Owners of more than half a thousand houses in the Community of Valencia are facing a newly created tax payment. They are in the hands of large investment funds, not individuals. These are completely enclosed, tenantless buildings, something that has already been effectively penalized by the Generalitat. It is a tax that is included in the Law on the Social Function of Housing and carried out by the Ministry included in this law. Hector IlluecaHe counts on Unides Podem to begin the rotation starting in December and penalize each and every one of the months when said properties are uninhabited in 2022. For now, 532 residences registered Owners of more than 10 buildings are required to inform the Administration which floors they do not use.
The regulatory framework to start implementing this tax is prepared, in the absence of the Ministry of Finance, by developing the formula by which the tax will be charged, with Arcadi Spain at the helm. Its amount will vary depending on the volume of land available to homeowners as a whole. Thus, up to 5,000 square meters, a fee of 7.5 Euro per meter will be paid. From 40,000 meters, the amount goes up to 22.5 euros per square meter, with a full charge of 600,000 euros. In the regulation, it is stated that fines of up to 300,000 euros are paid to large property owners who do not notify the Administration and do not notify the houses that have been vacant for at least a year.
province Alicante is currently the company that aggregates the most properties together. In this case, a total of 219 registered in the Generalitat registry; Valencia with her 184; Castellón with 129, according to data from the Generalitat’s Directorate General for Emergency Resettlement. The result has been the first era of communications this year, so the figure is expected to continue to increase towards the end of the year.
Mobilizing resources to deal with the so-called housing emergency is one of the strategic axes of Botànic, and in particular Unides Podem, which supports the Second Vice-President’s cause. The political agenda is to try to mobilize more public and private resources to facilitate access to housing, in any case to rein in speculative practices, and banking institutions and vulture funds are on the agenda. In fact, this is exactly the purpose of the tax, which will begin to be collected from the owners of large apartments and can be avoided when the house is rented. To this end, the Department of the Branch has promoted programs such as my Xarxa Lloga, which seeks to facilitate citizens’ access to rental housing and mobilize uninhabited properties in the Community at affordable prices. It is estimated that in the autonomous region approx. 20,000 homes became unusable in the hands of financial institutions, so the number of registered so far seems rather low.
However, Generalitat now plans to go a step further, and the Ministry of Housing is drafting a law recommending that large property owners be compelled to temporarily transfer properties that have not been inhabited for at least two years.
Most needed areas
In the first half of the year, the Second Vice Presidency and the Ministry of Housing and Bioclimatic Architecture purchased a total of 219 houses across the Community for 12.6 million euros. Properties are located in areas where there is a need for more housing for families with difficulties. Specifically, in the province of Alicante, 104 of them located in the towns of Callosa de Segura, Gata de Gorgos, Monóvar and Monforte del Cid have been involved in an investment of more than 6.2 million euros. A significant portion of these have been obtained through preferential first refusal and redemption.
Sareb Resources
The Ministry of Housing continues to pressure the Spanish Government to transfer control of the approximately 8,500 homes held by Sareb to the Community. According to the region’s minister, Héctor Illueca, the transfer of Sareb properties will increase the number of public homes available for vulnerable families by 71%, responding to the 8,500 people on the waiting list for access to public housing in the Valencian Community.