The Spanish holiday villa dream is over, thanks to Brexit

After the 2016 referendum, I joked to friends that the feel-good TV show A Place In The Sun might now have to be renamed A Place In The Sunderland. And focus not on estate agents finding affordable dream second homes in Spanish resorts but on locating the Wearside properties that were now the only ones attainable, given how difficult moving abroad was about to become.

Since we officially left the EU, Britons can no longer do what many once did – buy a property in one of the EU27 countries and either live there permanently and fuss-free, or visit whenever they like. Various workarounds are available – golden visas, digital nomad status, work visas and, for those not ready to make a permanent move, the 90-in-180-day rule. But everything is far more difficult and in most cases, more expensive than before.

And now we learn that the dream of buying a holiday home in Spain is to be denied to those who cannot afford to pay double for the privilege. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez is proposing to impose a 100% tax on property bought by buyers from non-EU countries.

The government in Madrid is upset that British and American buyers are driving up property prices so much that locals are forced out of the market. Sanchez said: “In 2023 alone, non-residents from outside the European Union bought 27,000 houses and flats. Not to live in them, but mainly to speculate. To make money out of them. Something that, in the context of the shortages we are experiencing, we cannot afford.”

Spain, of course, cannot impose this tax on other EU member states or their population, as that would break EU rules about freedom of movement and the single market. But the UK is no longer in the latter and so can suffer.

There are still lots of obstacles in Sanchez’s path. His plan has to make it through parliament, the tax rate is not yet fixed in stone and critics will point out 27,000 non-EU non-resident purchases at 27,000 a year are a small percentage of the 27 million homes in Spain.

But that is not really the point. Spain’s government has found a handy whipping boy, someone to blame for its own lack of home building and a housing market that sees prices rising ever further beyond the hopes of ordinary people. Sound familiar?

Yes, it is easy to pick on foreigners and blame immigration; easy to claim that your own government’s failure to build homes, to control property inflation, to provide social housing and let rents soar is the fault of immigrant. This is even easier when the people you want to blame are not members of the EU.

In 2023, Brits made up 8.5% of all foreign house purchases in Spain – the largest foreign group. Yet they enjoy none of the protections that French, German, Finnish or even Norwegian would-be buyers do.

Thanks Brexit, you just keep on giving and giving. I bet you didn’t see “Your foreign holiday home will double in price” on the side of that bus, did you?

Now, anyone for Sunderland?