The Basque Government has initiated procedures to declare areas with tensioned residential markets in the Gipuzkoan municipalities of Bergara and Oñati, as well as in the Biscayan towns of Sopela and Urduliz. Four orders from the Minister of Housing and Urban Agenda, Denis Itxaso, have been published this Tuesday in the Official Gazette of the Basque Country (BOPV), initiating these processes at the request of the town councils of the four localities. This will enable them to limit rental prices upon completion.
A period of 20 business days is now open for public review of the studies and reports justifying the procedure, allowing interested parties to submit allegations. Subsequently, new orders from the Department of Housing will be published in the BOPV, definitively declaring the municipalities as tensioned.
This will be communicated to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda, which will assume the final administrative phase of the process by detailing the list of tensioned areas each quarter in the Official State Gazette.
For a municipality to be declared a tensioned area, it must meet at least one of the two criteria established by the Law for the Right to Housing. The first is that the average burden of the mortgage or rent cost, plus basic expenses and utilities, exceeds 30% of the average income.
The second criterion is that housing prices in the area have grown 3% more than the CPI recorded in the relevant autonomous community over the preceding five years.
