Josep Sintes: "We must create and protect residential land to live on, just as we have industrial or rural land"

PalmaHe was manager for a short period of the Palma Congress Palace 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 Territorial Balance Framework (MIET).

You come from the real estate world. How do you end up elaborating a proposal like the MIET?

— Precisely because I have seen the problem from the inside. For many years, the debate on housing has been framed almost exclusively in terms of supply: building more, streamlining procedures, unlocking land, facilitating developments. And obviously all of this is important. But in the Balearic Islands there is a reality that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: even if more is built, 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 only with local salaries 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 exclusive results for the resident population.

And what is this “structural thing” that you believe is not being 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 highly desired territory 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 a little does not necessarily reconnect prices with local income. You can build more and still continue to drive residents out of the market. That is why I say that 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 the 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 payment capacity. And on an island with such high international pressure, this tends to progressively displace the resident population. Therefore, 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 soil, I understand, therefore, within the scope of general development plans. What does this mean exactly?

— It means clearly distinguishing land primarily intended for habitual residence from 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 compete at the same time 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 carry out, and which the general plans of each municipality can develop. I propose establishing differences and classifying land solely by its main social function: to make homes, not to do business as a system. 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 to live there, not apartments and houses acquired for strictly lucrative and speculative purposes.

But isn't this limiting private property?

— No more than any urban planning already does. Municipalities 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 asset. 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 of it?

— I perfectly understand why this debate arises, because people perceive a very large inequality in purchasing power. It is a quite logical reaction when a significant part of the population feels left out of the market in which they live. 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 is why I believe it is more viable to act on the function of land and on the rules of the market. That is to say: defining which spaces must primarily fulfill a residential function and protect them institutionally from direct competition with global asset demand. It is not so much about "prohibiting who buys", but about preventing the entire territory from operating exclusively under the same asset 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 competences, 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 assumed that we are facing a structural transformation of the territory's functioning.

In the Balearic Islands we are accustomed to being told about scaring off investments when faced with restrictive or interventionist proposals.

— 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?

— There is interest because I believe many people perceive that traditional tools are no longer sufficient. Part of the debate remains very focused on building more, and I'm not saying that's not necessary. But if we don't also act on the price formation mechanism and on the competition between unequal demands, the problem will persist. I believe that even within very different political spaces there is an intuition that the Balearic Islands are entering a new phase of territorial tension, where the residential market can no longer be understood solely with classic categories.

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 ceases to be 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 carries out 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 land becomes decoupled from the economic capacity of 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 can stay. And a point is reached where the question is no longer whether prices are high or low. 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 each time it 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 high. 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 out the local community.