Mallorca political groups take heart from Canadian ban on foreign property sales

Christopher GrubbSo only rich "foreigners" welcome? All EU citizens have the same rights, rich, poor, Mallorcan, Mainlanders, Greeks, Finns or Germans. Other EU members are not "foreigners" they are CITIZENS! (Brits now are, however). The Canadian example is a red herring. They are not in a union with other countries. Try passing a law saying only Albertans spending over $1M are allowed to buy in BC and see how far you get.

AJEAgreed, but that's exactly why I don't believe it will ever happened. Also it's worth noting that the current government is a coalition 9f various parties. Two of the coalition partners are ideologically bent on anti-foreigner, anti-progress sentiment, seeking a "return" to a rosy tinted nostalgic past which, in reality is not pretty. Another well known ideologically driven government adopted the same strategy, and we all know how that's going. The presiding party in the coalition government here has actually been quite well grounded and pragmatic, and the evidence if that is pretty obvious. But obviously they can't publicly condemn their coalition partners. Nonetheless, this kind of radical digressive thinking can only result in the loss of future elections, and so I have no doubts that there's substantial concern about that within the presiding party, even if they don't express it publicly.

Disaster government trying to ruin an industry that brought in 1B in tax revenue last year, not taking into account lawyers, builders, notaries, and other services which are mostly locals BTW. If this is about affordable housing why don't the government use some of that revenue to build it, or towards incentives to first time home buyers.

Ganja Pit Bull NutjobAnother one disconnected from the place they live. Son Vida. now there's a place that's representative of Mallorca. Yes, it certainly is German dominant, so I believe you know it well enough. But you won't likely find many, if any Mallorquins living there, regardless of how much money they have. Do you know why? You don't actually know any Mallorquins do you? At least not more than just a passing acquaintance. Because if you did, you'd know the answer.

Mallorca needs a more nuanced approach than just a total ban on residential property purchases by non residents. 99% of locals can only afford properties priced at less than €300k. Therefore it makes sense to introduce some controls that prevent, or make it harder for non residents to buy property in this price bracket. Leave more expensive properties alone, they are rarely purchased by Mallorquins - putting any restrictions on foreigners buying property above €300k would do untold damage to the economy through reducing the government tax collection via property transfer tax, a high % of construction workers are employed to build / renovate these expensive properties plus many retailers depend on foreigners building / renovating expensive properties. So I urge the political parties to focus their reform proposals on the segment of the market (less than €300k) that is most important to locally employed people and to leave the rest of the property market alone.

Absolute rot again from the sheep $hagg€r, there are only scores of wealthy Mallorquins, the other 400,000 + are poor. 90% of Son Vida is owned by Germans, I know I live there.

Mallorquin families are amongst the wealthiest on the island. And much (if not most) of that has come from foreign property purchases. It's actually foreigners that make up the bulk of the poorest of the population. Again, banning foreign property purchases won't go down well with the influential families who vote, and certainly not with a large number of businesses reliant on foreign money. And it won't do squiddly for the island's poorest. They'll still struggle to pay the rent. It's ideological rather than rational. and we all know how that turns out.

Nice picture of Son Vida in the picture where the average house price is around €6m. Good luck selling those to Mallorcans who last time I looked were mostly doing low paid service industry jobs.

The slight technical hitch. Canada isn’t in the European Union. European Union citizens have the right to live , work and buy goods and property in the 27 territories. Last time I looked Spain was in the European Union. Unless someone knows something and isn’t telling.

Well, let's just double down and add another "failed government policy" to "failed government policy". Unfortunately, there's too much at stake for almost every segment of the local population, business, and industries, so I suspect if they manage to pull this off, they can kiss themselves goodbye in the next elections. I suspect somebody must be thinking carefully about that.