President Marga Prohens closed Thursday's 'Mallorca Real Estate Summit' at the Castillo Hotel Son Vida by highlighting housing as the main problem facing the Balearics. She referred to increases in rent of 85% and increases in prices for sale of 90% between 2015 and 2023, observing that young people are unable to start a life plan, families are spending most of their salaries on housing, more people are having to resort to living in motorhomes.
The president identified population growth as a key factor, contrasting this with parts of Spain that have experienced depopulation. "The Balearic Islands are the Spain that is filling up, with needs for services, infrastructure, and housing." She listed government initiatives to facilitate housing, such as Build to Rent and Safe Rental, and the minister for housing, José Luis Mateo, emphasised the need to create affordable housing for the middle and working classes. "It's a problem that affects us all. We cannot give up."
The foreign buying of homes, depending on perspective, is either a cause of the housing crisis or a factor that is at most no more than marginal. Whatever its real impact, representatives of the ABINI estate agencies association and CaixaBank both pointed to dynamics that are driving foreign buying and not just in the Balearics.
Daniel Arenas of ABINI said that since the pandemic people from abroad no longer want homes just for holidays. They want residences. "Buyers are younger, they are enrolling their children in international schools, and are working from home. And there are clients because of the situation in Russia. If we go to Mallorca, they tell me, we'll be further away from Putin."
In this regard, Daniel Caballero of CaixaBank said: "On the Costa del Sol and the Costa Brava, and in Alicante, we are seeing clients coming from areas near Ukraine. There are many Poles who are buying the most expensive homes and are even moving to Tenerife."
But for all the talk of the issues, the heart of the matter lies with political will and action. Mateo referred to the government decree to facilitate 20,000 new homes in Palma, half of which will be of an affordable and social character. It is only one example but it is indicative of a failure to arrive at the type of political consensus that the ABINI and the API estate agencies association expressed in their joint letter sent to Prime Minister Sánchez last week which called for "urgent measures" to be adopted to enable the building of affordable and social housing.
Vox have blocked the passage of this decree in parliament, Mateo saying that if the decree is not approved by parliament, this will be "irresponsible". But not everyone in Vox fully endorses the stance of the parliamentary group. At Thursday's council meeting in Palma, the Vox deputy spokesperson, Fulgencio Coll, insisted that the decree must be unblocked. "We shouldn't waste more time; we've already lost a year and a half."
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Have to say a lot of talk about lack of action and Political will , The real Problem is the cost of Money to go forward with such a project and it's only going to get more expensive interest rates have to rise with all the borrowing going on , the additional cost of People to do this work as hourly wages have increased and qualified people are hard to find , A Builder with big enough trouser´s to be able to survive and not go Bust halfway through and a Bank who is willing to take on the RISK of being involved in such an endeavour , These are the Hard TRUTH´S about the situation .