Tag: residents

There Are 17,000 Illegal Tourist Apartments In Madrid

26 April 2017 – Expansión

In just a year, the number of tourist apartments has increased by 100% in the Spanish capital. Of the 20,000 that currently exist in the Community of Madrid, only 3,000 have been registered. Hoteliers are asking for an urgent decree to be passed. 

“For a year and a half, we have been hearing that the Community of Madrid is going to publish a new decree to regulate the supply of tourist accommodation, but nothing. To open a hotel, one needs to comply with 400 rules, we have counted them; meanwhile, tourist apartments are not subject to any legislation. Unfair competition is harming every hotel in Madrid”. That is according to Madrid’s Association of Hotel Businesses, which is alarmed by the boom of tourist accommodation in the city.

According to the latest report from Exceltur, the alliance for tourist excellence, the supply of this type of tourist home has risen from 10,000 (37,000 beds) in 2015 to 20,000 (74,000 beds) in 2016, which represents an increase of 100%. Of the 20,000 beds, only 3,000 are actually registered, according to the Community of Madrid’s decree dated 2014, which governs tourist activity. (…).

To understand the severity of the problem, which has led to a 20% increase in rental prices in the city centre in a short space of time, causing gentrification, the expulsion of residents who have lived there for their entire lives, the Association presents another fact: Madrid’s hotels offer 80,000 beds in total, just 6,000 more than offered by the tourist accommodation establishments.

“We want to participate in the modification of the current decree, we don’t want to receive it a day before it is approved, but rather we want to work with the authorities to make the legislation correct and effective for both hoteliers and residents”, said Mar de Miguel, President of the Association. She added that these accommodation alternatives, besides not complying with the majority of the rules in terms of security or quality, are not subject to the urban development plan and do not pay the corresponding taxes, which is leading to tax fraud of €800 million per year. (…).

The Community of Madrid plans to legalise the market although it is very aware of the handicap that it faces. “The problem is that there is no legal precedent in Europe due to the mixing of jurisdictions and the reality of the fact that the activity is being performed in individuals’ homes, which significantly limits the capacity to exert control over it”, explained Carlos Chaguaceda, the region’s Director of Tourism. Homes let to tourists are therefore not regarded as businesses by law, and so “the Administration is unable to intervene in an agreement reached between two parties to rent a home”, said the Director of Tourism. (…).

The regional government proposes the creation of a register for these tourist apartments, where the owner legally acknowledges his/her activity. “Ideally, we would have the capacity to act against any platforms that advertise these properties online (without the corresponding permissions). For example, if a property does not have a registration number, it may not be advertised on any website”, suggested the Director of Tourism. (…).

Meanwhile, the Town Hall of Madrid considers that the Spanish capital is a long way from the problems that hoteliers are facing in Barcelona and Paris, given that the average number of beds per 1,000 inhabitants is 2.7 in the Spanish capital compared with 8 in the Catalan capital, but even so it wants to minimise the “risks of saturation” that is starting to exist in certain neighbourhoods, such as Cortes. (…).

The Town Hall is also looking to sign “memorandums of understanding containing certain commitments with Homeaway and Airbnb” (…).

Original story: Expansión (by R. Bécares and L. F. Durán)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Banks & RE Firms Sell Affordable Homes In Seseña

10 May 2016 – La Voz de Galicia

Its silhouette – large blocks of toasted brick emerging out of the green fields of Toledo province – attracts attention from the Madrid-Andalucia motorway. The urbanisation of El Quiñón or Residencial Francisco Hernando, as its developer, Paco, el Pocero, named it, is located in the municipality of Seseña (Toledo), which borders Madrid, in an image linked to the real estate bubble whose crash hit it hard, but from which it is striving to break loose.

It wants to show that it is just another neighbourhood in Seseña and that, as such, the ghost town with deserted streets that received its first visitors in the Summer of 2007, when the first half a dozen residents moved in, of the 580 who received the first sets of keys, has gone from being a dormitory town to one where 6,700 people are officially registered, of which 1,600 are under 16 years old.

Amongst those that financed Pocero’s mega project – a PAU containing 13,000 homes of which only 5,096 have been constructed in two phases – at the height of the boom, was the former Galician savings banks. In fact, one of the financing operations, by Caixanova, is now under the spotlight of the National Court, along with the allegedly irregular loans that the FROB sent to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor at the time. The Town Hall highlights that the neighbourhood currently has an occupancy rate of 80% and that the “reactivation” of the real estate sector has been felt “over the last year or so”, when the banks started to put the stock they holds in Seseña on the market. “The population has grown very fast”, say sources at the Town Hall. And the census confirms this: El Quiñón has more than doubled in terms of the number of inhabitants in five years, from 3,280 residents in 2011 to 6,700 currently, who represent 30% of the municipality’s total population (22,500).

Slow start

But the start – which is now happening – is slow and not free from difficulties. The key factor for Seseña to become an object of desire for potential buyers once again is prices, which have decreased by more than 50%. At the moment, for example, Aliseda has several two bedroom homes for sale for €85,000, although in 2012, other real estate arms of banks such as Santander and Sabadell ended up selling homes off virtually at cost, for less than €60,000 (…).

Original story: La Voz de Galicia (by A.B.)

Translation: Carmel Drake

First Residents Move Into Arroyo del Fresno (Madrid)

30 December 2015 – El Mundo

The new PAU (‘Programa de Actuación Urbanística’ or Urban Planning Program) in Arroyo del Fresno, located in the North of Madrid, has started to receive its first residents. CP Grupo and Amenabar have begun to hand over the keys to homes in this newly created environment, which will eventually contain almost 3,000 unsubsidised and subsidised homes (high-rise flats and single-family houses) in two phases. The development – where building work commenced in February 2014 – is, without doubt, one of the great symbols of the real estate recovery.

In accordance with the planned schedule, the first occupancy licences were granted in Arroyo del Fresno on 30 November for CP Grupo’s Montearroyo development (210 VPPL (limited price) homes) and Amenabar’s first VPPL residences, comprising 188 homes. All of these properties were sold shortly after their release onto the market in 2013 and the area is currently overrun with people moving in and deeds being signed, after Madrid’s Town Hall completed the partial receipt of the urbanisation.

In this sense, Amenabar has said that the deed signing process is progressing well, with deeds now signed for 176 (94%) of the 188 finished homes and the remaining deeds due to be signed for the other units soon. At the same time, the company revealed that it will begin to hand over its other development in Arroyo del Fresno in February; work there is almost complete on the 340 VPPB (basic price) homes.

In this way, the first settlers (which now occupy around one hundred of the properties) moved into Arroyo del Fresno in time for Christmas and hence the first illuminated windows and balconies can now be seen in the new neighbourhood. The number of residents in the PAU is expected to continue to increase over the coming days, as new residents take advantage of their days off over the holiday period to move in, according to CP Grupo.

It is worth highlighting that the opening of this new PAU is highly significant for the real estate sector because of what it represents. The definitive revival of the area took place at the height of the property crisis and the development received an enthusiastic response in terms of demand from the start, brandishing a new product in a sought-after location at competitive prices (post-boom). And so Arroyo del Fresno represents one of the faces of the new phase (of the economic cycle). After being the epicentre for the reactivation of property development, it is now really coming to life.

Original story: El Mundo (by Jorge Salido Cobo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Carmena Halts The Sale Of 2,000+ EMVS Homes

29 July 2015 – Cinco Días

Manuela Carmena, the mayoress of Madrid has announced that the Town Hall of Madrid will not sell any of the 2,086 rented homes, owned by the EMVS (Municipal Company for Land and Housing or ‘Empresa Municipal de la Vivienda y Suelo’), to vulture funds and that it will put a stop to 70 planned eviction processes. Her statement came after a meeting on Tuesday with the “Yo no me voy” platform, supported by more than 220 residents in five of the affected buildings in the ‘Centro’ neighbourhood of the city.

The beneficiaries of the social housing rental properties owned by the EMVS across the city started to receive notifications and visits in 2012, informing them that their contracts would not be renewed. Previously that was something that had happened automatically, every two years, provided two requirements were fulfilled, in accordance with Decree 100/86: the household income must not exceed a certain level and the tenants must not own any property in the Community of Madrid. In total, 2,086 contracts of this type are currently in place across the city’s 21 districts.

The EMVS started proceedings against tenants who refused to leave their rented homes. “To date, there are 70 processes underway, but these families have now recovered their homes. No-one is going to be kicked out on the street. The Town Hall of Madrid is going to withdraw all of those processes. For us, the right to housing, as recognised by the Constitution, is fundamental”, said Carmena. The EMVS’s commitment extends to 2,086 homes. (…).

Manuela Carmena said that the Town Hall is now “making contact” with residents who are currently “confused” because they think that their social housing contracts are going to be terminated and that their homes are going to be sold. We will explain to them that the contract “is valid and that they will not lose their homes”.

The councillor has not denied the “immense distress” that these tenants have gone through, after finding out that they had to leave the homes they had lived in for more than 20 years. (…).

Original story: Cinco Días

Translation: Carmel Drake