Spain has announced that it will impose a tax of up to 100% on properties bought by non-residents of Spain, particularly from countries outside of the European Union — such as the UK, where many of these buyers are from.
Non-EU residents bought 27,000 properties in Spain in 2023 for rental purposes.
The number of these will be limited.
PM Pedro Sánchez has recognized the unprecedented nature of the measure, but said that it was a necessary move, given Spain’s housing emergency.
“The West faces a decisive challenge: To not become a society divided into two classes, the rich landlords and poor tenants,” he said.
But Sánchez has often struggled to amass enough votes to pass legislation for other laws he proposed, points out the BBC.
“Average house prices in Europe have risen by 48% in the last decade and it is unbearable”, he lamented.
His government responded, in lukewarm tones, that only the proposal itself would be finalized “after careful study”.
In 2023, the same government passed a housing law towards increased construction social housing (with national statistics showing that there is a need for at least 3 million new homes) capping rents in areas under the greatest market pressure, and inflicting penalties on owners who leave properties unoccupied. Despite this, rents increased by 11% in 2024.
A flat in Madrid costs about €1,500 PM, while the average Spanish salary is of €23,568, says Eurostat.
Other measures among the dozen announced by the PM for 2026 include tax exemption for landlords who provide affordable housing — transferring over 3,000 homes to a new public housing body — and stricter regulation and greater taxes on tourist flats. Essentially, rental properties will be treated with hotel rules.
At the same time, a new law came into effect at the end of November by which hotels and landlords alike are forced to provide customers’ personal information directly to the government, such as passport details and payment method details — a measure against which local confederations have pushed against, saying that it goes against European data protection laws. But Airbnb, for instance, has complied with the measure of providing customer data to the Ministry of the Interior.
In June of last year, Barcelona’s mayor even pledged to remove short-term tourist rentals altogether, after locals were being pushed out of their own space.
Spain sees nearly a billion visitors per year.
