Invest2 publishers2 min readPublished
Sanchez takes Spain's defeated housing decrees to a November 29 election
Pedro Sanchez called a November 29 election after Spain's right-wing opposition killed two emergency decrees against evictions and property speculation. For owners of Spanish rental housing, the vote is a contest between the government that wrote those measures and the parties that voted them down.
The Investor · Invest desk
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What happened
- The parliamentary defeat set off speculation that Sanchez would bring forward a national election otherwise due next year.
- Semafor reports that housing has risen to the top of voter worries in several European countries as prices race ahead of incomes.
- Home ownership across the EU declined last year, according to data cited by Semafor.
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Why it matters
- exposure Landlords and buyers of Spanish residential property face the return of eviction and speculation curbs if Sanchez wins a majority able to pass them.
- constraint The sitting parliament has already refused the measures, so any change to Spanish eviction or speculation rules now depends on who forms a government after November 29.
- decision Other European governments under the same voter pressure have to pick a remedy, either Spanish-style eviction and speculation curbs or the zoning overhaul Works in Progress argues for.
The measures that lost in parliament are the ones aimed most directly at property owners. According to the South China Morning Post, the two emergency decrees included measures to reduce evictions and real estate speculation, and right-wing opposition parties joined forces to scuttle them [4]. The report does not say what those measures would have done to rents or to the cost of buying property as an investment.
By calling the vote, Sanchez is taking his housing plan to voters before trying it again in the chamber that rejected it [1]. The November 29 vote [2] can go a few ways for owners of Spanish rental housing. If Sanchez returns with a majority that can pass the decrees, the eviction and speculation measures come back. If the parties that voted them down form the government, those measures stay off the books unless that bloc writes its own. A result that leaves neither side able to pass housing law puts things back where they stood after last week's defeat [3].
In my view the election matters more for Spanish property than the protests do, because the government's answer to the protests has already gone to a parliamentary vote and lost [1]. The case against that view is the eviction. Outrage over the televised eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid last month brought protests to cities across Spain [6]. The eviction and the ballot fall about three calendar months apart [1]. Whoever wins could decide they cannot govern without some eviction protection. A right-led government that adopts eviction limits of its own would prove me wrong.
Semafor puts Spain inside a wider European problem. It reports that housing has risen to the top of voter worries in several countries as prices race ahead of incomes [7], and that EU home ownership fell last year [8]. The remedy it quotes points somewhere else. "If Europeans want to meet their housing needs, they will probably have to revisit their zoning systems, just like Americans," Works in Progress wrote [9]. Zoning reform is about how much housing gets built. The Spanish decrees, by the SCMP's account, were about evictions and speculation [4].
What to watch
- Whether the right-wing parties that voted down the decrees publish their own housing plan before November 29, and whether it includes any eviction protection.
- Whether Sanchez campaigns on bringing back the two emergency decrees as written or in a changed form.
- Whether the November 29 count gives either bloc a majority able to pass housing law.