The Government is launching a registry of large holders, which will be mandatory and will entail sanctions

BarcelonaCatalonia will finally have a register of large property owners, which will allow to know who are the owners who have five or more properties and how many they have in total. The measure –which has been planned for years but has never been activated– will also serve to inventory which owners will be obliged to comply with the rental price index in stressed areas.

The register, which will be obligatory, has been reactivated through the approval of a decree law approved this Tuesday by the Government that modifies several legislative texts and repeals another. The text thus allows the registration to be carried out and also other measures to speed up the construction of protected housing and simplify administrative procedures. The Government has also incorporated that the refusal of these large owners to provide data to the administration in relation to the register of empty or occupied homes is a serious infringement.

Other measures include permanent protection of homes acquired through right of first refusal and right of redemption, to ensure the growth of the public housing stock, and the possibility of starting to build public housing with only a basic prior license accompanied by a basic project, with the aim of shortening the time until the keys are handed over to families. The Government has also approved that the Catalan Land Institute allocate the deposits to the construction of public rental housing.

Pending parliamentary procedure

The Minister for Housing and spokesperson for the Government, Silvia Paneque, did not specify when the register of large holders could be put into operation, an initiative that, as she recalled, the Parliament has requested to be activated several times. The measures will come into force once the decree law is published, but the reform will still have to receive the approval of the Catalan chamber. The spokesperson has hinted that the Government has the support of ERC and the Comuns to move forward: "We have worked together," she assured in a press conference after the meeting of the executive council.

As for the calendar, there is also no news regarding the authorisation of the body of inspectors – between 75 and 100 – that must ensure compliance with the sanctioning regime of the housing law that the Government approved a few weeks ago. The Catalan executive has linked it to the approval of the credit supplement that it intends to approve to inject an extra 4,000 million into the extended budgets. But at the moment there is no progress on when it wants to approve it.