New Spanish housing bill aims to regulate rent prices of properties owned by big landowners

The left-leaning Spanish coalition government partners have reached an agreement regarding a Spain-wide housing bill that would allow authorities to regulate rent prices of properties owned by big landowners.

If approved, which is far from certain yet as the Socialists and Podemos do not have an absolute majority in Congress, people who own 10 or more properties will be considered big landowners ('grans tenidors' in Catalan) and will lose their tax privileges.

Additionally, 30% of all new homes would have to be made into social housing, of which half would have to have low 'social' rents, and it would allow local councils to raise property taxes on empty houses and apartments.

Catalonia's rent cap law

The Spanish bill — and whether it becomes law — will be followed closely from Catalonia, whose issues are at the heart of Spain's housing crisis. 

A contentious rent cap law in municipalities with "tense housing markets" was approved by the Catalan parliament in September 2020 that banned landlords from raising the cost of homes that had been rented out below the Average Price Index in the past five years and set new contract prices according to it. 

In June, months after the People's Party lodged an appeal, the Spanish government announced that it too would challenge the law's constitutionality in Spain's Constitutional Court, but did not ask the court to put the measure on hold until it issues a ruling. 

Press play below to listen to the Filling the Sink podcast episode on Catalonia's housing crisis that was released on June 26.

  

 

Budget agreement

President Pedro Sánchez's Socialists and anti-austerity Podemos have closed a deal regarding the budget, although it is not set to be officially approved on Thursday during an extraordinary cabinet meeting. 

Second vice president and labor minister Yolanda Díaz, of the junior coalition partner, celebrated the "good agreement" in a Tweet. "Big companies will have to pay what they owe."

One of her party's demands was to set a minimum 15% corporate income tax for large corporations.