Prague will check the electricity meters of Prague apartments. He wants to know how many of them are empty
According to Mayor Zdeněk Hřiby (pirates), Prague is preparing several measures to reduce the price of local flats. In cooperation with PRE, he prepares an analysis which, according to the meter reading, reveals how many flats the owners have bought only for investment and leaves them empty. Such owners could face a higher property tax. In addition, the municipality is preparing repairs to city apartments, in which no one lives today, because they are uninhabitable due to their condition.
“There are claims that many apartments in Prague are sold only for investment and remain empty. Some say that there is a negligible number of them, the other that this is a major problem that increases the price of housing in the metropolis. little objective data that would come from independent sources, “Hřib told Aktuálně.cz.
The problem is that there aren’t many ways to easily find out if someone is actually inhabited or not. For example, a person may have a permanent residence elsewhere than in the apartment in which he lives. The metropolis wants to obtain a more accurate picture of whether investment flats represent a serious problem in Prague using anonymized PRE data on electricity consumption. The Institute for Planning and Development arranges cooperation for the city.
The answer to the question of how many flats the residents lack will be given by simple monitoring of electricity meters in Prague flats. “If it doesn’t rotate or rotates very little, it’s not enough that the apartment is empty,” says Hrib.
A tax on empty apartments is possible
A number of foreign metropolises are affected by a similar problem, ie empty flats bought for investment. Vancouver, Canada, for example, has decided to address the introduction of a so-called “empty home tax”. The owner of any Vancouver apartment who needs to prove that he has been living for at least six months in the past year must pay an additional amount of one percent of the property.
In order for the owner to avoid the tax, someone must have a registered permanent residence or a valid tenancy agreement in the apartment, with the authorities verifying that this is not fraudulent conduct. Those who falsely claim that his apartment is inhabited face fines in the hundreds of thousands of crowns.
For the first time, apartment owners in Vancouver paid the tax this year. The city then invests net tax revenues in affordable housing projects. He’s thinking something similar in Toronto. Germany and Australia have also resorted to the use of similar tools.
The introduction of a similar measure in Prague Hřib did not rule out a direct inquiry with a reference to Vancouver. However, according to him, the final decision on how to approach the problem will be mainly in some of the ministries. “The moment we have hard data in our hands to confirm that this is a problem, we can go to the Ministry of Finance or another ministry to start addressing it in a realistic way,” says the mayor.
According to the law, Prague has the opportunity to propose legislation on its own, but it is no longer possible to enforce historical amendments from its own workshop in the Chamber of Deputies. “The one who raises his hand for this in the Chamber of Deputies is not Prague. That is why it is necessary to proceed in cooperation with the ministry in order to have a chance of success.”
They came up with a proposal to introduce a tax on empty flats already in the communist election campaign. They estimated that thanks to it, the owners could start renting hundreds to thousands of apartments that do not serve anyone today. In this way, Prague politicians could find support in the Chamber of Deputies for the new tax.
Prague is repairing devastated flats
According to Hřiba, the city also wants to devote itself to empty flats owned by the municipality. Therefore, it is preparing the reconstruction of city apartments, which today serve no one and due to their condition are in the statistics in the category of “uninhabitable”.
“This is, for example, the question of the former hotel on the Opatov metro station, where we will get more than three hundred new flats for repairs. 180 flats In this way, it is possible to get flats back into the system cheaply, “says Hřib.
Prague has also started to monitor the length of construction and territorial proceedings from the beginning of the project to the end of the appeal proceedings. “We suspect that there are problems, for example, in appeal proceedings at the municipality, and therefore the personnel department of the given department has already taken place,” says the mayor. However, in addition to the work of officials, the planned project is intended to measure whether proceedings are disproportionately delayed by activists and, in general, by third parties who provide comments on construction proceedings.
Editing: In the text, we have replaced the sentence “According to Hřiba, a similar measure would be possible in Prague as well.” for “The introduction of a similar measure in Prague Mushroom did not rule out a direct question with reference to Vancouver. The final decision on how to approach the problem, but according to him it will be mainly in some of the ministries.”
Airbnb cannot develop live, the situation with apartments in Prague is calamity, says Smejkalová:
The raid on Airbnb is OK, it is pure business, a number of landlords are not complying with legal obligations, says political scientist Kateřina Smejkalová. | Video: Emma Smetana