The Association of National and International Real Estate Agencies (ABINI) has rejected the proposal put forward by the Spanish Government, led by Pedro Sánchez, to limit the purchase of homes for non-residential use in regions such as the Canary Islands, with the aim of containing prices and facilitating access to housing for young people and vulnerable groups.
ABINI considers this to be an interventionist measure that fails to address the real causes of the rise in property prices and could have counterproductive effects on both the economy and investor confidence.
ABINI President Dani Arenas has pointed out that ‘restricting home purchases will not solve the problem of access unless supply is effectively increased. The rising cost of the market is mainly due to the lack of available land, the slowness of urban planning processes and the absence of a sustained housing policy over time’.
Arenas also warned that this type of initiative ‘introduces worrying legal uncertainty and sends a negative message to investors in territories that already face significant structural limitations due to their insular and fragmented nature’. In his opinion, ‘penalising certain uses or buyer profiles will not only fail to make housing cheaper, but may also slow down real estate activity, affect employment and reduce supply in the medium and long term’.
The association stresses that linking the housing problem solely to demand ‘is a simplistic approach that sidesteps political responsibilities accumulated over many years, such as the lack of urban planning, the lack of promotion of social housing and excessive administrative bureaucracy’.
In this regard, Dani Arenas has emphasised that ‘opening the door to purchasing restrictions based on criteria of use or origin sets a dangerous precedent that is difficult to reconcile with the principles of free market, legal certainty and investor confidence that should govern the European Union’.
ABINI insists that the solution to the problem of access to housing requires structural measures, such as streamlining licensing procedures, releasing land for development, promoting public-private partnerships and increasing the actual supply of affordable housing. ‘Without these actions, any restrictions will be merely cosmetic and of dubious social effectiveness,’ concluded Arenas.
