The political turnaround caused by the regional elections of the past 28-M leaves it in the air whether the Housing Law, in force only since May 26, after being published in the BOE, is fully developed. Two of its most controversial aspects, rent control and the classification of owners of more than five homes, who depend on the autonomous communities, as large holders, will foreseeably only be applied in the large Catalan provincial capitals, especially in Barcelona. and in Pamplona.
“All the development of the law, including the application of stressed areas, and which was aimed at intervening and limiting rental income, will not have a real effect in the vast majority of Spain,” said José Ramón Zurdo, general director of the Rental Negotiating Agency.
After the elections, autonomous governments of the PP are emerging in eleven autonomous communities and this party has already announced that in the communities in which it governed it would not apply the new norm.
In Castilla-La Mancha, where the PSOE has revalidated the majority, its executive has already announced that it would not apply it because it considered it counterproductive and preferred to promote housing development. In Oviedo, although Asturias will continue with a socialist government, rents have barely risen in recent years, so the city would not be affected.
In the Canary Islands, the support of the PP can be given by the Cabildo to the Canarian Coalition, which did not support the law in Congress and announced its intention to appeal it. In the Basque Country, the PNV does not support the law either, and has also announced that it will appeal against it for invasion of powers, but the law could end up being applied if in the next regional elections, in 2024, Bildu, one of the biggest promoters of the norm with ERC and Podemos.
“The electoral results are going to accentuate the injustice of having a differential rental market in Catalonia, with what this means as a distortion to attract investment and in business decisions,” lamented Carles Sala, spokesman for the API collective in Catalonia. “In the end it will turn out that the central government has approved a law that will be practically only for Catalonia,” stressed Sala, since the other large affected capital Pamplona, ​​in which the socialist party, EH-Bildu and Geroa Bai, will retain the government, has a real estate market with much less activity.
José Ramón Zurdo also predicted a displacement “of investment by promoters and investors” to areas that do not apply the law and the creation of “a two-speed Spain”.
The same call for general elections will paralyze key aspects of the development of the law, such as the preparation of the new rental reference index, entrusted to the INE, the creation of the future Housing Advisory Council, which was to include the ministries and professional entities , business and social, or the creation of the working group that was to prepare a proposal to regulate seasonal rentals within a period of six months.
The call for elections will also foreseeably delay the declaration of areas of tension that the Generalitat requested the same Friday before the elections and that the Executive must approve. “We hope that a government in office does not make a decision of this type,” said Sala, who recalled that the procedures provided by law for the approval of the zones, which include a public information procedure, are unlikely to be completed before 23 -J.
The new law could even be repealed if the Popular Party prevails in the elections on July 23, which has brought a proposal to Congress this week to repeal the Housing Law because it considers that it includes “interventionist and contrary to individual freedom” measures. and that it will have the opposite effects to those you are looking for, because the supply of flats will be reduced.
