The Government asks communities to collaborate to collect data on tourist apartments that make it easier to pursue fraud
The Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, met this Friday with the regional councilors of the sector to address the problem of tourist apartments. The Government has asked communities to collaborate to collect data and launch before the end of 2025 a platform on which to group this information, as required by a new regulation recently approved in the European Union. The objective is for this data to allow town councils to prosecute fraud.
The state platform that the Government intends to promote with the help of communities and municipalities seeks “homologize” and give “uniformity” to the data on apartments and rooms offered on online portals for tourist or temporary rental of less than one year. The minister has set the end of 2025 as the deadline to launch this initiative, thus accelerating the two-year period provided for in the European regulation. Rodríguez has assured that compliance with the new rule will allow us to have “better data” to confront the phenomenon of tourist apartments and prosecute fraud and has urged communities and city councils to work together to develop it.
“The provision of public data at the service of the general interest is essential”, explained the minister before the start of the meeting, in which the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) also participated, as well as officials from the Ministry of Tourism and their regional counterparts. “The European regulation gave a period of two years to launch the platform and I want to accelerate that pace so as to have it ready before the end of 2025,” she insisted.
According to the latest data from the INE, in the last year the number of tourist apartments has grown by 9.2% compared to February 2023 to a total of 351,389 apartments of this type. These apartments represent 1.33% of the total number of existing homes in Spain. Andalusia, the Valencian Community and Catalonia concentrate half of these properties.
The head of Housing has recognized that the proliferation of tourist apartments is a problem by reducing the supply of housing for residential use and, consequently, causing prices to grow. For this reason, she has committed to studying, together with the communities and city councils, formulas to “prioritize” the residential use of the home over any other, where it is “threatened”. “Against any other use, we must always prioritize the residential use of the home, which serves as a home,” she said.
However, the minister has clarified that the reality of the different areas of Spain is different and that diversity will have to be taken into account in the solutions adopted. Rodríguez has also recognized that tourism is a “very important” sector for Spain and that is how she intends to continue being, although she has highlighted the need to look for solutions when it “comes into conflict” with the development of the neighbors’ personal lives.
