When the young doctor Anna Hemona Balba started working at a hospital in Madrid last year, she moved to the place where she was half an hour away from her parents. Until she saved enough money, she could buy her own.house.But when she started looking at the house in the same village, almost all the houses of the house exceeded 500,000 euros.
This is almost 20 times the average annual salary of Spain, which is equivalent to the cost of the country's "golden visa". This is a project that provides residential rights to the rich foreigners who buy real estate in the country.In the past ten years, the project has attracted billions of euros to invest, but it has also promoted a housing crisis that has painful their residents.
"I can't afford anything," Balba, a specialist at allergies, said that in order to save savings, she would work overtime 100 hours a month."If foreigners raised the price that people who live here, this is unfair," she said.
In the face of increasing pressure to solve the problem of housing crisis, Spain said this month that it will cancel the golden visa, which is the latest example of the overall trend of the overall trend of the project from European countries.
In 2012, when the European debt crisis was the worst, six euro zone countries provided such visas to help fill the expanding budget deficit.Those countries that need international assistance -including Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and Greece -especially urgently need cash to repay debts. At the same time, they also saw a way to attract investors while re -dying the dying real estate market.
These countries have issued a fortune: Spain only issued 14,576 visas to the wealthy buyers who invested more than 500,000 euros in real estate.But the price that these people can withstand will be squeezing out of the market like Balba, and this market has already skyrocketed due to the rise and attracted Wall Street investors of Airbnb.
"Housing must be a right, not a speculative behavior," the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez made a speech when he announced the end of the country's golden visa plan this month."Major cities are facing a highly intense market. For those who are already living, work and tax, it is almost impossible to find decent housing."
These visas enable people outside the EU to easily buy temporary residency, and sometimes do not even need to live in the country.Investors from China, Russia and the Middle East have purchased real estate through these visas.
In recent years, after Brexit, British citizens have also followed up. They have snapped up real estate in Greece, Portugal and Spain, and more and more Americans have also joined it, hoping to enjoy a lifestyle that cannot be affordable in big cities in the United States.
But as governments seek to eliminate damage to the real estate market, the golden visa plan across Europe is currently gradually canceling or shut down.After Russia invaded Ukraine, EU officials urged governments to terminate such behavior and warned them that they might be used for money laundering, tax evasion and even organizational crimes.
Portugal has obtained an investment of more than 5.8 billion euros through relevant visas. The country has modified the relevant projects in October last year to cancel real estate investment projects to reduce speculative purchase of real estate.The market cools down.The influx of foreigners led thousands of low -income Portuguese citizens to leave their homes in Lisbon and other cities.
The Lisbon government is trying to solve the problem of affordable housing through new regulations. These regulations require landlords to rent vacant apartments from the family, restrict rent and turn some commercial real estate into housing.
Ireland closed the project last year, partly because Russian citizens worried about money laundering through the project.
As one of the only countries in Europe that is still providing golden visas, Greece is increasing the threshold of foreign investment in the Athens region and hot islands such as Mikonos and Santorini from 500,000 euros to 8010,000 euros.The country's Prime Minister Kiria Cos Mizetkis acknowledged a serious shortage of housing and the leasing market was under pressure, especially the surrounding areas of Athens, but he said that the government still wanted to attract investors.From 2021 to 2023, Greece received 4.3 billion euros through the visa.
A report released by the Institute of Labor and Economics in March stated that related visa projects can help stimulate the economic development of these visa countries.However, the report said that governments of various countries need to achieve subtle balance between "gaining economic benefits and preventing potential risks", including money laundering and excessive development of gentry.
This withdrawal trend is when Europe is facing a broader housing crisis, the European real estate market has experienced a profound transformation over the years, and it is increasingly squeezing out of the market for middle -income workers such as doctors, teachers, and police.
For decades, gentlemen have spread in European cities, but the rise of Airbnb and other short -term leasing providers has accelerated the affordable crisis of housing prices.In particular, the country affected by the European debt crisis, the owners there found that renting the house to tourists is better earned than renting to locals at hand.
The golden visa project exacerbates this pressure.In Greece, foreigners can get a 5 -year residence visa as long as they invest 250,000 euros.On the Greek islands around Athens and the breeze, the prices of many apartments and houses suddenly soared from a very low price to 250,000 euros, making most Greeks be at no way.
Laura McDower is a agent of the Mobilia real estate agency at Athens. She said that short -term leasing makes the rent in the city center unbearable, and investors from many countries will purchase through the golden visa projectWhen the house was converted into a holiday lease, the problem became more serious, which further squeezed the supply of affordable housing.
The plan is particularly attractive to Chinese citizens, and many people fly to Athens with cash -filled boxes.China's investment companies also purchase buildings in low -income communities and areas with student apartments, renovate the apartments, and resold to those who seek visas.Today, even in the unpopular areas of Athens and surrounding areas, the entire residential neighborhood is basically owned by foreigners.
The price of "golden visa pushed up has not declined," Mikedor said."The Greeks have been squeezed out of the market at a high price."
After Greece implemented the plan, the price of many apartments and houses on the Greek islands around Athens and the breeze suddenly soared from a very low level to 250,000 euros, which was out of reach for most Greeks.
In Spain, Chinese investors account for nearly half of the number of applicants, followed by Russians.The Spanish Minister of Culture Onest Ul Tatson said that in recent years, the low interest rate set by the European Central Bank has attracted more real estate investors outside the visa project, which has exacerbated this problem.
WestThe incident government plans to build 40,000 welfare housing for people with limited resources, as part of a wider plan for restoring economic affordable housing.
But it is not certain whether this can quickly help people like Balba.Although Spain recovers from the financial crisis, the salary level failed to keep up with the pace of growth in the real estate market.The minimum wage of nearly one -fifth of workers was 1134 euros per month, while Madrid's rent rose 15%in 2023.3.2%of the inflation rate has increased pressure.
In the past three years, Balba has been depositing money for the down payment for buying a house.She rented a room in a shared apartment in Barcelona and began training in a hospital in a hospital in the city center.However, her monthly income is exhausted by basic living expenses such as food, rent and transportation.
In order to save expenses, she moved to the hospital in Madrid, and now she lives in her parents' homes, so that she saves rent and also increases their income to 1900 euros through overtime work.However, even in her parents' village, the price of the house was as high as 500,000 euros, and she felt desperate.
"It may take many years to buy a deposit for enough to buy a house," Balba said."Buying a house is just a dream."
