[louison11]

I'm not saying it has zero effect. I'm saying it's a misdirected effort that would cause them more harm than good. Spain isn't exactly in the fittest economic position. It needs to attract foreigners to cultivate its growth - hence their Beckham law and other benefits for foreigners. You can deter people from coming and see the country stagnate/go down, or you can actually match the demand and foreign dynamism, and use that as an opportunity for the whole place to grow and modernize.

[throwaway4aday]

This is a quick "fix" that has a lot of unintended consequences. I've seen it first hand and the only people it benefits are those who are already wealthy. Everyone else gets a lot poorer as their cost of living skyrockets. Homelessness explodes as rents and housing costs increase dramatically, people who were living a humble but decent life before are pushed into poverty, crime both non-violent and violent increases and so does drug use. As far as I can tell the only people that actually benefit from this scheme are landlords and housing developers who slow walk their projects so that they can charge the maximum price per unit. Compared to the previous fairly stable state (which you call stagnation) the locals are much worse off. It also tends to ruin the character of places that were previously seen as a vacation destination for a unique experience, all of that just gets paved over and turned into a bland tourist trap barely different from any other place. Count yourself lucky if you live somewhere that has been passed over by this horrid money making scheme.

[delroth]

How does allowing *non-residents* to buy real estate help in attracting foreigners and cultivate growth?

[louison11]

Money invested from abroad is money coming inside the economy - whether the person lives there or not. That money goes to the seller, who'll then get taxed on it, spend it somewhere else... Or that money could be used, as I said, to build new buildings and rehabilitate old ones, thus creating jobs in the process. If the system was well set up for it, foreigners investing in a country is usually a good thing. The US is super foreign-investment friendly for example, doesn't hurt them.

Besides, if foreigners are investing solely to speculate - if they did fix the supply constraints, the opportunity for speculation would greatly decrease. It's only an attractive investment because the supply is so finite.

[iforgot22]

In a hot real estate market, there will be more market pressure to fix the dilapidated properties in good areas.

Say they instead keep values artificially low so an EU resident can buy a property for cheap, and it stays cheap. What's the benefit?