Feletti’s plan to regulate the sector / Argentina News

“Cost of empty housing”: the measure analyzed by Roberto Feletti to regulate the real estate sector

The Secretary of Domestic Trade said that the offer must be expanded and find a way to reach an agreement between tenants and owners

For iProfessional

02/10/2022 – 07:55 a.m.

The Secretary of Domestic Trade of the Nation, Roberto Feletti, referred to the real estate market problems that exists in the country and, in relation to this point, he targeted Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. “I don’t know how he doesn’t take care of seeing that the city of Buenos Aires is becoming a big tenancy“, he sentenced.

The situation in this sector shows that “The market does not allocate resources well.” And he explained: “The owner does not obtain from the rent the rent that he could reasonably have for the capital he commits, and the tenant cannot lower that rent. There is a market failure because the average income of the tenant does not allow him to reasonably pay the rent that the owner waits”.

Although for Feletti the problems in this market are exacerbated in the city of Buenos Aires, where 2,800,000 inhabitants live and 38% of families rent, he clarified that it is something that occurs in the large urban centers of the country. “It’s happening in the Metropolitan Area because the people who are expelling the city of Buenos Aires are beginning to put pressure on the first cordon,” he exemplified in an interview with C5N.

They seek measures to regulate the market for the sale of properties.

So, the official said that, in the Ministry of Internal Trade, the first thing that was done to solve this is think about how to expand the offer, and although he preferred not to give details of how they would achieve it, he pointed out: “In all countries there are regulations regarding the cost of empty housing”.

For example, the municipality of Amsterdam recently announced a similar measure that plans to introduce a requirement that those who purchase a property with an official value of up to €512,000 reside in the property for the first four years after purchase. The measure, which would come into force on April 1, would prevent renting the house during that period with the aim of curbing real estate speculation that has raised rental prices in recent years.

Saying this, Feletti stressed that working to expand the offer “it is a tonic” of the organism that leads. “We, somehow, when we freeze [los precios de la canasta]we told companies to ‘produce more and earn less'”, he stressed.

Inflation and prices

At another point in the interview, the secretary He stressed the need to build regulation instruments as part of an anti-inflationary strategy, in relation to the recent price freeze. “In 2021 the exchange rate was trying to lag behind inflation as a way to contain it, and another anchor was missing that was directly on these issues,” he said, although he clarified: “I have a lot of respect for the officials who preceded me in office and I’m not going to criticize.”

According to Feletti, it is focused on attack two types of inflation. “There is a gondola, clearly monopolistic, of pressure from price makers. On that we built a basket, first by freezing and now, by agreement,” he said, and then stressed that this “monopolistic inflation is confirmed,” which is sees -he clarified- in the fact that there are “big supermarket chains that are worried about supplying themselves, because their consumers demand it”.

For Feletti, who buys a house, he should live there for four years.

Then the official spoke of another inflation: the international one, which “affects internationally tradable products such as wheat, corn and meat“. As detailed, to control this they selected seven cuts that cannot be exported. In addition, he added, they are discussing how to expand the mouth of marketing and building trusts, as a “way for those who export to contribute and level prices with those who sell in the internal market”.

Linked to this, he referred to “the vegetable pressure” that they are experiencing and said that they are working with the Central Market to put together some regulation, mainly on potatoes, onions and tomatoes. “We have to have some tool that allows leveling volatility,” he said.