The far-left party in Spain’s coalition government has called for a tax on people who buy properties, refurbish them and quicky resell properties for profit, a move aimed at stamping out speculation in the country’s strained housing market.
Unidas Podemos, the junior coalition partner in Spain’s government, has proposed a new 20 percent tax on the total purchase price of homes sold less than two years after first being bought.
The proposed measure is aimed at addressing the practice known as ‘flipping’, buying a revenue-generating property, usually renovating it and reselling it quickly for profit.
For Podemos ‘flipping’ treats housing – a social good and basic necessity according to the far-left party – as a financial asset.
“If someone wants to speculate, let them do it with diamonds or with shares of technology companies, not with housing,” said Podemos spokesman Pablo Echenique.
Echenique added that, while young people encounter a multitude of problems in gaining access to housing, others can “play Monopoly with a basic good”.
The party has included the measure in its policy platform for the upcoming regional and municipal elections on May 28th, and clarified that the tax would be specifically targeted on property speculators, and not be applied in cases of force majeure or any other justified sale.
The proposal comes just weeks after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that 200,000 homes would be built as part of a drive to beef up Spain’s dwindling social housing stock, and the government passed wide-ranging housing reform that included rent caps on existing rental contracts, outlines ‘stressed’ rental areas where prices have risen significantly, and, in a move surely popular with all renters, shifts the responsibility to pay estate agent’s fees away from tenants and onto landlords.
Valencian political party Compromís also recently requested that the national government temporarily ban foreigners from buying homes in Spain as a means of preventing property price rises and speculation.
Source: Thelocal
