Spain plans to introduce a 100 percent tax on the value of real estate if it is purchased by non-residents of the European Union. This is how the government wants to resolve the housing emergency in the country.
This was announced by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
“The West is facing a decisive 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 properties in Spain in 2023. Sanchez emphasized that they bought them “not to live in,” but “to make money on them.”
The prime minister has not yet announced when he will submit this proposal to the parliament for approval, where he has often had difficulty gathering enough votes to pass legislation.
Pedro Sanchez has proposed many measures to make housing in Spain more affordable for local residents. Among them are tax exemptions for landlords who provide affordable housing, the transfer of more than 3,000 houses to a new state housing authority, and higher taxes on apartments for tourists.