In addition to the archipelagos and the coast, there are areas in the interior and north of the peninsula with 30% more tourist housing than before the covid, such as Jaén, Lugo, Pontevedra, Cantabria or Asturias
The explosion that houses for tourist use are experiencing is driving up the prices of conventional rentals and although the regional and municipal authorities are trying to stop this, the problem is outside Spanish law and Europe is currently avoiding confrontation with these platforms. INE data shows that there are more than 311,500 tourist properties in Spain (August 2022, latest data available), with 1.56 million spaces on offer. With the pandemic, the proliferation of this type of accommodation was reduced and more than 16,800 left the market, but in 2022 the percentage rose again to the point where 1.24% of the total housing stock in Spain is already of the touristic type.
The INE data, estimated from the information available on the three most used tourism accommodation platforms, shows that 61% of all municipalities in Spain have tourist homes, with some areas much more stressed than others. For example, in 70 of the 8,115 Spanish municipalities analyzed, at least 10% of the total housing is for tourist use (compared to the 2011 housing census), while 3,000 have none on their territory, most of them in parts of Spain. emptied.
The problem is those 70 municipalities where tourist accommodation represents a high percentage of the total, nine of which exceed 20%. The four most stressed are Sales de Llierca (Girona), La Oliva (island of Fuerteventura), Búger (Mallorca) and Ariany (Mallorca), where at least one in four registered homes is for tourist accommodation. It is striking that three of these four municipalities are located on the islands.
Faced with this situation, some municipalities are taking the initiative. In addition to the decision of the Balearic Islands municipal government in 2018 to ban tourist apartments in Palma – something that the Supreme Court has just upheld – that of Valencia has also restricted tourist apartments in the center, the Junta de Andalucía has amended a decree to allow their town halls to restrict housing for tourist purposes, and the town hall of Toledo has just announced that it will end these accommodations and only allow them to be on the ground and first floors in the historic center.
“Tourist properties are very profitable for their owners, but they depersonalize the city center, take away the identity of neighborhoods and cause social problems,” explains José Luis Zoreda, executive vice president of Exceltur, the tourism organization.
He warns that the new regulations Europe is preparing for tourist accommodation will remain “very weak”, as the platforms will not have to check the requirements of each rental. “It’s only half a step forward,” Zoreda emphasizes, explaining that with this new standard, the platforms commit themselves to “randomly” checking whether the registration number of one of their apartments matches the data of the competent authority in each country. “Millions of transactions will remain in limbo,” he says.
It also doesn’t help that the new housing law, which has been negotiated for months and about to be approved, has “no reference whatsoever” to tourist rentals, Zoreda laments.
At first glance, it may seem like a problem that mainly affects sun and beach destinations, such as the archipelagos or the Levantine coast. However, this situation is beginning to spread throughout the territory. In addition, in areas where tourism has historically not been their main activity, this sector boomed with the pandemic and with it the proliferation of tourist houses.
This is the case in Asturias and Cantabria, where the count of just over 4,000 homes for tourist use in 2020 has grown to over 6,000 in both cases by 2022.
Some municipalities, such as Cangas de Onís, Ribadesella or Santillana del Mar, have about 9% of tourist housing of the total number of registered housing in those areas due to the huge increase in the number of visitors to these parts of Spain in the years of the pandemic .
The case of inland provinces such as Jaén or Lugo stands out, where increases have exceeded 40% in just two years.
Provinces such as Huesca or Lleida have recorded much smaller increases (5% and 2% respectively), but with very stressed points in certain parts of the Pyrenees and the northern part of Aragon and Catalonia, where Alquézar (Huesca) has exceeded 18% of the tourist houses over the total of Alto Aran is close to 16%.
Exceltur’s ReviTUR report shows that over the past ten years, 6% of the total housing stock has been withdrawn from the neighborhoods with the greatest tourist attraction, meaning the departure of more than 60,000 homes in six cities analyzed by the employer (Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Malaga, Valencia and San Sebastián).
On the one hand, according to the analysis of INE statistics, the number of tourist homes increased in 30.2% of municipalities between 2020 and 2022 (21,526 more homes in 2,451 cities).
In 22.5% of the municipalities (1,826), on the other hand, this figure has decreased, with 31,504 less. Spain, for example, has gone from 321,496 homes for tourist use to 311,518 (-3.1%) in two years.
And the lower the supply, the higher the prices. Housing purchase prices in these areas with the highest tourist use have increased by an average of 9.1% over the past decade, compared to the slight 0.5% of all non-touristy neighborhoods in the same cities. Consequently, the population of these areas fell by almost 3% over the same period, according to the census.
Faced with the escalation of housing prices in Canada, Justin Trudeau’s government decided on January 1 to ban the purchase of real estate by foreigners in the country. The country has experienced an average price increase of 44% over the past two years, with the cities of Vancouver and Toronto the hardest hit. The provision, which is valid for two years and imposes fines of up to 7,000 euros on both foreigners who buy and those who assist in the transaction, does not affect permanent residents of the country or foreign students, work permit holders and asylum seekers.
The initiative, which was approved in the Canadian Parliament last June, is similar to the one enacted in New Zealand in August 2018 with the same goal. “Living should not only be property. It’s meant to be lived in: a place where families can put down roots, make memories and build a life together,” Ahmed Hussen, Canada’s federal minister of Housing, Diversity and Inclusion, said in a statement.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
