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so is there any actual evidence that foreign home ownership is causing meaningful housing price inflation in Spain? or is this just uninformed pandering like it is in the US
What's causing it in the US?
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How do you calculate the unimproved land value? This is an interesting question with the fires in LA right now. Is the land still as valuable as it was before the house burned down, minus the rebuild cost of the house? Or is the value intrinsically tied to the community that was there but no longer is? Or is the value actually higher now that a developer can come in and remake an entire neighborhood?
In situations like this, my assumption would be that it doesn't really get calculated so much as it gets measured... to be kind to victims, you might want to assume it drops for tax purposes temporarily, and then raise the valuation once bids go through and you get some post-fire data points.
Anything to stop a non-EU resident owning an EU company that owns a Spanish home?
It's not trivial to set up a business as a non-eu citizien. As far as I know every EU business has to have an eu citizen representative. Additionally, a company owned property can't just be used privately.
Why not?
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>The vacancy rates are deceiving though. If you have a place that is owned by someone and they are paying taxes on it, and it's not listed as a rental, it's not considered vacant. Why would you lie like that? https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/definitions.pdf Occupied Housing Units. A housing unit is occupied if a person or group of persons is living in it at the time of the interview or if the occupants are only tem…
That happens once every 10 years. They use tax records and other records to estimate it otherwise. Also people will just not return the form, and once again they have to estimate. And in places that impose a vacancy tax, they have incentive to lie or deceive the housing authority to avoid the tax. And in my neighbors case for example they come by once every few months to pick up mail and probably fill out those types…
Good thing we did a census in 2020, and the housing crisis (and associated allegations about absentee owners) far predates that.
>Also people will just not return the form, and once again they have to estimate.
Apparently they're pretty persistent. If you don't fill out a form you'll eventually get an enumerator that shows up at your door.
>And in places that impose a vacancy tax, they have incentive to lie or deceive the housing authority to avoid the tax.
The housing authority is independent from the census bureau. Is there any evidence they share data?
>And in my neighbors case for example they come by once every few months to pick up mail and probably fill out those types of forms.
So they're willing to go out of their way and lie to the federal government in order to maybe move the lower the vacancy rate by 0.00001%, when many (most?) people (as evidenced by this thread) are going off vibes and likely won't care anyways? I didn't know that foreign vacant homeowners had such a tight knit cabal.
Anything to stop a non-EU resident owning an EU company that owns a Spanish home?
https://www.vozpopuli.com/economia/el-castigo-fiscal-a-los-c...
what about corporate ownership?
In order to justify a corporate purchase, there needs to be a return on investment. A vacant property is not that.
To elaborate a little further, it’s not necessarily the act of having it sit empty but rather keeping the pricing high regardless of whether the property stays empty. That becoming industry standard becomes a recipe for prices spiraling out of control, at least for a bit of time.
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It's not trivial to set up a business as a non-eu citizien. As far as I know every EU business has to have an eu citizen representative. Additionally, a company owned property can't just be used privately.
>As far as I know every EU business has to have an eu citizen representative You can't hire a nominee director? >Additionally, a company owned property can't just be used privately. They can't "rent" it back to the owner?
Yes, you can, and it's very common. Couple hundred euros in Cyprus [1].
[1] https://blog.wamo.io/how-much-does-it-cost-to-open-a-company...
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Totally anecdotal, but I live in the largest city in Spain, and even in my residential area (as opposed to the touristy spots) every week I can see ads for "we buy your house, paid upfront over market value, Chinese investors". Posters in walls, flyers in windshields and so on.
This is excellent, assets like property don't grow on trees and needs to be protected from foreign investors. Absolutely need something like this in the UK.