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Carlos Mazón, president of the Generalitat Valenciana, and Susana Camarero, vice-president and councillor of Social Services, Equality and Housing, have presented in the Palau de Generalitat the Decree of Public Protected Housing (VPP) of the Valencian Community, a new regulation that, in the words of Mazón himself, ‘is going to mark a before and after both in the Valencian Community and in the whole country’. The Housing Observatory Chair of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), whose director, Fernando Cos-Gayón, participated together with Camarero and Begoña Serrano, director of the Valencian Institute of Building (IVE), in the round table presentation, has been a voice of reference in its creation.

‘There is no more powerful indicator of rising prices than the shortage of housing, and it is not a problem of unoccupied flats or tourist flats. The impact of both on the overall problem is residual,’ said Cos-Gayón, director of the Higher Technical School of Building Engineering (ETSIE-UPV), during the event.

‘The imbalance between supply and demand is brutal,’ he added. ‘Why is it that, with so many people wanting to buy, more homes are not being built? Because the numbers don't add up.

For the director of the UPV Housing Observatory Chair, ‘it is impossible for the public administration to pull this cart alone, because we would all end up suffering’, so the solution lies in ‘encouraging private investment and promoting public-private collaboration’.

‘In the short term,’ said the UPV researcher, ’the objective should be to generate land where pressure is distorting the market. According to the National Statistics Institute (INE), in 15 years there will be 4 million more people, and the main focus of demand is on young people and immigrants, who are necessary and are occupying the same niche as young people when it comes to looking for housing’.

One-person housing and the tax rate

When it comes to looking to the future, Cos-Gayón also believes it is key to be clear about the new housing model - ‘the INE indicates that in 15 years, 33% of homes will be single-person dwellings’, to modify the tax rate - ‘charging 10% VAT on housing for vulnerable people who you then have to subsidise is absurd’ - and ‘lowering energy efficiency requirements. It is unpopular, but other European countries are already doing it, because constantly raising the building price module is unsustainable’.

In any case, the director of the UPV Housing Observatory Chair believes that the new decree ‘goes in the right direction because, among other things, we need protected housing on land that is not protected and this new decree allows it’.

New features of the new decree

Among the new features of the new regulation, the establishment of different levels of protection stands out: 30 years for developments on land classified as VPP, 20 years for those developments on land that until now was destined for the construction of free housing, and 15 years for housing classified as young housing, a category in which Mazón has pointed out that ‘it is obligatory to contain a reserve of 40% of the development for under 35 year olds and single-parent families’.

The analysis of the price of free housing in each municipality of the Valencian Community that will be carried out by the Housing Observatory Chair of the UPV will be the reference to establish the corrective coefficient in the dynamic module introduced in the decree, which will allow an adjustment of the price of each stressed area to be implemented.

In addition, the new decree, which according to Mazón ‘will promote regulatory and administrative simplification while guaranteeing legal certainty’, will deploy a new system for setting maximum prices. This is a pioneering dynamic module in Spain which, based on building costs, will be adjusted in accordance with the evolution of market prices of free housing, demographic pressure and the evolution of average rents in each of the municipalities of the Valencian Community.