Spain Slaps 100% Property Tax on Non-EU Buyers
It’s part of a collection of measures to address the country’s housing crisis, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez says.

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It’s less a tariff and more like regional real estate redlining.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez says the country is proposing an extraordinary new tax of 100% for real estate buyers from outside the European Union. It’s part of a collection of measures to address the country’s housing crisis, he says, and it’s bad news for Britons who thought they might be able to surmount post-Brexit bureaucracy to settle on the costa del sol.
Taking the Bull by the Horns
Spain’s housing crisis is acute: The country has seen a 24% increase in homelessness since 2012, and the proportion of people living in rented accommodations who are at risk of poverty sits at 45%, the highest in Europe, per a Reuters report. While its housing market has become increasingly less affordable, tourism has boomed and the supply of short-term rentals has jumped while the availability of long-term leases declined. This summer saw widespread protests against tourism in holiday hot-spots like Barcelona.
With the planned property tax on non-EU nationals, the Spanish prime minister is broadening the conversation beyond run-of-the-mill tourists with selfie sticks, focusing on wealthy foreign investors:
- Spain already scrapped its golden visa program, which will officially shutter in April this year, meaning wealthy foreigners can no longer invest their way to a Spanish passport.
- Sánchez said when the program was scrapped that the majority of foreigners who’d applied for citizenship via investment had done so through buying real estate.
On Monday, Sánchez said that non-EU nationals had bought 27,000 properties in Spain in 2023, “not to live in them, but mainly to speculate.”
Gold Visa Rush: It’s not just Brits who’ll miss out on a sunny home in Spain; Bloomberg reported last week that there’s been an uptick in American buyers rushing to take advantage of the final days of Spain’s golden visa program. “It’s been non-stop requests,” Matt Anderson, an American real estate agent working on the Spanish island of Mallorca, told the outlet.