- Housing.The rent already eats 40% of the salary of families
Housing and the increase in rents will focus much of the speeches of the parties in the middle of the 10-N electoral race, taking into account that access to housing has become one of the main concerns of the Spaniards. The issue, in fact, was one of the protagonists of the last legislature and one of the points of contention between the Government of Pedro Sánchez and United We , who failed to agree on what formula to push to try to stop the vertiginous rise of prices. The discord came mainly from the idea of intervening directly in the market limiting prices, something that the Socialist Executive finally left out of the decree on rent.
Now, about to face the second general elections this year, the situation is far from being better. It is true that the residential market is fitting a certain moderation as a result of the normalization of the activity and the global economic slowdown, but even so, cities like Madrid or Barcelona continue to score significant increases month by month that hinder the access of citizens.
And in the middle of all that situation, the main parties that go to the polls next Sunday do not just find a way to try to tackle the problem. Their proposals are lost among electoral promises that will later require huge amounts of investment. And therein lies the problem, that the money does not arrive for a housing policy that for years has been secondary in our country.
Broadly speaking, the PSOE is committed to expanding the supply of affordable housing; the PP focuses on tax deductions for landlords; Citizens contemplate reducing administrative obstacles to build and rehabilitate real estate and United We can retake the idea of limiting prices and increases, although in the sector they agree that so far it has not been shown that this yields the expected results.
"In Paris, for example, an important submerged economy linked to rent has been generated following the latest measures in this regard," says Ferran Font , director of Studies at Pisos.com. In addition, experts warn that it can reduce the profitability of the owners and, consequently, discourage the offer and add more pressure to the prices.
Experts point more in the direction of increasing the public housing stock to cause a more real and immediate impact on prices. "We have always stressed that the measures should be aimed at encouraging the market and not intervening from control and penalization. In this sense, tax incentives should be put in place, both for tenants and owners. Precisely Portugal is following a model in the that, if the owner puts the rent below 20% of the market prices, he receives tax benefits that compensate for that decrease and the tenant has more possibilities of accessing that house, "says José Ramón Zurdo , general director of the Agency Rental Negotiator
The one in Portugal is the closest example, but there are others that could be a mirror in which Spanish politicians could look after November 11:
Berlin
It has been one of the latest initiatives that have been launched. Berlin has become the first federated state in Germany to approve by law the freezing of rental prices over the next five years.
The lack of housing in the German capital and other nearby cities has sponsored a pact between the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Die Linke to establish the limitation and impose, in addition, that from 2022 the increases are linked to inflation.
The political opposition and the businessmen with interests in the sector have already announced actions to try to revert the norm, that if nothing remedies it it will enter into force in 2020.
For Ferran Font, however, the most interesting measure that has been taken in Berlin is the remunicipalisation of some 6,000 homes to incorporate them into the public park and increase availability in a city that each year receives the order of 40,000 new tenants.
Paris
It is another city with the most expensive rental in Europe and has been trying to remedy it for years. In 2014, the then president, François Hollande , promoted a first attempt to limit the increases with the then called Alur Law . That experiment was suspended in 2017 but it has turned out to be the germ of the Elan Law , the project now promoted by Emmanuel Macron that entered into force this summer.
It affects new contracts and future renovations. Cities that want to benefit from the new decree will limit the rent increases to 20% on an average reference price that will be determined according to area, year of construction, qualities or number of rooms. In addition - and this is the main novelty - owners who violate the law will be sanctioned.
In principle, the experiment will be active until 2023 and then, depending on its results and its effectiveness, it will be decided whether it remains in force or not.
Lisbon
The neighboring country has promoted the so-called Accessible Leasing Law , which does not limit the rental prices of housing, but facilitates access of the lowest income to affordable accommodation. The rule defines what kind of rents each person or each family can receive based on their income.
It is a voluntary adhesion program for landlords and tenants, applicable to new lease agreements and their renovations that, in return, offers advantages of different kinds to each other. Landlords, on the one hand, are guaranteed a tax exemption for the income they receive while tenants have access to affordable housing compatible with their income.
Vienna
It is the most paradigmatic case, the aspiration of cities undermined by rent increases. However, the case of the Austrian capital has not been forged from one day to another, but it is the result of a historical trajectory based on the strong presence of public housing. The city council is the main landlord of the city, so it is not necessary to establish specific price limitations; it is enough to guarantee a housing stock with maximum prices well below the market and far from speculative levels.
The authorities invest hundreds of millions of euros every year in building new houses and rehabilitating those in worse conditions to add them to the social portfolio. In addition, they establish grants and subsidies for tens of thousands of apartments managed by private limited-income associations.
California
The housing problem has reached another rank and another level in some parts of the US and, especially, in California. Several points of the State such as Los Angeles or San Francisco have taken over the media in recent months to house a large number of homeless people on their streets.
The presence of large companies such as Google, Facebook or Apple in San Francisco, for example, has led to an increase in demand as dizzying as the rise in prices. The increase in income makes it impossible for many citizens to access them and has expelled them directly to the street. According to figures from the Department of Housing and Urban Development collected by Europa Press, an estimated 130,000 people are homeless throughout California and more than 8,000 in San Francisco itself.
Faced with this situation, Democratic Governor Gavin Newson promoted a month ago the adoption of legislation that allows a 5% limit on annual rent increases. The law will enter into force on January 1 and thus adds to other states and cities in the country that have promoted initiatives to limit the rise in rental prices. For example, Oregon passed a law that limits annual increases to 7% plus inflation, and the state of New York approved controls last summer.
Rome
In Italy, municipalities can use the national regulations that establish that each local authority must set the maximum prices for housing rental according to specific conditions, normally negotiated with local associations of landlords and tenant representatives. In order to establish the price scale, the characteristics of the premises, the location, the services close to the housing, the green areas ... are taken into account ... In Rome, the measure has been applied since 2004 before the successive increase in access to housing.
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