The second legislature of the Government of Pedro Sánchez has opened with signs of a profound change in the housing policy that he deployed in the previous legislature, which has opened new hopes in the real estate sector and has already led to the first criticisms in politicians and social movements linked to Podemos. From the emphasis on income control (“Limiting the price of rents is indeed progressive”, proclaimed the previous minister, Raquel Sánchez), the new Executive has shifted to prioritizing the increase in the supply of ‘housing and to recognize the key role that owners must play in it.
“We know that we still have a lot to do, and we will follow a very simple premise, which is to help tenants and small owners”, said Pedro Sánchez in his inauguration speech, when he marked the housing policy as the third priority of its Executive.
And the new minister of the branch, Isabel Rodríguez, had an even greater impact on her taking office. “I also want to have a message of tranquility and hope, of sensitivity, with the small owners. Peace of mind because this Government is treading the streets and we are aware that in Spain many people, especially elderly people, have devoted all their effort, all their work, all their savings, to the purchase of a second home which today complements their incomes. We will protect them too”, he pointed out, in addition to stressing that “now we will not look for culprits, but we will provide solutions”.
“This is continuing to feed the rentier social bloc”, immediately responded the leader of Més País and deputy for Sumar, Íñigo Errejón, while in the same line the Madrid Tenants’ Union criticized that “the minister decides to start to ensure that the small rentiers do not see their heritage affected”. Gerardo Pisarello, deputy for Sumar for Catalonia in Comú, also criticized that this desire to protect small owners “does not go in the direction in which a minister committed to the right to housing should go”.
For Gerard Duelo, president of the General Council of all Real Estate Agents’ Associations in Spain, the new minister’s speech “sounds good” and leaves “room for hope” that “the mistakes of the past legislature”. “We are waiting”, he added.
“It seems that we are facing an important paradigm shift towards what some of us have always defended: that we need to increase the supply of housing”, assured José García Montalvo, Professor of Economics at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF). “Price control only makes sense in monopoly situations, which do not occur here.” In his opinion, the policy of the executive started “from a diagnostic error, or simply from an ideological bias that attributed housing problems to evil beings, instead of seeing that, simply, the price went up because it has become a very scarce good”.
“The government’s actions until now put all the emphasis on the protection of the tenant”, recalled the director of studies of Pisos.com, Ferran Font. “Also protecting small owners is a positive change, but we will have to see how far this small category goes, because we are putting on the same level as large owners and equating those who have 10 homes and the funds that have thousands. A segmentation would be desirable”.
Juan Antonio Gómez-Pintado, president of the Association of Developers and Builders of Spain (APC Spain), congratulated himself that “housing will be one of the fundamental axes in the new legislature, as the developers and builders have demanded since years ago”, and he recalled that “one of the main challenges is that we are able to facilitate young people’s access to housing”.
Pedro Sánchez has decided to recover the Ministry of Housing 13 years after the previous president of a socialist government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, decided to suppress it after having created it when he came to the executive in 2004 During those six years, María Antonia Trujillo, Carme Chacón and Beatriz Corredor occupied the portfolio of Housing, and since it disappeared their competences had been integrated into the Ministry of Public Works and then the Ministry of Transport.
Nevertheless, housing is now once again one of the axes of the political debate, as it was during the years of the real estate bubble. “It cannot be that the main problem of the Spanish is access to housing”, acknowledged the new minister in her inauguration, in line with the words of Pedro Sánchez, who acknowledged its impact “particularly in young people”.
Real estate sources attribute the change of focus of the Executive to the loss of weight of Podemos within the Government, where it no longer has any ministers. “We can’t add up”, point out these sources, who remember that the government agreement signed by the two formations included the objective of increasing the public stock of affordable rental housing, so that it reaches 20% of the total , “through mechanisms for buying or renting existing homes, newly built homes and mobilizing empty homes.”
The pact was described by the Tenants’ Union as a “toast in the sun” and contradicts two axes of Podemos’ housing policy: the refusal to rent existing homes and to build new ones, since, according to the Union, they defend an “approach to degrowth, not to continue building megacities that are increasingly polluted and less connected”.
The refusal of Podemos to compensate the current owners, precisely, frustrated in the previous legislature a project of the executive to rent 30,000 homes in tense areas to large tenants, with a rent for 25 years with a discount of 20% compared to to the value of the area, to increase the stock of social rental housing.
