Barcelona to raise IBI on tourist apartments to 150% if Moncloa saves its housing decrees

The Barcelona City Council will apply the maximum surcharge of 150% on the IBI for tourist use homes as soon as the central government unlocks the housing decrees. The measure aims to return apartments to residential rental and depends on the PNV's vote in the Permanent Deputation.

The council led by Jaume Collboni has prepared the mechanism to impose a 150% surcharge on the Property Tax (IBI) for tourist apartments. It only awaits the central government to activate the housing decrees, which are returning to the Council of Ministers after being rejected by Congress last Friday.

The legal coverage is essential: without the state regulation, the City Council cannot apply the maximum rate reserved by law for properties without a stable residential function. With that umbrella, the surcharge would go from announcement to municipal ordinance.

The municipal objective is clear: to expel tourist housing from the market so that it returns to residential rental. Each apartment that leaves platforms like Airbnb is one more unit in a city with skyrocketing rental prices. The council has been trying for years to contain this use with licenses and moratoriums in the most pressured neighborhoods.

The Catalan real estate sector watches the maneuver with concern. Guifré Homedes, general director of Amat Immobiliaris and second vice president of the Board of the College of Property Agents (API), sums up the mood: "We are lost."

"Catalan real estate does not fear a specific tax increase: it fears not knowing what regulation will be in force when it signs the next contract"

The Catalan employers' association has been halting operations for weeks. Developers with built-to-rent projects underway are moving them to the buying and selling market, as warned by the Association of Construction Promoters of Spain. The president of Foment del Treball, Josep Sánchez Llibre, described Moncloa's measures as "a covert socialisation of private property."

Homedes estimates that the paralysis will last at least two months and scare off investors. "The second decree was a widespread aberration," he explains. He hardly complains about the first one, regarding evictions and extensions until 2028; he is concerned about anything that touches prices. "Here the market is already regulated, and now a second regulation would have to be added."

What worries the most is not the text itself, but its retroactive effect. "When you know the rules, you take them into account and plan accordingly. But they constantly change the rules of the game," he sums up. And he concludes: "It is hard to understand that something so structural, which needs so much consensus, ends up reduced to this theatre."

The government's second attempt will not be decided in the chamber, but in the Permanent Deputation, the body of 69 deputies that oversees Congress between legislatures. PP (27), Vox (6) and Junts (1) total 34 votes against; PSOE (25), Sumar (6), ERC, Bildu and Podemos (one each) add another 34. The tie is broken by the PNV.

The Basque nationalists have said they will analyse the decrees "in depth" before deciding. Minister Isabel Rodríguez even proposed in Congress a clause so that the measures would not affect Catalonia; the Catalan real estate sector is unclear whether such an exception is viable.

The decree that Congress rejected last Friday was not an exception: Junts voted against it along with PP and Vox, and the text was left at the mercy of a single parliamentary group. The paradox is that the Barcelona City Council, governed by the socialists, now takes advantage of the flip side of that same regulation to tax tourism.

The calendar is tight. The government seeks the endorsement of the Permanent Deputation in the coming days and, if successful, Collboni's 150% surcharge will stop being an announcement to become a municipal ordinance. If not, Catalan real estate will remain in limbo and housing, once again, in the air.