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Spain proposes 100% tax on homes bought by non-EU residents

theguardian.com

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Re: Spain proposes 100% tax on homes bought by non-EU residents

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that argument assumes you can only blame 1 thing at a time. Even if the bureaucracy is the worst offender, every foreigner buying a house still results in 1 less house for Spaniards. Sure, fix bureaucracy, but don't pretend foreign purchases have zero effect.

If you’re in oversupply, as the parent comment suggested, then is the effect of additional buyers meaningful?

If you have extra supply of houses needing renovation, as in the comment, and renovations require labor and/or materials to complete, having foreigners pay to renovate houses to be livable will decrease the ability of Spaniards to renovate houses to be livable.

For example, let's assume renovations are 100% completed by local crews. Any crew working for a foreigner is working for them because A) the foreigner is paying more than a local for the work B) the foreigner is paying enough to make a profit and the local isn't (which is a subset of A). There is no situation in which adding foreign money results in more houses for locals. If you eliminate the ability for foreigners to renovate, the renovation crews will take the money that the locals can pay. There will be fewer renovation crews, because some crew will not be profitable at the lower rate, but more crews working to renovate houses for Spaniards.

Similarly, for materials, given supply and demand curves (and assuming that the marginal units added won't cause economies of scale) eliminating the ability for foreigners to buy materials for renovations will move the curve intersection down to a lower price and volume.

Re: Spain proposes 100% tax on homes bought by non-EU residents

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that argument assumes you can only blame 1 thing at a time. Even if the bureaucracy is the worst offender, every foreigner buying a house still results in 1 less house for Spaniards. Sure, fix bureaucracy, but don't pretend foreign purchases have zero effect.

Every foreigner buying a house is supplying capital for one additional house to be built, and some portion of those additional houses will be unoccupied by the foreigner most of the year and available on the rental market for locals. Even if it's just short term rentals, that means more affordable vacations and temporary housing for the domestic population.

This is one of those arguments that at face value seems quantitatively sound but doesn't survive first contact with reality

Re: Spain proposes 100% tax on homes bought by non-EU residents

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does allowing *non-residents* to buy real estate help in attracting foreigners and cultivate growth?

In a hot real estate market, there will be more market pressure to fix the dilapidated properties in good areas. Say they instead keep values artificially low so an EU resident can buy a property for cheap, and it stays cheap. What's the benefit?

The benefit is that more people can afford to buy houses? Really surprising to see a country taking care of their people, and not just the wealthy ones!

All the hypotheses claiming that "the market pressure will improve things for all" have been proven false at this point. We have decades of data, and this is only widening the inequality gap.

Re: Spain proposes 100% tax on homes bought by non-EU residents

#164

Blaming foreigners for housing prices is misdirected. The real culprit is slow bureaucracy & zoning laws making it impossibly slow to get a permit to build anything in both Spain and Portugal. Both of these countries for example have so many abandoned houses needing to be renovated, and so many foreigners coming in with money to do it - but they can never do it because you can't get a permit in literally forever... I…

No, that argument assumes you can only blame 1 thing at a time. Even if the bureaucracy is the worst offender, every foreigner buying a house still results in 1 less house for Spaniards. Sure, fix bureaucracy, but don't pretend foreign purchases have zero effect.

Foreigner purchase effects are complex.

While a unit sold does immediately reduce the supply by 1 unit, new demand and foreign funds can also stimulate more building and, especially important, can prevent areas falling into disrepair and becoming ghost towns. It really depends on the specific area and situation. My 2c.

Re: Spain proposes 100% tax on homes bought by non-EU residents

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't hire a nominee director? 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...

Yep. I've a longterm "internet friend" and Cyprus resident/native who has been grumbling about this for two decades now, his principal complaint is the sheer number of Russians back dooring their way into becoming an EU company via Cyprus and screwing up the cost of living, housing, etc for the locals who suffer from the pressure of rich transients who do little for the community. A common enough templte compliant th…

> He'll also admit it's not just the Russians but many others also

Limassol is friendly to Russians. If you're American, the go-to is Ireland, though Luxembourg is trying to eat their lunch. (If you're Chinese, Hungary and Poland.)

Re: Spain proposes 100% tax on homes bought by non-EU residents

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's saying the company could rent the building to the owner of the company.

It’s not really clear what they mean.

Person A sets up a company in foreign country.

Company buys a building in the country.

Company rents out the building to Person A.

Re: Spain proposes 100% tax on homes bought by non-EU residents

#167
post #85
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know or claim that it's any truer, but I thought the oft-reported reason, for Vancouver/BC especially, was Chinese investment , and explicitly not immigration even, the chief complaint that the growth has been/is expected to be such that they're left unoccupied?

>for Vancouver/BC especially The ALR bans any and all significant development in BC. Land is not scarce in BC; land that it's legal to build on is.

Ok - I'm not Canadian, idk what ALR is - I'm just saying what's disagreed with up-thread isn't what, in my experience, is the common claim (whether it's correct or not).

Re: Spain proposes 100% tax on homes bought by non-EU residents

#168
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s always supply. It’s fair to criticize foreign ownership/hedge funds purchasing homes, but the overwhelming reason is that we are not building enough.

Sure, but it's one thing to not be building enough for people to live in, and another thing to not be building enough for people to keep empty flats as speculation vehicles.

If they want to pay lots of property taxes and contribute to payments for local infrastructure without actually using it, that’s probably a net good thing, IF there were enough additional homes to go around for others.

Re: Spain proposes 100% tax on homes bought by non-EU residents

#169
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it's one thing to not be building enough for people to live in, and another thing to not be building enough for people to keep empty flats as speculation vehicles.

When too many flats are used as speculation vehicles, the bubble pops and the problem solves itself.

Except at that point the wealthy homeowners will ask for bailouts.

Re: Spain proposes 100% tax on homes bought by non-EU residents

#170
post #157
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So would you say it's fair game to blame "migrants" for crimes? After all, you can't steal something if you're not in a country, so letting someone into a country strictly increases the crime rate. Even if migrants commit crimes at a lower rate than the local population, unless it's exactly zero, it'll still increase the crime rate. edit: downvoters, I'm not actually endorsing blaming migrants. It's only used as an e…

> Even if migrants commit crimes at a lower rate than the local population, unless it's exactly zero, it'll still increase the crime rate. But that assumes you do not count the person who commit the crime as part of the population count. In this example, “crime per capita” goes down if they commit crime below the average crime rate of population before they joined that population.

>But that assumes you do not count the person who commit the crime as part of the population count.

Sorry, meant to say "crime count", or more precisely, "native victimization count". Natavists by definition prioritize the native population over immigrants, so if some native got victimized by a migrant, I doubt a natavist would be convinced by "well actually, even though there was one extra crime committed by a migrant, there's also 10,000 (or whatever) more people, so the crime rate actually went down!"

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