This Thursday, Madrid City Council unveiled its tool to try to organize the supply of tourist apartments in the capital, where 15,000 of them currently operate without a license. The way to do this will be through the Reside Madrid Plan, which was reported this Thursday at the Government Board and which will begin processing in December until it is definitively approved, foreseeably, in the summer.
The plan will be applied in two areas, in a different way. On the one hand, in the historic center, delimited by the AP001 area and covering the districts of Centro, Chamberí, Salamanca, Retiro and part of Arganzuela and Moncloa. And on the other in the rest of the city.
In the first area, Tourist Use Housing (VUT) will be totally prohibited in a dispersed manner, also in the premises and will only be allowed in complete buildings, when they are not residential in nature (for example, in office buildings). And there will be a small door open for “buildings listed in poor condition” to be renovated to become VUT for a limited time.
Specifically, these last residential buildings will be able to change their use to tourist apartments for 15 years whenever they need a renovation and through a direct license linked to the rehabilitation and restoration of the building. At the end of that period, it must return to residential use and abandon tourist accommodation forever. This is one of the most controversial points of the plan, since it can consolidate investment fund operations to buy buildings with tenants and empty them for tourism, as residents in blocks of Lavapiés, Chamberí or also in Arganzuela have already denounced.
Outside the historic center, VUTs will be generally prohibited in residential buildings, although there will be exceptions: they will be allowed in residential blocks only when the homes have independent access to the neighbors’ portal. And in the case of the premises, as long as they are not located in important commercial hubs of the districts such as General Ricardos or Marcelo Usera streets, the mayor has given as an example.
The City Council’s intention is to separate tourist uses from residential uses and alleviate the “very serious problem” that exists in the city, where young people and families cannot currently access housing, even if they have the financial capacity to do so, Mayor Almeida pointed out. .
In this sense, the City Council will allow the transformation of 215 residential buildings in the historic center that are currently in private hands into affordable rental housing or colivings, with the aim of increasing the residential supply in Madrid.
It will also be allowed to convert tertiary buildings into housing, to which incentives will be offered such as granting an increase in buildability. In this case, they will not be required to have affordable prices.
The left-wing parties in the City Council have harshly criticized the announcement of this plan, which has not yet been reflected in any official document. “It is a carte blanche for speculation, for housing prices to continue to skyrocket even more for residents and to destroy the life of the neighborhoods of Madrid,” says Rita Maestre. For the PSOE, Almeida’s planning will serve to “expel residents from the neighborhood. We are very concerned that this is one more trick by the Popular Party to pretend that they are doing something but in reality they are only rearranging and favoring certain speculators.”
Fines from 30,000 euros
The Madrid City Council assures that as of October 16,100 tourist apartments operate in Madrid, of which only 7% are legal (1,131) and will continue to maintain their license with the new plan. In order for a VUT to operate in Madrid, it needs an activity license from the City Council.
Currently, the granting of new permits is stopped until the regulations announced today by the mayor are definitively approved. But the moratorium and fines do not seem to be intimidating some of the owners who are renting out tourist apartments without a license: since April there have been a thousand more apartment listings on Airbnb, even though their number cannot have increased. legally.
The Almeida Government has tried to intimidate the owners of illegal VUTs, especially since April, when it announced the suspension of licenses and sanctions starting at 30,001 euros to try to discourage their opening. Then he calculated that there were more than 12,000 properties in an irregular situation, which have aggravated the existing housing problem in the capital. Previously, penalties of 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 euros were imposed.
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