Can we get this in Washington State please.
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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Spotted the savvy European investor.
I hope there is an exemption for people buying houses that they reside in full time. This type of policy is incredibly anti-immigrant otherwise.
Yeah, it would only apply to people from outside the EU that also don't reside in Spain.
Source (in spanish): https://www.eldiario.es/economia/ventajas-fiscales-alquiler-asequible-limites-extranjeros-no-residentes-sistema-publico-garantias-nuevas-medidas-vivienda-gobierno_1_11959199.html
Yeah, that's what I thought too. But also it says "resident" so I guess you don't have to be a citizen to buy a house?
You can rent for some time until you have your residency solved/accepted.
My wife is on year 4 of the immigration process in the US. She's still dealing with people misunderstanding how work authorization works with recruiters when applying to roles. She applied ages ago to get the condition removed from her permanent residency. This is even working for years at major companies and making 6 figures. We also bought a home after she started the process.
I know and understand that the US immigration process is not the same as what is in Spain or any other country, but bureaucratic bullshit exists everywhere and you don't know the gotchas until you go through it yourself.
Saying someone needs to complete a process that can easily take 5+ years in some cases is just not realistic or fair. You shouldn't be forced to rent, it leaves you ripe to being exploited as an immigrant often by people who are xenophobic and bigoted.
There are ways to change the dynamic of landleeches but screwing immigrants isn't the solution. Everyone needs a place to live, nobody needs a place to rent out or to leave vacant as an investment. There should also be exceptions for things like commercial properties e.g. things zoned for business use. Shouldn't be fucking an immigrant over for opening up a gas station or restaurant to make ends meet because the locals are too xenophobic to hire foreigners (a huge issue all over the world.) ___
Non-EU residents. Right there in the title. If you are residing in Spain then you are a de facto EU resident.
Ffs.
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(5 replies)
Lol I thought that at first too. Chuckling to myself like "Oh boy here go all the civilized nations putting up measures to handle the wave of fleeing U.S / U.K migrants." LOL
Of course, I sympathize though. A majority of the ones actually able to flee would be the already-well-off that would try to get their nasty little business-fingers all over everything in their new borders.
Just make it so the dwelling has to be occupied by the owner for 9-10 months a year. Every month it is unoccupied, the owner has to pay the value of a monthly rent as tax multiplied by the number of months it has been unoccupied -->
month 1 = rent x 1 month 2 = rent x 2 month 3 = rent x 3
I think that'll be hard to ignore for most landlords - foreign or not.
How do you confirm whether the property is occupied?
How does the state know which house you occupy / where you live?
They don't. They trust what I tell them.
Great. Would you be willing to declare your primary residence at another dwelling you don't live in just to help out a friend? Do you expect that to be an easy thing to do every month in order to trick the system? Do you think the landlord of the residence you're living in would simply lie down and take a fine if they know you've signed a contract to live there and declare it as your primary residence?
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(7 replies)
They do not.
You have to make a rental agreement. Here in India it has to be registered with the government and pay a nominal registration charges. So when filing your taxes you join your lease agreement, which can be verified by the registrar.
That's not really relevant.
The proposition is to tax people who own property but do not reside there in.
My question is how does the Gestapo know where an owner lives.
For example, if my wife and I own our home and have a holiday home by the sea, we would simply say that one of us resides in the holiday home, and it's not practically possible to disprove that.
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(10 replies)
Occupancy is hard to monitor and easy to fake though. Purchases are impossible to miss and are a single point of enforcement as opposed to an ongoing burden like you’re suggesting. Though I do appreciate the spirit of your plan.
The people that wanted to have an additional, part time residence in Spain that could afford it would simply pay it.
Really? A cute little apartment in the center of Madrid that would normally cost 3k a month?
| Months | Nominal Rent | Rent | Accumulated total | % of original value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3000 | 3000 | 3000 | 0,15% |
| 2 | 3000 | 6000 | 9000 | 0,45% |
| 3 | 3000 | 9000 | 18000 | 0,90% |
| 4 | 3000 | 12000 | 30000 | 1,50% |
| 5 | 3000 | 15000 | 45000 | 2,25% |
| 6 | 3000 | 18000 | 63000 | 3,15% |
| 7 | 3000 | 21000 | 84000 | 4,20% |
| 8 | 3000 | 24000 | 108000 | 5,40% |
| 9 | 3000 | 27000 | 135000 | 6,75% |
| 10 | 3000 | 30000 | 165000 | 8,25% |
| 11 | 3000 | 33000 | 198000 | 9,90% |
Let's say they bought it a 2M€. You sure they would want to let it sit empty for 9-11 months a year?
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(1 replies)
I agree with the measures I hope they address companies doing it too as it could be a loophole.
We were thinking about a move to Spain soon and in years to come possibly renting out the home we buy and live in South America to be closer to family.
I imagine in this case , as a non EU resident despite being an EU citizen the tax would apply.
I'd guess so, and that makes sense to limit the people wealthy enough to buy property and not live in Spain
Not saying you're a rich landlord
I'd have assumed that the majority of landlords were EU citizens... then remembered about Brexit.
That'll upset the brexiters, and they'll howl about the mean Spanish government...
I remember back during the Leave Referendum that many Briton pensioners living in Spain voted Leave "To keep the Spaniards from entering 'our' country" and later were very suprised that they themselves were also impacted and had to apply to live in Spain (and apparently after the end of the transition period some even got expelled from Spain because they couldn't be arsed to register and became illegal immigrants).
That is the most Brexit thing I've ever heard. The audacity to complain about the Spanish in your country while the British loudly and palely swarm Spain every summer.
Tbf, most of the complaining was about Poles and Romanians.
Mostly because they were the lower income additions to the EU, and the absolute poverty wages being paid in the UK farming and construction industries would have seemed like a fair deal to them.
Oh and this cunt who convinced his empty headed followers that millions of Muslims would be coming here under EU rules from famous EU member, Syria.
Yeah, I was an EU immigrant in Britain at the time and the Delusions Of Grandeur of the locals were really placed in sharp relief and some of those were pretty shocking. These were especially bad for the Brexiters but for example many Remainers claimed that the UK should "Stay in the EU and shape it from the inside" (so a "we Britons know best than the rest" view, and remember that the Leave Referendum happenned after the UK Government demanded from the EU, once again, even more special treatment and was told "No").
In Britain the mindset that led to Brexit had been heavilly pushed by the Press and Politicians for decades, so this outcome wasn't totally unexpected. In fact I only know about Britons being expelled from Spain after the end of the transition period since they didn't register, because some British newspapers which had supported Brexit published outraged pieces about how Spain was expelling Britons), so even after the whole Brexit thing was done, at least part of the Press still pushed (and Britons still believed) the whole idea that Britons should have special treatment even whilst not reciprocating it.
As I see it Britain and Britons are suffering from one hell of a post-Imperial Hangover, which makes it very problematic for them to cooperate with other nations in any format other than "purelly competitive and always trying to gain an advantage over others", so they were always the odd one out in the EU and, frankly, De Gaule was right when way back he did not want to let the UK into the EU.
post-Imperial Hangover
LOL 100%
On the surface it seems like a good idea: if the home isn’t going to be your primary residence you pay extra—a lot extra—to curtail a housing shortage caused in part by foreigners buying and inflating.
That said… if the issue there is anything like it is here in the states, the buyers will have more than enough capital to buy anyways and just pass the cost along to tenants… making the problem worse?
See below, the idea is for rent control to take care of that, which is part of the package. Along with the government supposedly planning to build their own company to compete.
If they were able to manage getting this implemented, which is dubious for political reasons, it probably would work, but it'd take at least a few years and there are many ways the increasingly anarchocapitalist conservative forces around it can disrupt it. We'll see. As a model for other places... it's probably a good place to start looking, it just needs a legal framework where you can deploy all of it (rent control, direct government development and rental, fiscal pressure on speculative property purchases). Just one piece alone probably won't do it.
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(6 replies)
The bigger issue is that it’s quite easy to “hide” that you are foreign. To do so, simply set up a holding in Spain that buys the house on your behalf.
The legislation being proposed also has a bunch of regulation regarding Spanish holdings buying property, including rent price controls. Depending on how you look at it, forcing foreign groups to set up shop domestically and be restricted by that regulation is the entire point of the tax hike.
Spanish media were reporting recently that some existing rental holdings were starting to dump real estate in response to the rent control, at least in Barcelona.
The bigger problem will be whether the legislation package passes in Parliament, where it needs support from conservative regionalists and then gets implemented at the autonomy level (think states, if you're American), which is largely controlled by conservatives.
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