Menorca promotes the purchase of empty buildings

CiutadellaThe residential market in Menorca is increasingly out of reach for those who live there year-round. However, for the first time, proposals and measures are being put on the table that do not consist solely of ceding land to Ibavi for it to promote social housing. The island's Council is promoting the purchase of unoccupied private buildings, and experts and business people suggest that land be reserved for residents to separate this offer from the one that now dominates the market, aimed at attracting the attention of the wealthy.

The Cercle d'Economia de Menorca has taken action to request that institutions intervene directly and temporarily in the market in order to guarantee housing for the resident population. The business entity believes that no more diagnoses should be made, but rather action should be taken to confront the "situation of authentic emergency" that Menorca is experiencing, especially when all data indicates that the population and immigration will continue to grow in the future.

“The lack of housing is not a problem that only affects residents, but also teachers, police officers, tourism workers, and young people who want to become independent. There are medical specialties that we also do not have covered for this same reason. So the only thing we cannot do is nothing”, says the president of the Circle, Miquel Àngel Casasnovas, who focuses on the Island Council to “lead” the solutions.

In order to facilitate their work, the Circle has extracted a decalogue of proposals from the housing conferences it organized in March. The experts' conclusion is that “unity of action” is needed, a “broad institutional, social, and economic consensus” among all administrations so that the public and private sectors row in the same direction.

The “Pact for Housing in Menorca”, as it is called, must align housing policies with employment, wages, and economic development, so that all grow at the same pace. And not only from the public sphere. The Cercle proposes to develop public-private collaborations and promote alternative models such as housing cooperatives.

Offer of habitual residence

But the main proposal involves “orienting the offer towards habitual residence”. It is about town councils reviewing planning, mobilizing available land, which has been planned for years but has not yet been developed, and establishing “clear usage conditions” in new developments that are authorized. With the Council setting common criteria and ensuring that processing times are reduced.

“It is a scandal that it takes two years on average to issue a license”, complains the president of the Cercle. “We have municipal plans subject to eternal revisions, as in Ciutadella, and projects obliged to overcome infinite procedures. We must get out of this administrative mess that only discourages investment”, he states.

The proposal of the Cercle d’Economia aligns with that recently made public by the doctor in Economics from Alaior, Josep Sintes Vinent. He, now residing in Mallorca, has warned that “the developers are directing their developments towards the foreign buyer, because that is who will pay more and make you earn more”. For this reason, prices skyrocket, far above local income and what any resident can afford to pay. Therefore, Sintes suggests that it is convenient to “segment” the land and use markets in order to reserve a specific one for the resident population.

To achieve this, he proposes creating a land bank that is in the hands of the Consell and the island's town councils with the idea that they “evit speculation. It is about changing the rules of the game and separating land for residents from the rest, thus allowing each to compete within their own market”.

Purchase of public housing

In parallel, the Council has already taken the first steps to expand the purchase of public and social housing in Menorca and thus complement the new Ibavi developments. Until the end of the month, property owners who are interested can offer their multi-family and vacant buildings to the island administration for purchase. The objective, said president Adolfo Vilafranca, is to create its own public housing stock that offers "real and urgent solutions to the people and families" who reside on the island.

Only 60% of the 60,000 houses that, according to the Socio-Environmental Observatory (Obsam), are registered in Menorca are used as homes, to live in. The rest are second homes or assets to speculate with. This means that the INE has counted at least 8,969 vacant houses, and there are highly seasonal municipalities like es Mercadal, where 28% of the houses are unoccupied.

The Minister of Territorial Planning, Núria Torrent, understands that buying vacant homes "is a much faster and more efficient way than other avenues" to provide an immediate response to the population's housing needs.

The Council's action

With this action, the Consell de Menorca continues other operations carried out in the first three years of the term, such as the purchase for three million euros of four plots of land in Maó, Ferreries, Alaior, and es Mercadal, where nearly 300 protected homes will be built. It has also increased public aid to young people by 150% to help them pay rent and has removed more than 1,500 tourist places from the market in the villages to offer them to residents.

Likewise, it has launched a new Insular Housing Office in Maó to provide a public service that guides and advises citizens on rental contracts, mortgages, and other related issues. "We are acting with an integral vision and mobilizing resources as has never been done before," concluded the president.

The deputy and general secretary of the PSOE, Pepe Mercadal, who has already announced that he will run for president of the Consell, proposes "a structural change to make the institution a protagonist in the Menorca housing market." In this regard, Mercadal asks, "if housing is the main problem, how can it be that the Consell only dedicates one million out of its 184 million budget to it?". The socialists commit to allocating at least 10.

But the short-term key, in the socialist leader's opinion, is to set a limit on rental prices, as is already applied in 300 municipalities in Spain. And he openly criticizes the Government for announcing new residential developments in Menorca "when we haven't even seen one begin. The previous Government promoted 161 flats, 87 of which were handed over. It may seem like few compared to the severity of the problem, but at least they are more than the zero of this legislature. It's shameful.

In fact, the public housing stock in Menorca is completely insufficient. Currently, there are only 333 social housing units, 0.9% of the island's total accommodation offer.

The construction of residential projects has also soared by 78% in the last quarter of 2025 and mortgages have grown by 32.7%. But the reality is that many residents are forced to live with their parents and hundreds of public and seasonal workers stop coming to the island because they can't find anywhere to stay.

On the Idealista portal, 116 flats are currently offered for rent, but only 13 for the whole year, non-seasonal, and only two that cost less than 1,000 euros per month. Purchase prices are also increasing, by up to 55,000 euros more on average in Ciutadella in just one year. It's no different from what's happening throughout the Balearic Islands, where property prices have grown three times as much as wages over the last decade. As the Cercle d'Economia rightly says, it's time to act.