40.07% of the homes registered in the Canary Islands in 2023 belong to owners with five or more homes, regardless of whether they are individuals or companies. It is the highest percentage since 2013, when the Islands and the rest of the world were mired in a financial crisis. The analysis of figures also reveals that registrations of small holders (one or two properties) have fallen by 40.43% in the last decade, which suggests the consolidation of a new trend in the real estate market.
The data comes from the registrations collected in the cadastre of the registrations of new properties for residential use. This information is broken down by type of owner (natural person or legal entity) and number of properties owned. It only refers to new constructions. Owner changes (when someone buys a second-hand home) are not reflected.
The registration of houses in the cadastre in 2023, the last year with figures, amounted to 10,912, the highest value since 2015. Of that total, 59.41% are from natural persons and 38.96% from legal entities. Most of the cadastral registrations in the Canary Islands correspond to two very specific profiles: small individual owners (individuals with one or two properties), who accumulate 45.97% of registrations; and commercial companies with five or more homes, accounting for 34.52%.
The percentage of registrations made by owners with five or more properties is 40.07%. It is the highest value recorded in the Archipelago since 2013, when the collection of homes by this type of owners was in full decline since 2008, the beginning of the economic crisis. It continued to fall until 2015, then registered a small valley in its evolution and in recent years it has not stopped increasing.
For their part, small holders have carried out a completely opposite dynamic. After the outbreak of crack financial, they barely carried out 32.77% of the registrations. That percentage began to grow until 2014, when they carried out practically two out of every three registrations, but their prominence has not stopped falling since then. The data reflect that, in the current context of the housing emergency, owners with at least five properties are gaining more and more weight in the housing stock, cornering small holders.
“When you go to buy a house, you are not competing with your neighbor, but with an investor who wants to organize that home within speculative parameters,” reflects Jordi González, doctor in Sociology from the University of Leeds and collaborator at the Urban Research Institute. of Barcelona (IDRA). “There is a logic of increasing returns in which those who have more apartments and have a business structure find it increasingly easier to acquire houses.”
More data supports this thesis. Cadastre statistics define owners as those owners associated with the rights of a property (ownership, usufruct, bare ownership, surface area and administrative concession) and are computed without taking into consideration the percentage of ownership. Well, in 2006, the number of owners with a minimum of 11 properties in the Canary Islands was 7,065. In 2014, that record had risen to 13,470. And in 2024, the last year with figures, it is already 16,522. The only group of owners that has lost weight with respect to the total is that of small holders. In 2006, they accounted for 87.01% of the headlines. Now, 78.74%.
For González, this shows that those who purchase a home at this time “are not, for the most part, families or young people who are going to get a mortgage,” but rather specific investors who have a “suitable objective” for that property. All this in a context “where the supply is very scarce and there is extreme competition in rentals and purchases.” In 2020, registrations of natural persons accounted for 68.11% and those of legal entities accounted for 29.6%. In 2023, however, they correspond to 59.41 and 38.96%, respectively.
The Government of the Canary Islands has insisted on construction as a “priority” measure to tackle the housing crisis, in the words of its president, Fernando Clavijo (Canary Coalition). The regional Executive says it has 4,000 million euros from European reconstruction funds and more than 2,000 million additionally contributed by the State to build residential properties.
The housing decree approved at the beginning of this year is focused on that, on increasing the stock of public and private houses, betting everything on brick. So far, the regional government does not know how many homes have been built with this standard and is working with the Canarian Federation of Municipalities (FECAM) to make a “joint assessment,” a spokesperson for the Department of Housing points out. Canary Islands Now. According to figures from the Canarian Institute of Statistics (ISTAC), the construction of 1,338 homes has been completed this year, none of them officially protected.
“Everyone agrees that supply must be increased. Nobody disputes that. The problem is, what do you do in the meantime?” asks González, who advocates regulating rents and intervening in the empty housing market. Ángela García Bernardos, PhD in Public Policies from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), elaborates along the same lines: “Housing construction does not bring with it elements of lowering prices unless it is accompanied by other measures that mitigate the growth of prices. ”, he adds.
The expert, who a few years ago published a thesis on the Spanish housing system during the Great Recession (2007-2016), regrets that many governments, such as the Canary Islands, apply the “economistic” maxim that, if the price of housing is high, it is because the supply is scarce. “For example, if there are few washing machines and many customers, the normal thing is that the cost will be high. But with housing it doesn’t work exactly the same,” says Bernardos.
The doctor argues that one of the main reasons that explains this is because “no two homes are the same” and that the product (housing, in this case) “has some particularities that make the place where it is decisive when it comes to determining the offer.” He also reasons that houses in Spain act as “investment channels”, which means that their price, even after use, does not drop (unlike washing machines, to continue with the example).
The progressive increase in the weight of large investors in the real estate market is usually linked to large funds, such as Blackstone, but González also highlights the role of SOCIMIs, created in 2009 to invest in housing and “invigorate the market”, and Leasing Entities. of Housing (EDAV). The former do not pay corporate tax and the latter have deductions in the same tax.
“In a model where housing is so commercialized, these processes occur. That everyone has to compete on equal terms for a good that, for some, is a source of wealth and, for others, a roof over their heads. This is how perversions occur, especially if a family has to compete with a large company,” Bernardos emphasizes.
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