The Government promised Brussels to undertake 231,000 rehabilitation actions with European funds before the end of the year and is “in a position to comply with the commitments made.” This is clear from the report on the investments of the Recovery Plan in housing that Minister Isabel Rodríguez presented this Tuesday to the Council of Ministers. According to the data in that document, the rehabilitation program at the housing level (there is another program aimed at entire neighborhoods) already has 514,858 applications, which even exceeds the total of actions that were committed until 2026 (410,000). “It has been a success how the rest of the public administrations have reacted, but also the private operators,” said the Minister of Housing and Urban Agenda in the press conference after the Executive meeting. “We have managed to accelerate the pace of rehabilitation,” she added.
These half a million applications, which are basically processed through regional programs, are divided between 197,349 actions already accepted and 317,509 that are being studied. The key is to know how many of the first are already a reality and how long it will take for the rest to become so, since the commitment to the European Commission implies that these actions are completed. Although the latest public rehabilitation statistics only detect a modest increase in activity at the moment, the figures of interest that the Government has detected “allow us to be optimistic,” according to Rodríguez.
Furthermore, deductions in the income tax return for rehabilitation also count as actions in the European objective. And these reached a considerable volume in 2022, according to the figures managed by the Executive. Specifically, in the previous Tax Agency campaign, these tax aid reached 57,247 taxpayers, which referred to 42,682 properties. More than half were for the reason that they allow 40% of the amount spent on energy improvement actions in the habitual residence to be deducted (in exchange for reducing energy consumption by 30% or achieving the A or B rating for the home). The rest were divided between the simplest assumption (20% deduction for reducing energy consumption by 7%) and the most demanding (60% deduction, reducing consumption by 30%, but at the level of an entire residential building).
The Government, therefore, believes that it will more than comply with Brussels and already quantifies more than 180,000 jobs that have been created by the activity of renovation and improvement of homes to reduce their energy consumption. This represents a turning point compared to the second half of last year, when within the framework of the negotiation of the addendum to the European recovery plan, initial commitments were lowered for fear of not complying. In fact, in the initial formulation of the plan, half a million rehabilitation actions were contemplated until 2026, which was later reduced to 410,000.
Aside from these figures, the objective repeated by the Executive was always to promote rehabilitation activity in line with the long-term goals of the EU, which pursues total decarbonization by 2050. This implies that from 2030 Spain would have to be able to energetically rehabilitate 300,000 houses per year. As these figures are light years away from the current ones, and especially from those when the Commission set those objectives, the approach was always to take advantage of the pull of European funds to give a boost to the renovation works and for the sector to take inertia.
Globally, component 2 of the recovery plan, which is the one that focuses on actions on buildings, includes 5,520 million euros. The bulk of these, more than 4,000 million, are related to rehabilitation. Along with the smaller works leg, another line is investment in neighborhoods. This refers to large urban actions and the autonomous communities have already requested 841 million for them. That is, 96% of what was originally budgeted. This refers to 285 neighborhoods that are distributed among all the communities, except Castilla-La Mancha, and the two autonomous cities. These together cover some 44,500 homes, according to the report presented by the Ministry of Housing, which details that Cantabria and the Valencian Community are the most advanced in the agreements. The question, again, is when these signatures will begin to translate into works on the street.
New ICO lines
Aside from the progress of the recovery plan, the Government meeting this Tuesday also sought to give a boost to other measures in the field of Housing. On the one hand, the progress of golden visas for real estate investment has been reported for their elimination, as President Pedro Sánchez announced this Monday. In addition, the Executive has given the definitive green light to the agreement with the Official Credit Institute (ICO) to guarantee mortgages for young people up to 35 years old or families with dependent minors. This line of guarantees, announced months ago and which includes 2,500 million, will allow obtaining the part of the mortgage that banks do not normally lend (the limit is usually set at 80% of the value of the home). Now the only thing that remains is for the entities to adhere to the agreement to begin offering these guarantees, which the Government believes will happen in May.
In addition, the conditions of another agreement with the ICO have also been approved, by which the Government will guarantee 50% of the promotion of housing intended for affordable rental. This also refers to another measure of the recovery plan, which was agreed in the addendum, by which 4,000 million in credits will be allocated to finance the construction of social or affordable rental blocks. The 2,000 million in guarantees, Rodríguez explained, seek to “encourage private developers and public administrations” to build this type of houses. The ministry has indicated that it is working with the ICO “to finalize the implementation” of these actions, with which it hopes to launch some 40,000 homes. The decision to allocate 4,000 million of the addendum to the promotion of affordable rentals was adopted after seeing the good reception of the initial plan for that purpose. Although with different conditions, this allocated 1,000 million and proposed to build 20,000 homes, but the Government has garnered requests from the autonomous communities with which it plans to build almost 25,000 apartments.
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