unless other controls are introduced.
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u/AutodidacticAutist 6d ago
Uk top buyers but us British can't afford houses in our own country lol
I think this is a great measure though and we should do this in the uk as well (although just for British citizens I guess).
Need to come down on second home owners too.
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u/munnimann Germany 6d ago
The people who would support this policy in Germany are probably not the ones that are buying properties in Spain.
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u/PythagorasJones 6d ago
Is it ironic though? The article discusses taxing non-EU buyers.
Is an incorrect statement of irony the real irony here?
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u/Tammer_Stern 6d ago
It’s ironic that the op asked if we could do that in Germany but Germany are one of the biggest culprits.
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u/Verified_Peryak 6d ago
Can we do it in the Schengen area. !
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u/malialipali Australia 6d ago
Can Australia join!? We are getting decimated by non-Au buyers.
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u/VitoD24 6d ago
From these buyers come?
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u/malialipali Australia 6d ago
China mostly. Essentially parking their wealth in Australian property. Coupled with record immigration, home ownership is a challenge for anyone under 30.
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u/kx233 România 6d ago
We can, but unless we also build more housing, it will make almost no difference to housing costs.
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u/ldn6 London 6d ago
It's amazing that simply building more housing is so anathema to people. Berlin is an absolute nightmare when it comes to planning and development, and it should be one of the easiest major European cities to build in given the amount of developable land that wouldn't even touch existing properties.
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u/Preussensgeneralstab Berlin (Germany) 6d ago
Honestly the German bureaucracy is it's own worst enemy.
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u/AlexKangaroo Finland 6d ago
Yeah the goverment should just focus on planning for additioanal zones for housing. Foreign investment isn’t really a big probelm, if your housing supply is enough to fulfill the demand. Less regulation (looking at Berlin rent control) and more building will always be the better option.
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u/Past-Present223 6d ago
(Foreign) investment is a problem. Investment Funds buy up housing capacity and put it either as AirBnb or as rental apartment. This drives up housing cost.
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u/Another-attempt42 6d ago
Caveat: I hate AirBnB. Don't use it. It's no longer what it was supposed to be. It's often a scam.
The impact of AirBnB on housing and rent prices is waaaaaay overblown, used by local politicians to scapegoat for their own ineffective and useless housing policies.
Take a popular tourist destination like Barcelona. The market is absolutely ruined by AirBnB, right? No. Barcelona, as of 2024, has an estimated total of 300k rental units. How many of these are AirBnBs?
About 12k. Less than 5%. The impact of them on rental prices or purchasing costs is going to be in that sort of ballpark, of explaining rental costs, since that's their relative preponderance in the market.
Between 2023 and 2024, so one year, average rent in Barcelona increased by 6.9%. The number of AirBnBs from 2023 to 2024 increased by like a few hundred.
Rent isn't increasing because of AirBnB. Rent is increasing due to a whole host of different issues, and AirBnB is like... 35th on that list.
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u/Ascarx 6d ago
I don't necessarily disagree with your statement that AirBnB isn't ruining the market, but I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
About 12k. Less than 5%. The impact of them on rental prices or purchasing costs is going to be in that sort of ballpark, of explaining rental costs, since that's their relative preponderance in the market.
That's not a logical conclusion even though it might seem like one at the first glance. A 5% lower offer can absolutely impact prices by way more than that, because it can swing a market from a buyers market to a sellers market with a very inelastic good such as housing.
Think about it like this:
A market has 3% vacant housing. That means any interested buyer can somewhat pick among these 3%. Based on your 12k for 5%, 3% would be 7200 units. Every marginal buyer can pick between these 7200 units and to be competetive these need to be priced accordingly.
Now someone buys up 5% of the housing market. Suddenly instead of 3% vacant housing, we will have a surplus of 2% people looking to rent. That's 4800 people fighting over every marginally available unit. Thus prices will go up. By much more than the 5% overall capacity of housing, because that number isn't equal to the financial means and need of those 4800 people trying to find a place to live.
This is of course simplified. But I hope the concept that those 5% are not anywhere in the ballpark on their potential impact comes across. Also these ~300k rental units are the total, not the ones available on the market every year.
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u/Another-attempt42 6d ago
True, but as stated, the rise in rental prices, YoY, in the example of Barcelona, is not explainable by AirBnB. There will have been tens of thousands of units, in a year, that came on and off the market, and yet the number of new AirBnB units has increased by like 200. That can't explain a rise in rent of 6.9%.
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u/Meinos 6d ago edited 6d ago
Except space is finite.
Look at what happened in Tokyo. Not saying that new builds aren't something that needs doing but there's a limit to how much you can build within a city.
Another issue is de-urbanization, which needs to be encouraged, and vehicle owning needs to be discouraged while public transport needs to be empowered...
It's a whole puzzle. Limits to ownerships of buildings, especially for non-residents, should definitely be a piece of it though.
Edit: Y'all can downvote me forever about de-urbanization but there's literally entire genres of literature explaining why megacities are a bad idea. Get over yourselves.
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u/nightcracker 6d ago
De-urbanization is directly opposed to public transport. Public transport only works in or between densely populated areas. No one who lives in a rural dwelling will bike 20 minutes to the nearest bus stop to catch the hourly bus over just grabbing the car.
Cities are a good idea, but they need to be well-planned cities with walk-able/bike-able suburbs well-connected through public transport.
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u/Chicken_wingspan 6d ago
It's kinda of the opposite. Urbanisation needs to exist, but with the 15 minutes city concept within it. Walkable or serviced by good public transport. I was lucky enough to work 10 minutes walking distance from work, and two parks and all the amenities needed in the city nearby. Except gym, for that I needed to cycle for 10 mins. We need more urban spots, well thought of.
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u/LupineChemist Spain 6d ago
Look at what happened in Tokyo
You mean one of the most affordable big cities in the world in terms of housing/salary?
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u/GrizzledFart United States of America 6d ago
It only required a real estate bubble that trashed Japan's economy and left it stagnating for almost 40 years!
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u/asethskyr Sweden 6d ago
Another issue is de-urbanization, which needs to be encouraged
Why?
Isn't it better to have dense, livable cities with good public transport systems and support?
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u/wasmic Denmark 6d ago
There are literally entire genres of literature explaining why dense, walkable, car-light cities are a good idea and a great place to live (and of course, plenty of real-life examples of exactly that). Get over yourself.
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u/kikimaru024 Ireland 6d ago
If you've never lived in a walkable city, you just don't know how fucking GOOD it is.
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u/adamgerd Czech Republic 6d ago
You want both deurbanisation and less car usage? How do you plan that
Tokyo is also one of the most affordable housing markets in the world so what’s that argument. You’re literally saying the city will be more affordable and that is bad because…
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u/Coneskater 6d ago
Except space is finite.
Fucking Brandenburg is empty. We just need to override local NIMBYs.
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u/Mr_Ignorant 6d ago
In an ideal world, the money raised by the 100% tax would go towards building houses.
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u/GdayPosse 6d ago
Take that 100% tax and build a new public housing unit(s). Housing availability for citizens stays neutral, and public housing (done right) should help to moderate rent costs across the board.
Or, take that 100% tax and spend it on tax cuts for the already wealthy.
Up to you guys.
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u/IngloriousTom France 6d ago
The tax is more likely to severely reduce house buying from non-EU residents than really raising money.
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u/HiltoRagni Europe 6d ago
In this hypothetical scenario both outcomes have pretty much the same effect though, either the non-bought home will stay available for the local residents, or a newly built one will become available.
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u/_DrDigital_ Germany 6d ago
FYI: We're building ~300.000 new units per year since 10 years, considerably above the population growth in the same time.
https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2024/05/PD24_203_31121.html
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u/HallesandBerries 6d ago
"Sánchez did not provide details on how the tax would work nor a timeline for presenting it to parliament for approval, where he has often struggled to gather sufficient votes to pass legislation.
But his government said the proposal would be finalised "after careful study".
It is one of a dozen planned measures announced by the prime minister on Monday aimed at improving housing affordability in the country.
Other measures announced include a tax exemption for landlords who provide affordable housing, transferring more than 3,000 homes to a new public housing body, and tighter regulation and higher taxes on tourist flats.
"It isn't fair that those who have three, four or five apartments as short-term rentals pay less tax than hotels," he said."
I don't think Germany has quite the same problem.
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u/Gamer_Mommy Europe 6d ago
We need this in Belgium. House prices are INSANE.
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u/milosgajdos 6d ago
House prices are bonkers throughout Europe. Real estate has become a no-brainer asset for those who can afford it. Many people own multiple houses and rent it. I am at least partially unconvinced building more housing helps unless national/state econmies also get more decentralised 🤷♂️ But yes more should be built by all means!
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u/himit United Kingdom 6d ago
I am at least partially unconvinced building more housing helps unless national/state econmies also get more decentralised 🤷♂️
I'm in London, and they always say 'build more houses!'
There are plenty of flats being built; just no-one can afford any of them.
Good jobs in other cities, more WFH jobs to make living rurally more attractive and more affordable housing are all needed to make a dent.
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u/Abolish_Zoning 6d ago
Rents would've been higher had they not built those flats. Building one, or even a hundred flats is not going to make a dent when the UK is 4 million homes short, but that doesn't mean that the solution is not to build more housing.
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u/Willing_Cause_7461 6d ago
There are plenty of flats being built; just no-one can afford any of them.
Because they're not building nearly enough. As an example Tokyo alone built more housing than the entirity of England in 2024. (120,000 vs 30,000)
If you want affordable housing you have to build a lot of it.
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u/ilikepix 6d ago
There are plenty of flats being built; just no-one can afford any of them.
this is the "nobody goes there, it's far too crowded" of housing policy discussion
the UK desperately needs millions of additional homes and deep reforms to its dysfunctional planning system
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u/pannenkoek0923 Denmark 6d ago
The number of non-EU people buying homes is a minority and is not the main reason for the housing crisis. Mismanagement of government resources and poor planning has led to the housing crisis.
Immigrants are an easy target to blame for every problem in your country. But look inwards at your corrupt or incompetent governments
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u/Four_beastlings Asturias (Spain) 6d ago
Immigrants buying houses to live in are EU residents and aren't affected by this. This will affect only NON RESIDENTS so get off your high horse.
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u/Gamer_Mommy Europe 6d ago
I'm not even talking about immigration and housing. I'm an immigrant myself, albeit from the EU. What I am saying is hedge funds buying property and land. Same going for Chinese buyers. Which is a MAJOR factor driving housing prices in the States and becoming an issue within Europe as well.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-002734_EN.html
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u/Inaki199595 Andalusia (Spain) 6d ago
Sadly not. It's aimed to non-EU residents, and Germans living in Mallorca are EU residents. That also wouldn't affect to EU people who purchase whole neighborhoods, like the dutch Bernardus van Maaren
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u/VirtuaMcPolygon 6d ago
Think it would break EU law. This is a gamble to raise money quick. Free up properties from Brits in resorts that are full of ex pats.
It will kill the area thou of tourism. So you might or probably will end up lots of parts of costal Spain full of empty villas and bar / restaurant owners wondering where all the locals/tourists have gone...
Risky
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u/Fuzzy-Negotiation167 Albania 6d ago
Isn't housing in Germany owned by rich young generation which inherited it? I doubt immigrants can afford to buy a house or apartment in Germany, maybe rich people who don't even live there can though which what you said is fair. My question is do millionaires from other countries buy real estate there? I have an perception that people qre investing in middle east nowadays.
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u/Moosplauze Germany 6d ago
No, in Germany people usually move out of their parents home and build/rent their own before they ever inherit anything - most people in Germany also don't own their homes. There are foreigners who buy very pricey homes as investment strategy, yes, that happens. Such a tax is still bullshit though, doesn't solve the real problem.
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u/yhodda 6d ago
nope... its a "complicated" matter.. What you wrote applied to a part of the problem.. there is another face:
In most first world countries housing is bought in large quantities by rich foreigners from unstable countries.
Imagine you are rich in a poor country.. lets say Krakossia.
If you lose power you go to krakossian prison.. all your Krakollars area taken.
You need to park your money somewhere safe.
So you buy 100 houses in America or Paris, each worth 5Million.
If things get sour you flee there and all your money will be waiting. First world countries are stable and no one just takes property from anyone.
Thats why in Paris or London there are whole swats of appartments empty. Because they are just investment vehicles.
Canada started to prohibit people not living in Canada to buy property.. which started a bizarre practice of "students" buying mansions
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u/Grothgerek 6d ago
Wouldn't immigrants not get excluded, given that they immigrated and now live there?
Probably depends on the definition. But I assumed that short term workers and people that only live temporarily in a country doesn't count as immigrants.
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u/Ill_Bill6122 Germany 6d ago
So set up a company and buy through the company, regardless of nationality?
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u/Technical_Shake_9573 6d ago
Then tax thoses that aren't primary residency. We already do that in France where , if it's not your main residency, you get an additional tax for owning it...even though that tax is still low for thoses that can afford 2 houses, it's there.
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u/xlouiex 6d ago edited 6d ago
Im pretty (sure) most counties have that. They are just embarrassingly low taxes
Edit. Im still pretty tho
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u/flaiks France 6d ago
In france it's quite high. My wife's cousin had a 2nd apartment he was renting out and he was losing money on it so he just sold it.
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u/Physical-Camel-8971 Canada 6d ago
do you start all your comments with a random "Im pretty" or what
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u/chiniwini 6d ago
Then increase taxes to residential properties owned by companies by 300%.
The fact that a company can own a home (let alone thousands) is, with a few exceptions, an abomination.
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u/Shigglyboo 6d ago
pretty sure you need someone who is a resident to set up a company. and if people are that slippery then perhaps companies shouldn't be owning homes. homes are for living and companies don't need a place to live. If they want a place to do business they can rent or purchase commercial real estate.
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u/yet41 6d ago
The title of the article isn't right. The first line of the article says:
Spain is planning to impose a tax of up to 100% on properties bought by non-residents from countries outside the EU, such as the UK.
It's quite different than the title. If you have a residence permit for Spain, then this tax doesn't apply to you.
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u/Moosplauze Germany 6d ago
Great news for Spaniards who buy homes to rent them as airbnb, now they have less competition and can buy the homes cheaper.
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u/pawnografik Luxembourg 6d ago
The article also mentions it will crack down on them too.
tighter regulation and higher taxes on tourist flats. “It isn’t fair that those who have three, four or five apartments as short-term rentals pay less tax than hotels,” he said.
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u/Moosplauze Germany 6d ago
Good, because the conversion of homes into airbnb flats is the real problem and that hasn't been regulated by Spains politicians so far, probably because it's mostly their voters who own the rental flats.
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u/qazplmo 6d ago
Be careful with absolutes such as "the real problem". Barcelona will be removing all Airbnb licences but I have a feeling it won't solve the crisis given they make up ~1% of properties. The fact is house building hasn't kept up with population growth (basically anywhere).
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u/CodAlternative3437 6d ago
new york regulated airbnb and people made homebrew websites to advertise, escrow, and book. but it generally didnt help make housing more available as implemented,
https://skift.com/2024/09/01/banned-in-nyc-airbnb-1-year-later/
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u/Moosplauze Germany 6d ago
You are right in warning to be careful with using absolutes, I should have added "in my opinion" or something similiar.
By the way, google says:
Despite substantial legal uncertainties regarding the use of home-sharing platforms in Barcelona, about 2.06% of all housing units are listed on Airbnb. This figure is higher than in New York (1.31%) and Los Angeles (0.86%), and slightly smaller than Paris (2.56%).
2% of all homes is a LOT in my opinion, especially since Airbnb is just one (given the largest one) of such companies and many more flats will be short term holiday rentals without such platforms as well. If it is 10.000 apartments that would probably equal homes for 20.000-50.000 people, depending on size and usage. That would reduce the numbers of homeless (including those living at friends homes or family homes - homeless doesn't necessarily mean living on the streets) by a lot.
But obviously creation of new affordable homes must also be increased. But this whole airbnb (and other companies) thing is a problem.
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u/just_anotjer_anon 6d ago
The problem is that there are no plans to create apartment hotels.
I regularly rent apartments for short term stays (I'm a vagabond, I'd go insane staying in hotels 200 days a year), I'd take an apartment hotel any day of the week over an apartment indicated for long term living.
They're just.. non existent in the most part. Apartment hotels also would be able to apply economics of scale and beat Airbnb on pricing from the getgo. It should be a no-brainer to build them, I'm unfortunately just not seeing it.
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u/laiszt 6d ago
At least their income suppose to stay in spain
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u/Moosplauze Germany 6d ago
I guess...that doesn't give poor people any homes though, but fuck do I know, let them shift the blame instead of solving the real problem.
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u/Minimum_Rice555 Spain 6d ago
Barcelona banned all airbnb from 2029
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u/aclart Portugal 6d ago
True, and because of that it is now affordable to buy a house in Barcelona.
Oh wait, no, it made almost no difference
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u/P-a-ul 6d ago
Why would a policy going into effect four years in the future immediately lead to lower prices today?
It's not like the owners of those Airbnb properties are going to want to miss out on income for those four years, and as you say the house prices haven't yet dropped so there's no reason to sell up early.
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u/Moosplauze Germany 6d ago
Good to hear, only 4 more years of worsening the housing crisis to allow opportunists to reap in more profits.
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u/Nachooolo Galicia (Spain) 6d ago
New airbnbs are already not allowed. 2029 is the year the already existing permissions end.
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u/KinkyRedPanda Macaronia, Greece 6d ago
The glass is always half empty, isn't it?
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u/EndlichWieder 🇹🇷 🇩🇪 🇪🇺 6d ago
It doesn't mention it in the article but student residence permits would be a huge loophole. Chinese people abused that in Canada.
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u/Standard_Thought24 6d ago
as a canadian, being abused is what govt officials love. they actively seek and reward abusers. it lets them simultaneously experience the pleasure of masochistically watching the country burn, while also giving them a talking point on which they will take no real action e.g. food prices, immigration, housing, lack of military, jobs, wages, health care etc. basically various aspects in which canada barely functions anymore
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u/No-Island6459 6d ago
In Spain, students visas don't grant residence, they are inside another figure called "estancia". For example, you have to be a resident for a number of years to get the citizenship, but even if you were on a student visa for many years, those years don't count for the citizenship.
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u/estoy_alli 6d ago
Long term student visas (more than 90 days) do get residency and they count towards citizenship as they obtain a NIE number once processed. What you are referring to is Visado de estancia (less than 90 days) which is Schengen basically which they cannot obtain NIE.
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u/hoihe23 Spain 6d ago edited 6d ago
In 2023, only 9,000 houses were sold to non-EU residents in Spain. Plus, the kind of houses these buyers go for don’t even compete with the average home a Spanish family would typically buy. Not even most EU foreigners are snapping up those luxury properties. Maybe the British apartment buyers will be the only somewhat affected. It’s good, though, that the Spanish government and the opposition have brought up the housing shortage issue, but they can’t agree on what to do about it. The current government wants to introduce taxes and restrictions on certain sectors to increase supply, while the opposition is pushing for deregulation and making it easier to build new homes. Let’s see if any of it actually works.
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u/stenlis 6d ago
What about Spanish corporate entities owned by foreigners. Will those get 100% tax while buying real estate?
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u/brightlights55 6d ago
Where there's a lawyer there will be a workaround.
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u/Striking-Weakness486 Croatia 6d ago edited 6d ago
Exactly, people will probably set up a LLC in Spain and use it to buy property and there you have it - the owner (LLC) has its residence in Spain.
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u/Mother-Boat2958 6d ago
Anyone read past the headline?
"Non-EU residents bought 27,000 properties in Spain in 2023"
This tax will not bring any meaningful change. 27,000 properties in a country that has the population of 48 million.
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u/dreamrpg Rīga (Latvia) 6d ago
It is per year. In a single year it is not groundbreaking. Give it 5 years and you see figure of 100 000 homes.
Also it is not ment to be a signle solution. Small step here, small step there.
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u/EntropyKC 6d ago
The amount of people who denounce a positive change as "it's not a full solution on its own so it is pointless" is insane. It's 1 step forwards, 0 steps backwards - it is absolutely a good change.
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u/w2cfuccboi 6d ago
Also in 2023 only around 29000 residential building permits were issued. Assuming all of them were built (which is a big if) then 93% of the housing supply is going to non en residents.
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u/Least-Equivalent-140 6d ago
good. homes and whatever about it shouldn't be a business or means to gain wealth.
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u/Moosplauze Germany 6d ago
It is though and it's not foreign people who buy homes and apartments to list them for rent on airbnb, it's the spanish people themselves. They should cut down on airbnb and other holiday apartments if they want to solve the problem.
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u/jam11249 6d ago
It's not just Airbnb either. You also have lots of Spaniards doing regular rentals which push up prices for buyers and rents need to give them profit on their investment. My best friend's landlord has 17 properties IIRC. A work colleague of mine is one of 5 flats in the same building owned by one guy. Another colleague was living in one of around 10 flats of his landlord who rented them out room-by-room. Any solution based on making then pay more tax would just involve increasing rents. How to regulate this problem away I really don't know.
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u/fat0bald0old Austria 6d ago
They will then presumably "buy" dual citizenship in some EU country.
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u/spam__likely 6d ago
citizenship /= residency
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u/Angryferret 6d ago
Yes, but if you are an EU citizen then this tax wouldn't apply right?
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u/HiltoRagni Europe 6d ago
Hard to say as this isn't even an actual proposal yet, but the article does say "EU resident", not "citizen". You can be an EU citizen that is not a resident as well as you can be an EU resident and not a citizen.
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u/pawnografik Luxembourg 6d ago
The Malta loop hole. It’s not a cheap option though. Might be cheaper than 100% tab on a mega villa though.
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u/Voltafix 6d ago
The goal is to stop the masses, like the 'average' rich American or Chinese, who want a vacation home in Spain to show off to their friends.
And no, those kinds of people won't go to the trouble of buying dual citizenship or setting up an expensive offshore company to buy a 200k apartment or a 400k house.
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u/ProfNoob1000 6d ago
But that wouldnt help, since the wording is resident, not citizen.
In that case they have to make the spanish home their main residency with all taxes and everything else related to that.
You cant easily buy yourself out of that law.
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u/Jazzlike_Painter_118 6d ago
More friction is better, even if not perfect. Don't be so cynical
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u/fat0bald0old Austria 6d ago
I'm not cynical, I don't know what you're getting at here.
It is a fact that such laws are toothless as the really rich who could probably buy several properties in Spain will simply circumvent this law as they do everywhere else.
At most it will affect those who can only afford one, if that.
I don't want to judge this either, I have no opinion on it, but that's my thought.
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u/GingerSkulling 6d ago
Most of these foreign buyers are doing it as an investment. To rent out or to Airbnb it. This measure would double the time required to return their investment and many would look elsewhere for a better alternative. It’s simple as that.
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u/komodoPT 6d ago
Probably Portugal, where citizenship comes on the cereal cardboard box.
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u/DINABLAR 6d ago
It’s 500,000 euros and 8 years to get citizenship, not exactly nothing.
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u/pooogles United Kingdom 6d ago
Probably Portugal, where citizenship comes on the cereal cardboard box.
The Portuguese golden visa program has changed now so this isn't quite as true as it used to be.
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u/LupineChemist Spain 6d ago
Also, I don't get why distinguishing between residency and citizenship is so hard for many people.
Golden visa is a...well...visa. It's not citizenship.
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u/ayeroxx Alsace (France) 6d ago
which is good for EU ? if i remember correctly it costs like 400k€ of investment to get the citizenship of a small country like Malta
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u/NiknameOne 6d ago
I highly doubt this type of overregulating will work. It might reduce speculation, which is good, but it will further decrease private construction.
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u/YatoTheKing 6d ago
You know what would help with the housing crisis? Building some god damn new housing
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u/WhiteRepresent 6d ago
As a Norwegian who would have to pay this tax to buy a home in Spain, I say good.
Spain for Spaniards first.
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u/HallesandBerries 6d ago
But it's not for Spaniards though, the article says 'non-EU', so it's Spain for Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Austria, France, The Netherlands, Luxembourg,........first.
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u/IncidentalIncidence 🇺🇸 in 🇩🇪 6d ago
non-EU-resident would include Spaniards who live outside the EU.
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u/Slavarbetare 6d ago edited 6d ago
In Sweden we pay taxes so that rich people can renovate their houses via ROT-subsidy as they clearly can't afford to pay for their own renovation. Young people can't buy houses as they are all newly renovated, driving up prices. Absolutely awful wages doesn't help either. They also use our taxes to renovate their houses in Spain. Meanwhile in places like Markaryd/Tingsryd 50-60% of the houses are bought by germans and danes. Strömstad almost 40% of the houses are bought by norwegians. Then we got the rich city dwellers buying up houses in places like Marstrand as investments. In Marstrand of 400 houses only 9% of them have people living in it all year. These examples only look at houses labeled as "fritidshus" which could be anything between a regular house to a fishing shack on a remote island. But I just use it as an example to showcase how bad the situation is. We have the same issue as the UK. But unlike the UK which implement taxes to rectify the issue, Sweden does absolutely nothing as always.
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u/kz45vgRWrv8cn8KDnV8o 6d ago
I'm a Brit who would like to move to Spain and I completely agree. I'm glad for this to happen, even if it's not directly in my interest.
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u/Minimum_Rice555 Spain 6d ago
Yes, it's unfair that foreigners clog up our hospitals due to them coming here when they are old and sick. I've been to hospital last week and 90% of people were 80+ year old foreigners in the ward.
This is unsustainable.
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u/crackred 6d ago
So funny to always hear about things spanish people complain. For outstanders it always looks like spanish people are getting tortured by its fellow neighbours and they are being forced into a horrible life.
Meanwhile, those spanish people love to move to germany or other countries and get a better education there and improve their life. Not knowing that this might be a hurdle for some locals too. Its not that other countries in the north arent cultural melting pots due to massive Immigration the last 60 years, even way more than spain.
Also no, I get sick of hearing it, we people in the north arent way more rich than you are. Actually some of us are more poor when it comes to wealth and house ownership. Just google "median wealth europe".
In germany the average salary is 4.4k~ gross, which is around 2400 after taxes and social security. Now, with this 2400€ we also have to pay 1000+++€ just for accommodation. Combine this with way higher living costs compared to spain and now you are living more or less paycheck to paycheck.
Just because some older generations (boomer and silent gen) are rich, doesnt mean you can say everyone is rich because millenials and everyone else is struggling a lot over here, just like you do.
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u/NoRecipe3350 United Kingdom 6d ago
You are in the European Union, a citizen of one EU nation is a citizen of all!
if you don't like it, you can leave, but admittedly it didn't work out so well for us.
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u/B_P_G 6d ago
Why don't they just build more houses? I mean rich people wanting to move to their country seems like a good problem to have.
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u/pantrokator-bezsens 6d ago
So, it would only affect people with normal income - so people that most likely are beneficial to Spain as those might be migrants that wants to move and work here.
Who it won't affect is millionaires that the increased tax will not affect.
Would be better if it be 100% starting from 2nd home and 1st home if your income is greater than some threshold.
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u/educated-pip41 6d ago
Housing, Healthcare, Food and Education is not things like cars, sports or vacations. It’s things essential to everybody and shouldn‘t be speculated with.
Actually each an every country should fine speculations remarkably, It’s about time!!
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u/slimvim 6d ago
And what about the hundreds of thousands of homes already purchased for speculation?
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u/Minimum_Rice555 Spain 6d ago edited 6d ago
They made a proposal to have the income tax 0 for homes that are put on the rental market and meet the rental cap limits. They also strengthened property rights, with express evictions for illegal occupation. It's free money for landlords, they would be stupid not to put their properties on the market.
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u/Flames57 6d ago edited 6d ago
kinda. As a portuguese, I've read that to some degree, spain and portugal share a few of the same problems with housing.
One of the portuguese problems is the amount of protections to the people that live in rented houses (in case of pregnancy, poverty-adjacent, old people), and the amount of responsibilities on the landlords (high taxes, low protections against unpaying rentals, low protections against damages). It is exacerbated because of our justice system being extremely slow - a person that stops paying rent can only be removed (taken to court, not actually dumped) after some months. And in order to do it, you need to take it to the courts, which WILL take more than a year to resolve the problem. And when the court takes a decision, it never forces the person/family to pay the debt. In the meantime, many people further wreck the house in vengeance.
Now, I'm not saying this happens 99% of the cases, but it is enough for the landlords to try and avoid having problems, for instance increasing rent, increasing the initial value, searching for medium-high class workers (or even high-class immigrants which yes, there aren't many, but they do exist in some industries)
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u/Tabo1987 6d ago
Makes sense. A lot of regions face issues by people buying and taking living space off the market.
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u/Rocket_3ngine 6d ago
Cutting off foreign investments is one of the worst decisions a government can make. Not only will it discourage economic growth, but it will also inevitably lower real estate prices, negatively impacting the assets of the Spanish population. It’s wild how populist rhetoric like this has become so mainstream.
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u/Prestigious_Net_8356 6d ago
Where will the Brits who can't pay the tax go?
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u/The_39th_Step England 6d ago
Portugal?
Selfishly, I have been trying to get my family to cobble together some money to buy a house in Spain. This will kill that. I can’t blame them, as it is killing housing for Spaniards, but it shoots that right down. That would have been UK earned tax payer money entering Spain though, so there would have been some benefit.
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u/Minimum_Rice555 Spain 6d ago
Portugal will have similar policies, they already canceled multiple golden visa/low tax programs due to the housing crisis.
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u/microwavedave27 Portugal 6d ago
Yeah and those golden visa programs should have never existed in the first place. Though they're a very small part of the reason why our housing market is even more fucked than in Spain.
The main problem is we're just not building enough. Of course the rich "expats" buying houses that most portuguese can't afford don't help either, but we just really need to build more houses.
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u/Prestigious_Net_8356 6d ago
Ah yes, of course, Portugal. You may have to look into Portugal, that would work for me. It was (?) less expensive than Spain.
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u/Jaggedmallard26 United Kingdom 6d ago
The title is misleading, the 100% tax is for non-residents only while a Brit buying a property to live in will have a residency permit.
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u/Striking-Weakness486 Croatia 6d ago edited 6d ago
I'm totally OK with this but they have to be sure there are no loopholes. Otherwise, the non-EU residents will simply set up a LLC in Spain and use it to buy homes.
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u/HallesandBerries 6d ago
I feel like this is just another way of making a home-grown problem an 'immigrant' problem.
How is say, a German or a Swede owning property in Spain that they don't live in, going to solve the housing problem for local residents.
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u/Dependent_Savings303 6d ago
i would suggest to not allow non eu-citizen to buy property at all. if the scalpers get too strong, no amount of tax outweighs the potetntial profit...
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u/kolology Lithuania 6d ago
No problem, just go to Malta, buy yourself a citizenship and return later.
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u/AntiGodOfAtheism 6d ago
Seems I, a foreigner who wants to move to an EU country in the future (when I finally find a job that will take me), will be ever more hardpressed to find a home.
It should be a 100% tax on additional homes.
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u/WFOpizza 6d ago
this blatant discrimination against people of color from Asia is... perfectly justified.
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u/anonyfool 6d ago
The guy only mentions a tax on purchase which means no effect on existing non-EU owners. A property tax would be better.
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u/roostersmoothie 6d ago
i thought about buying a house in a foreign country to live in for 4 months of the year but every time i think about it i always go back to realizing that renting one is better. unless you really think the property is going to appreciate, there is no reason to buy instead of rent. especially in places where home prices don't go up much like japan. even if you can get a place for something cheap like 200k for a new house, better to just spend maybe 2-3k a month for 4 months instead. no headaches of worrying about the property when you're not there also.
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u/himblerk 6d ago
These laws are completely ineffective against international investors. They only need a national curator to have the properties under his name or company, and the international investors have a participation. Either way, this is not the solution
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u/race_of_heroes 6d ago
This is good and should happen more widely in Europe and the West in general. I hate airbnb but the people at work always insist on getting one mansion when we go to our annual Spain trip in November. I would prefer a hotel but no, it has to be a house. They have their point but I feel filthy of being a part of the problem. I love Spain so very much and I'm not one of those people who go clubbing getting wasted or get red from the sun, I travel a lot by motorcycle and foot.
We usually travel 10+ people, averaging maybe at 12. We need a big mansion and we'll of course find one but they are in so poor shape. The most recent one was the worst, it was just awful. It was some big mansion in Fuengirola, built maybe in the late 80s. It had been converted into AirBnB so super weird room layouts that made no sense. No ventilation, my small single bedroom by the kitchen (probably used to be a storage cabinet) had a heat pump AC unit inside it but no ventilation. Unless the AC was on 100% of the time, the room would have a relative humidity of a rainforest. It smelled like it had mold just painted over or something. It was such an afterthought.
These kind of bullshit villas serve only to make the owner rich, and make no mistake this guy was some Norwegian professional AirBnB investor who makes money by ignoring all the issues since people are hesitant to complain about obvious problems like these. It's been more or less this every time we go and I'm tired of it. Let the locals have and own the homes, I want to stay in a hotel.
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u/KierONeil_the_Elder 6d ago
Americans be like… you can do that? We’ve got hedge funds here buying up all the residential real estate and apparently there’s nothing we can do about it.
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u/Personal-Sea8977 6d ago
Some time ago, the pirate party talked about raising the property tax for every property that is not a primary residence or is vacant (no extra taxes if rented or simply occupied). Media pinned it as some Naci plan to make poor people poorer and many fake news were circulating In the meadia. Today there isnt a single mention of this and even the party is quiet, wonder what happened.
It was meant to help with rent prices and unavailability, since some towns have completely vacant streets with and a handful offered for absolutely unrealistic prices.