Josep Sintes: "We must create and protect residential land for living, just as we have industrial or rural land"

PalmaHe was manager for a brief period of the Palau de Congressos de Palma and, therefore, also knows public management. However, Josep Sintes has dedicated a good part of recent years to studying the phenomenon of the excessive increase in real estate prices, in which he currently works. Doctor in Economics, he has sent a proposal to all parliamentary groups in the Balearic Islands to find concrete solutions to the housing emergency, which he has named the Insular Framework for Territorial Equilibrium (MIET).

You come from the real estate world. How did you come up with a proposal like the MIET?

— Precisely because I have seen the problem from within. For many years the debate on housing has been framed almost exclusively in terms of supply: building more, streamlining procedures, unblocking land, facilitating developments. And obviously all this is important. But in the Balearic Islands there is a reality that is increasingly difficult to ignore: even if construction takes place, residents continue to lose access capacity.

— This is what started to make me rethink the problem. Because if the system always produces the same result, even when supply increases, we are probably not facing a simple quantitative insufficiency. There is a deeper mechanism. From the real estate world, you see very clearly that the Balearic market no longer operates solely with local wages or local demand. It is connected to capital flows, European assets, second homes, international investment. This does not happen elsewhere. And when you put this on top of a small, limited, and very attractive territory, the result is that the resident ends up competing in a completely unequal league. MIET is born from this observation. Not from an opposition to the market, but by trying to understand why the market, in certain territories like the Islands, generates increasingly exclusionary results for the resident population.

And what is this “structural thing” that you believe is not addressed?

— Here two very different demands compete for a very limited resource. On the one hand, there is the resident demand linked to salaries, credit, and the local economy. On the other, there is a global demand that does not necessarily depend on the economic conditions of the Islands: people who buy as a patrimonial asset, as a second home, or simply because the Balearic Islands are a territory highly desired internationally. When these two demands compete within the same market, the price is not set according to the average purchasing power of residents, but according to the segment that can pay more. And this is important to understand because it completely changes the nature of the problem. If the price is set by the global marginal buyer, then increasing supply slightly does not necessarily reconnect prices with local income. You can build more and still continue to push residents out of the market. That's why I say the debate is not just 'how much to build'. It is also who competes for this land.

Some will say this is simply the free market.

— Yes, and precisely my approach is that the market functions exactly as it is designed. I am not saying that the market 'fails' in the classic sense. The problem is that current rules allow residential land to compete directly with global heritage uses in a territory with a very rigid supply. When this happens, the result is economically coherent, but socially it can be very aggressive. The market assigns the resource to whoever has the greatest purchasing power. And on an island with such high international pressure, this tends to progressively displace the resident population. For this reason, the MIET does not propose to directly intervene in prices. What it proposes is to act on the institutional rules that determine how this price is formed. It is an important difference.

Your model talks about functionally separating the land, I understand, therefore, within the scope of general planning. What does this mean exactly?

— It means clearly distinguishing between land primarily intended for habitual residence and land oriented towards heritage, tourist, or investment uses. It is not about prohibiting the market or eliminating investment. It is about preventing the same housing from competing simultaneously as a residential right and as a global asset. Right now, in many areas of the Balearic Islands, the same dwelling can simultaneously compete as a place to live, as an investment product, as an international second home, or as a tourist asset. And when all this happens within the same market, the residential function ends up being subordinated to the highest paying capacity. What the MIET proposes is to introduce a functional differentiation similar to what already exists in other urban planning areas. We already distinguish between industrial, tourist, and rural land. What I propose is that, in territories with this extreme tension, the residential function must also be institutionally protected. We will not be the first to do so; there are already similar initiatives in other European locations. A legal reform is needed, which the Parliament of the Balearic Islands can enact, and which the general plans of each municipality can develop. I propose to establish differences and classify land solely by its main social function: to create homes, not to systematically generate business. This has been completely distorted, and things must be put back in their place, or the islanders will have to emigrate. I therefore propose a series of measures to make it possible for towns and cities to accommodate the people who go there to live, not flats and houses acquired for strictly lucrative and speculative purposes.

But isn't this limiting private property?

— No more than what any urban planning already does. City councils already decide where there can be hotels, where there can be industry, or where there can be public facilities. What I propose is to also incorporate the residential function as a use that deserves specific protection in territories with extreme tension. In the end, land is not just any good. It is finite, it is territorially limited, and it directly conditions the social and economic structure of the territory. All societies regulate land in one way or another. The question is not whether there is regulation, but for what purpose it is regulated.

The debate about limiting purchases to foreigners has returned with force. Are you in favor?

— I perfectly understand why this debate is arising, because people perceive a very large inequality in purchasing power. It's a fairly logical reaction when a significant portion of the population feels left out of the market they live in. However, today the European framework makes it very difficult to apply direct general limitations on who can buy. And, furthermore, I believe the debate should not be simplified solely based on nationality. The real problem is the difference in economic capacity and the pressure this generates on a very limited territory. That's why I think it's more viable to act on the function of land and on the rules of the market. That is to say: define which areas must primarily fulfill a residential function and protect them institutionally from direct competition with global patrimonial demand. It's not so much about "prohibiting who buys," but about preventing the entire territory from operating exclusively under the same patrimonial logic. We Balearics compete with the Nordics with a considerable income difference, and if we don't change the rules of the game, there's nothing we can do.

In other words, act on the rules of the game with which the Balearic Islands have competencies, such as territorial planning?

— Exactly. In the Balearic Islands, we cannot continue regulating solely with abstract market criteria as if we were a territory with infinite land and homogeneous demand. Here there is a very concrete and very intense global pressure. When you have a rigid supply and a very strong global demand, the market naturally tends to orient itself towards segments with greater purchasing power. This is what happens with housing, but also with other scarce resources in the territory. If we do not adapt the rules to this reality, the market will continue to progressively expel the resident population. And I believe that the political debate has not yet fully grasped that we are facing a structural transformation of the territory's functioning.

In the Balearic Islands, we are accustomed to being told that restrictive or interventionist proposals will scare off investment.

— It will depend on what investments we want to attract. The model does not eliminate the heritage market or residential tourism. What it does is differentiate spaces. Land oriented to global investment will continue to exist. But there must also be spaces where the main function is to guarantee housing to live in. Furthermore, I believe that a false dilemma is often posed between the economy and territorial cohesion. A territory where the resident population cannot live stably also ends up generating very serious economic problems in the medium term. Therefore, it is economically and socially unviable.

You have already submitted this document to the political groups. What response have you received?

— And what happens if nothing more than some protected units and the measures we have seen so far are done?

And what happens if nothing more is done than some protected apartments and the measures we have seen so far?

— That the decoupling between local income and housing prices will continue to rise. And a moment comes when this stops being just a real estate problem and becomes a structural problem for the country. A territory cannot indefinitely sustain a situation in which the population that works there, studies there, and develops its daily life there can no longer afford to live there under normal conditions. Because a moment comes when this affects absolutely everything: the labor market, public services, social cohesion, demographic continuity, and even the identity of the territory. Sometimes housing is spoken of as if it were simply another market. But land and housing have a very different structural function. It is not just an economic asset: it is the physical basis on which a society is organized. When the price of the territory becomes disconnected from the economic capacity of its residents, the system progressively enters a very fragile situation. You start to have difficulties because teachers, healthcare workers, police officers, service sector workers, and young people may leave. And a point is reached where the question is no longer whether prices are expensive or cheap. The question is whether the territory can continue to function normally. Because a territory cannot function indefinitely if the workers who sustain it cannot live there. The problem is that these dynamics do not usually produce a sudden rupture. They are gradual processes. For years it seems that the system still works, but it increasingly requires more exceptions, more displacements, more residential precariousness, and more external dependence to continue operating. That is why I believe the debate is much deeper than whether prices are expensive. What we are really discussing is what kind of territory we want to be: I think the Islands cannot continue to function as a kind of land market for people with high purchasing power, leaving the local community out.