Valencia City Council has decided to get serious about tourist apartments. And take some time to organize a growing activity spurred by record numbers of tourism in the community, with the City Council facing requests for 733 tourist homes this year alone. In the face of this explosion, which caused interesting images called “tourist cages” in the city center, the local government decided to impose a moratorium on the sector. Purpose: Suspension of the issuance of new licenses for one year.

With this break, the City Council wants to “give legal and regulatory security” to a growing business that will have a clear impact on the city, the industry and the housing market.

unanimous support. The plenary session of the Valencian municipality, which was filled with debates, accusations and doubts almost until the last minute, yesterday unanimously approved a moratorium on tourist houses in the city. The measure was announced days ago by mayor María José Catalá (PP), in response to complaints from both neighborhood associations and the opposition.

Its aim is twofold: to temporarily halt the proliferation of visitor apartments, which has seen a real boom in just a few years; and take advantage of the pause to provide the city with a regulatory ordinance.

A moment from the general assembly meeting held in Valencia yesterday.

So what does he suggest? In practice, a moratorium on tourist apartments would result in a temporary suspension of the “processing and issuance of licenses” for both the construction of new apartments and “change of use”, the Valencia City Council said. all or part of a structure. The measure is temporary for one year, but Catala has previously hinted it could be extended for another 12 months.

As for the areas where it will be implemented, the City Council points to other residential areas of Ciutat Central and the neighborhoods Benimàmet, Carpesa, Poble Nou, La, where “a real case of tourist housing” has been detected. Punta, El Palmar, El Saler and El Perellonet. “Excluded are urban or developable sectors whose global or dominant use is tertiary or industrial,” the consortium explains, excluding land currently classified as urban land with special regulation. […] “Development of tourist residences according to the Ciutat Vella Special Protection Plan and the Cabanyal-Canyamelar Special Plan”.

A rule written in lowercase letters. The measure would also exclude properties designated for “specific tertiary use,” regardless of where they are located. This is because in these cases tourist accommodation does not remove properties from the housing market and does not “cause adverse damage to the urban environment”, the Council reasons. In practice, this decision focuses on tourist apartments located in buildings where neighborhood communities are located and excludes those located in hotels as well as other apartment buildings devoted entirely to visitors.

Buildings where tertiary use is permitted on the first floor are also excluded from the suspension if they have independent access from the street. The measure also looks to the future at “new tourist apartments”, so it does not affect those who have already requested a license and met the requirements. “The suspension will apply to responsible declarations submitted from the day the agreement is published in Turkey. Official Gazette of the Generalitat“says.

Goal: regular. Since abandoning plans to propose a moratorium, Catala has insisted that the measure is temporary and a tool for the City Council to bring order to an activity that has soared in the capital of Valencia in recent years. “This is nothing more than a temporary pause to regulate the situation of apartments of this nature,” he said days ago. At the plenary meeting yesterday, the City Planning councilor highlighted the same idea, advocating for a regulation that “encourages residential use of properties by establishing solid legal safeguards and clear rules of the game”.

But… There are so many floors? Definitely. Figures vary from one source to another, but the picture they paint is clear. And it doesn’t allow for a lot of interpretation. While tourist apartments in the capital of Valencia are experiencing a real boom, at the same time housing prices in the city have also increased by double-digit increases – a phenomenon repeated in many other cities in Spain, and not all of them are tourists. percentages. Idealista finds, for example, that the rent price in the city increased by 20.2% last year.

The Generalitat’s record is collected Country It shows that at the end of last year there were 5,747 tourist apartments in the city of Valencia. However, Visit Valencia assures that at the beginning of this year there were approximately 10,300 advertisements on different platforms. If we talk about places offered to tourists, their weight in the accommodation offer will be even greater than that of traditional hotels.

There is more data. So far in 2024 alone, the City Council has received 733 applications for housing for tourist use; This figure includes both licenses and responsible declarations. Not bad considering the newspaper I grew up It was noted that 456 license applications were made for tourist houses last year, and this number did not even reach 100 in 2022.

One more person to the list. Valencia is not the first Spanish city to move in response to the proliferation of tourist apartments. Recently the Madrid City Council did this and froze the licenses; or Seville, where the City Council encouraged measures to limit its impact on the city. In Valencia, the moratorium was accompanied by the support of the plenary meeting for the continuation of the Tourist Housing Supervision Plan. According to data presented by Catalá in recent days, 160 apartments in a state of irregularity in Valencia have already been closed.

Pictures | ChiralJon (Flickr) and Valencia City Council

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