Spain strikes to STOP Brits from shopping for houses within the nation because it broadcasts enormous new monetary penalty they’re going to be hit with

The Spanish government has unveiled drastic reforms affecting Brits’ ability to buy homes as the state desperately looks to tackle the mounting housing crisis.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez today announced a new package of 12 measures the government hopes will win over residents furious with the lack of available homes.

One contentious proposal is the introduction of a tax for non-EU citizens buying houses in the country who do not already reside in Spain.

The government suggested levying a tax on foreigners, including Brits, by raising the amount paid when purchasing a house to 100 per cent of the value of the property.

House-buyers in Spain are currently expected to pay costs and taxes worth between 10 and 12 per cent of the price of the house, depending on where it is. 

Sanchez said that the new tariff would help ‘prioritise the availability of housing for residents’.

He noted that in 2023 alone, non-residents from outside of the EU bought 27,000 houses and flats in Spain, ‘not to live in them, but mainly to speculate’.

He said this was ‘something that, in the context of the shortages we are experiencing, we cannot afford’. 

Spain has seen massive demonstrations grow year-on-year, with aggrieved locals decrying the housing shortage while opportunists buy up homes and rent them out to holidaymakers, or leave them vacant for most of the year.

Residency in Spain is open to UK nationals and other non-EU citizens planning to stay longer than 90 days, subject to fees and proof of financial stability.

Sanchez’s radical plan to address the housing crisis was presented today, outlining 12 measures focused on reforming the construction industry, ensuring affordable rentals and offering incentives to those who follow renting guidelines.

This includes transferring land to a new Public Housing Company that the government says it will use to build thousands of new affordable rental houses.

Sanchez said in the first half of this year the company will begin to incorporate more than 30,000 Sareb homes, some 13,000 with immediate effect. 

The government also hopes to ‘rehabilitate’ vacant homes for additional ‘affordable rental’, offering incentives to those who renovate flats and make it available for an extended period of time.

It hopes an income tax exemption for owners letting out their homes according to the ‘Reference Price Index’ will encourage a healthier rental ecosystem. 

In a bid to ensure Spaniards can access homes before wealthy non-EU citizens, the proposals also include a measure to ‘limit’ the purchase of homes by people who ‘do not reside in our country’.

This is to be tightened with regulations on fraud for seasonal rentals, disincentivising those who illicitly look to make the most of Spain’s lucrative tourist season. 

‘The objective with all these measures is clear. What we want is to protect citizens, to find a better balance between tourism and investment, which are two key activities for our economy,’ Sanchez said with the announcement.

‘And also, logically, access to housing, which is a constitutional right of the people and a legitimate objective of our Government when we say that we want to make it the fifth Pillar of the welfare state.’

Sanchez assured the increased power given to the state to purchase properties and land will be backed by a guarantee ensuring all housing built by the State remains public property indefinitely.

The aim of the ambitious plan is that ‘what is built and rehabilitated with public money will always remain the property of the Spanish people and will not end up in the hands of vulture funds’, he insisted.

The government is hoping to mobilise some 6bn euros in ICO loans and guarantees to help construct an additional 25,000 new homes.

While building more homes itself, the government is also taking aim at private ventures involved in unsustainable rental practices.

Sanchez urged the need to prioritise residential use over tourism, vowing to introduce a tax reform ‘so that tourist apartments are taxed as what they are, a business’.

He said that ‘it is not fair that those who have three, four, five apartments for short-term rent pay less taxes than hotels or workers’.

Jaume Collboni, the mayor of Barcelona, set precedent with the radical decision to get rid of all short-term apartment rentals for tourists starting November 2028.

Companies like Airbnb have long been in the sights of anti-tourism demonstrators, with residents fearing that they are being priced out of homes by the abundance of property owners letting out their homes for huge fees.

For the six months to the end of June last year, during the busy summer period, 42.5 million international visitors travelled to the country.

June alone recorded a 12% rise to 9 million as the busier summer period picks up, according to Spain’s data agency INE.

Data shows visitors are increasingly opting to stay in rental apartments, rather than hotels, driving up demand for flats and incentivising landlords to buy up housing at the expense of residents.

The number of visitors to Spain in the first-half of the year staying in that type of accommodation was up 30%, while those staying in hotels was up 11%.

The first major protest in Alicante took place last July, with hundreds of locals taking to the streets to voice their concerns about overtourism.

Scores of residents met at the central Plaza Toros with banners and flags reading ‘Leave our neighbourhoods’, ‘our home is not the patio of gringos’ and ‘f*** AirBnB’ amid fears locals are being priced out of their homes and trapped in unstable jobs catering to foreign visitors.

Salva, a spokesperson for the group organising, told MailOnline: ‘It is the administrations (city council, autonomous community, central government) that must take measures to put the needs of the people who live in the city at the forefront, compared to the wishes of those who visit the city.

‘We hope that the demonstration is the first step so that more people feel that it is legitimate to claim the right to live with dignity in our city, and to be able to join together to build a neighbourhood movement that says that Alicante is not for sale.’

Earlier in the month, residents in Barcelona shockingly fired water guns at tourists enjoying dinner on a street popular with foreign visitors.

Under the banner ‘Enough! Let’s put limits on tourism’, some 2,800 people – according to police – marched along a waterfront district of Barcelona to demand a new economic model that would reduce the millions of tourists that visit every year.

Barcelona’s rising cost of housing, up 68 percent in the past decade, is one of the main issues for the movement, along with the effects of tourism on local commerce and working conditions in the city of 1.6 million inhabitants.

Rents rose by 18% in June from a year earlier in tourist cities such as Barcelona and Madrid, according to the property website Idealista.