Survey on housing: 68% support limiting prices, even if it lowers landlords' profitability

The “housing decrees” to be debated in Congress are, in practice, royal decree-laws issued by the Government on housing matters. Once approved by the Council of Ministers and published in the Official State Gazette (BOE), they must obligatorily undergo Congress control within a maximum period of thirty days to be validated or repealed, and Congress may also decide that they be processed as a bill through the urgent procedure.

1. Publication and entry into force

• The Government approves the Royal Decree-Law (for example, on housing matters) in the Council of Ministers.
• The text is published in the BOE. From that moment it has the force of law and can come into effect immediately (often the same day of its publication or the following day).
• That publication is a condition for it to be included in the Congress agenda: the Regulations indicate that the decree-law can be debated as soon as it has been published in the BOE.

2. Scheduling the debate in Congress

• The Presidency of Congress and the Board, in agreement with the Spokespersons' Board, schedule in the Plenary agenda the debate and vote on validation or repeal.
• That debate must take place before 30 days have passed since the promulgation of the royal decree-law, according to article 86.2 of the Constitution and article 151 of the Congress Regulations.
• If Congress is dissolved or outside ordinary session periods, the competence may fall to the Permanent Deputation, which assumes the Chamber's powers regarding decree-laws.

3. Development of the validation or repeal debate

The parliamentary procedure for the housing decree-law is the same as for any other decree-law:

• In the Plenary, a Government member (usually the minister responsible for housing or transport-urban planning) presents the reasons of urgency and necessity justifying the use of the decree-law.
• Then a general debate takes place, with interventions from parliamentary groups following the turns established in the Regulations (usually a first turn of the groups, possible replies and counter-replies).
• This debate is not about specific amendments, but about the political and constitutional appropriateness of the decree-law itself (its content and the use of the urgency figure).

4. Vote on validation or repeal

• Once the debate is concluded, a single vote is held in the Plenary.
• Affirmative votes are understood as favorable to the validation of the royal decree-law; negative votes, favorable to its repeal.
• A simple majority of the deputies present is required (more votes in favor than against); it is not a qualified majority.
• The agreement of validation or repeal is again published in the BOE, officially recording the result.

5. Decision on its processing as a bill

If the housing royal decree-law is validated, a second strictly parliamentary decision opens:

• The Presidency of Congress asks in the Plenary if any Parliamentary Group wishes the decree-law to be processed as a bill.
• If at least one group requests it, that request is submitted to a vote of the Chamber.
• If the Plenary votes in favor, the text becomes a bill processed through the urgent procedure.
• The urgent procedure implies shorter deadlines in Committee and Plenary than in the ordinary procedure.
• At this stage, amendments to the articles may be submitted by the groups, but the Regulations exclude total return amendments (it is not possible to return the text to the Government, because it is already in force).

6. Role of the Permanent Deputation

When the decree-law is issued between legislatures (Congress dissolution) or outside session periods:

• The Permanent Deputation exercises the powers of Congress regarding decree-laws: it can validate or repeal them and decide their processing as a bill by urgency.
• Once the new Congress is constituted, the Deputation reports to the Plenary on the decisions taken.

In summary, the housing decree-laws that reach Congress must, at a minimum, undergo the debate and vote on validation or repeal in Plenary (or in the Permanent Deputation) within 30 days from their promulgation, and may also begin a process as a bill through the urgent procedure if so agreed by the Chamber, from which point the real parliamentary negotiation through amendments opens.

The Council of Ministers is the Government body that makes key state decisions on housing, but it does so within a very limited constitutional framework and in co-governance with the autonomous communities. The Constitution (articles 97, 82, and 86) and Law 50/1997, on the Government, assign it the direction of domestic policy and the power to approve bills, royal decree-laws, royal legislative decrees, and regulations; housing, however, is a predominantly autonomous competence, so the Council mainly acts by setting bases, common frameworks, and state promotion measures.

Basic legal framework

According to the Constitution, the Government directs domestic and foreign policy (art. 97) and can issue:

• Delegated law (legislative decrees) when the Cortes grant it express delegation (art. 82 CE).
• Decree-law in cases of extraordinary and urgent necessity, with the force of law but provisional in nature and subject to validation by Congress within 30 days (art. 86 CE).

Law 50/1997 specifies these powers for the Council of Ministers. Generally, it assigns it, among others, the functions of:

• Approving bills and submitting them to Congress or, if applicable, to the Senate.
• Approving royal decree-laws and royal legislative decrees.
• Approving regulations and other general provisions for the development and execution of laws.
• Adopting binding programs, plans, and guidelines for all bodies of the General State Administration.
• Adopting agreements that do not require the form of royal decree but guide the actions of the state public sector.

These decision forms are reflected in practice: for example, recent royal decree-laws have included housing measure packages (shield against evictions, regulation of seasonal rentals, restrictions on purchases by certain funds, tax incentives, etc.), approved precisely in the Council of Ministers and then sent to Congress for validation.

What the Council of Ministers can do in housing

Applied to the housing field, the Council of Ministers can:

• Promote state housing laws: approves the preliminary draft and the bill (for example, the 2023 Right to Housing Law) and submits it to the General Courts, which have the final say on its content and approval.
• Approve urgent measure decree-laws: this is the route used for quick responses to housing crises (eviction moratoriums, extraordinary rental extensions, measures on investment funds or tourist flats). They come into effect after publication but only remain if Congress validates them.
• Regulate laws through regulations: through royal decrees it can create or modify state housing plans, regulate aid, rehabilitation programs, access requirements to certain subsidies, or coordination instruments with autonomous communities.
• Approve state plans and programs: by agreement or royal decree it sets the State Housing Plans, determines fund distribution criteria, and defines strategic lines (for example, increasing the public affordable rental stock).
• Decide on the use of state assets for housing: through agreements and royal decrees it can allocate state-owned land and housing to affordable rental policies, channeling them to entities such as SEPES or specific programs.
• Incorporate budgetary and fiscal measures linked to housing, always within the framework of tax and budget legislation approved by the Cortes (for example, tax breaks conditioned on affordable rental or extraordinary allocations for housing plans).

Relationship with the General Courts and competence limits

The Council of Ministers does not legislate alone: its normative capacity in housing is subject to double control:

• Parliamentary control: the bills it approves are debated, modified, and voted on in Congress and Senate; decree-laws must be validated or repealed by Congress within 30 days, and may then be processed as bills to introduce amendments.
• Constitutional control and territorial distribution: housing and urban planning are among the matters broadly assumed by the Statutes of Autonomy. The State mainly acts by setting bases, basic equality conditions, or general economic order measures. The Constitutional Court has reiterated that state housing plans and their regulations must respect that distribution, fitting as promotion and coordination measures, not as substitution of autonomous competence.

Summary

In short, the Council of Ministers is the Government's decision center for state housing measures: it chooses the instrument (law, decree-law, regulation, plan), approves the text, and sets the political and budgetary strategy. But its decisions are:

• Limited by the Constitution and the Government Law in form and procedure.
• Conditioned by the competence distribution that reserves to autonomous communities the regulation and ordinary management of housing and urban planning.
• Subject to Congress control and, ultimately, to the Constitutional Court.

Housing policy in Spain, therefore, is built on a balance: the Council of Ministers promotes and articulates major state measures, while autonomous communities develop and execute most material competences on housing and land.

According to Law 12/2023, on the right to housing, autonomous communities (and, where applicable, other housing-competent administrations) can declare a territorial area as a tense residential market zone when certain material requirements (thresholds of effort and prices) are met and a specific procedure based on objective data is followed.

1. General concept of “tense residential market zone”

The law defines these zones as territorial areas where there is a special risk of insufficient housing supply for the population, so that access to decent housing under market conditions is not affordable. The declaration thus has an instrumental purpose: to guide public housing policies and activate the rent containment and supply reinforcement measures provided by the law itself.

2. Territorial scope that can be declared

Article 18 of Law 12/2023 allows great territorial flexibility. The competent administrations can declare tense:

• A whole municipality (for example, Bilbao, Vitoria, or Pasaia, as has already been done in practice).
• A group of municipalities within the same functional area.
• A neighborhood, urban district, or other intramunicipal delimitation when access problems are concentrated in parts of the city.
• Metropolitan or regional areas sharing the same residential market.

What matters is that the area makes sense as a housing market unit and that the delimitation is motivated by data.

3. Material requirements (tension thresholds)

For a territory to be declared tense, at least one of these two criteria must be met (both are not necessary):

• Residential effort criterion (30%): that the average burden of rent or mortgage, plus basic housing expenses and utilities, exceeds 30% of the average household income or the average income of residents in the area.
• Price evolution criterion (+3 points over CPI): that the purchase or rental price of housing in that area has experienced, in the five years prior to the declaration, an accumulated increase of at least three percentage points above the accumulated growth percentage of the CPI of the corresponding autonomous community.

These two criteria aim to measure, on one hand, the real effort households bear to access and maintain housing and, on the other, whether prices have detached from the general price evolution in the territory.

4. Procedural and justification requirements

The declaration cannot be made arbitrarily. The Housing Law requires a set of guarantees:

• Preparatory information procedure: a prior file must be opened to obtain and analyze information on the residential market situation in the area, including:
  • Indicators of rental and sale prices and their evolution.
  • Data on household income and disposable income.
  • Other relevant indicators of housing accessibility.
• Justifying report: the law requires a report justifying the declaration with objective data and technical grounds, explaining which criterion is met (30% effort or +3 points over CPI) and how it was calculated.
• Public information procedure: the declaration must be subject to a public information procedure, so that citizens and affected agents can know the data used and the proposed delimitation of the area.
• Definition of “large holder” in the area: the report must establish what is considered a large housing holder in that specific area (starting from the state definition but allowing modulation), since some additional collaboration obligations and rent limits depend on it.
• Communication to the State and publicity: once approved by the autonomous community, the declaration must be communicated to the Ministry competent in housing, which publishes quarterly in the BOE the list of current tense zones so that state measures are enforceable and applicable.

5. Duration and extension of the declaration

Law 12/2023 establishes that the declaration of an area as a tense residential market zone has an initial validity of three years. After that period:

• It can be extended annually if it is proven that the circumstances that justified its declaration persist.
• Each extension must follow the same procedural scheme: data update, justifying report, and motivated decision.

Overall, therefore, the requirements combine clear quantitative thresholds (30% effort or +3 points over CPI in five years) with a procedure of analysis and justification that obliges autonomous communities to base the declaration on verifiable data and review it periodically.