The agreement reached between the Government of Catalonia and the Comuns party to approve an urgent reform of the Urban Planning Law, will directly limit the purchase of housing in tense areas.
The future regulation will restrict the acquisition of properties exclusively for habitual residence or rent at a regulated price, will require justification of their use before a notary, and will set a maximum of four homes per person for small property owners.
Specifically, the ban will mean that large holders, who in Catalonia are those with five or more homes, will not be able to buy more homes unless it is going to be “their residence or entire buildings if they are dedicated to rent, respecting the limit on rents foreseen in the tense residential market areas and the current lease contracts”.
Small property owners will be able to buy housing as long as it is for their own use or to rent it out permanently, also within the limits set by the Catalan Executive.
The objective of the regional executive is "to limit speculative housing purchases in Catalonia, with the aim of it being applied "before summer".
The measure will be applied as decided by the city councils in the rent-controlled market areas, which include 271 municipalities in the region where more than 90% of the population is also concentrated.
For Iñaki Unsain, a real estate expert in Barcelona, this measure represents “an unprecedented intervention that alters the market’s foundation”.
According to his explanation, “for the first time in Spain, it is established how many homes a citizen can buy, and that introduces a level of uncertainty that many owners are not willing to assume”.
The most transformative element of the reform, according to Unsain, is that it limits purchasing power and conditions the use of the asset even before acquiring it.
For the Catalan Government, the reform is an instrument to curb the activity of large holders, but Unsain opines that “the main ones affected will not be the funds, but the families who buy an additional home as a form of savings or as future support for their children”.
