British woman, 26, profits from Spanish rentals

Liv, 26, £120,000, and a property portfolio in Spain

Liv is 26 years old, has a two-year-old son, and lives in Marbella. She earns around £120,000 a year, and most of that money doesn't come from a salary but from a second business she runs in Spain. Her plan, according to her own testimony reported by The Telegraph, is to buy more properties in the country to rent them out on Airbnb; the obstacle she points out is that foreign buyers have to pay a considerable deposit.

What has brought her into the spotlight isn't the amount, but an idea: at 26, she already declares she won't need a pension because her Spanish rentals will pay for her retirement. It's the softer side of a phenomenon that causes friction: residential housing turned into a cross-border financial asset, with a buyer who doesn't live here and a seller who does.

The plan to buy, rent, and wait forty years

The arithmetic of the case is simple to state and devilishly hard to sustain. A 26-year-old draws up a plan that must work until she's 66: four decades during which the asset cannot fail, regulation cannot change, and the country where the property is located cannot enter a spiral that ruins rentals. This is the calculation being discussed openly, and it leaves the question hanging: forty years is a long time for many things to happen.

Some argue that the plan relies on assumptions that never all fail together. The first is that prices won't fall. The second is that taxation for non-resident owners will remain stable. The third is that the tourism that fuels short-term rentals will keep coming every season. With a pandemic, an interest rate hike, or a legislative change, the same plan that seems solid today becomes a mortgage with a view.

And there's a nuance that is repeated: the protagonist doesn't live off a salary; she lives off a business. Housing is the vault where she keeps her surplus. In financial terms, that's not retirement; it's a portfolio concentrated in a single asset, in a single country, and with a single potential tenant per door.

Can a foreigner be banned from buying property in Spain?

This is where the issue truly gets tangled. Some who trinc the case advocate for banning sales to non-residents, using the same criteria applied by Canada or New Zealand, which have already closed the door to foreign purchases. Others respond that the UK is no longer part of the European Union and, therefore, the legal path would be simpler than it appears.

The most uncomfortable argument is another: that Brussels does not prevent limiting purchases to legal residents. Under this interpretation, each state could reserve land for those who reside in it without breaking European rules. The discussion, at that point, stops being ideological and becomes a matter of comparative law.

The Danish precedent: the law that stopped Germans on the coast

The case cited time and again is Denmark. The Nordic country designates areas along its coast where only Danes or legal residents in the country can buy. The rule was designed to prevent German citizens from acquiring the North Sea and Baltic Sea coast, and according to those who bring it up, it demonstrates that such a restriction is compatible with the community framework.

Denmark did not leave the European Union to legislate this nor did it ask for special permission. Hence the interest: if the mechanism exists and works in a member state, the question stops being whether it can be done and becomes why it isn't. The answer given by some is that the problem isn't the foreign buyer but the domestic seller and the lack of supply.

Tourist accommodation also pays taxes

Against the narrative that holiday rentals destroy the market, a counter-argument emerges. Tourist accommodation is taxed, generates activity, and consumes local services. Large hotel groups, with hundreds of establishments and tens of thousands of rooms, bear a different tax burden, and according to this line of argument, they dedicate part of their savings to advertising so that the media repeats the message that Airbnb flats are the enemy.

This is a hypothesis, not a proven fact, and should be read as such. But it exposes the asymmetry of the debate: the individual renting out two rooms is discussed, not the operator managing thousands.

The underlying problem: young people unable to become independent

Beneath all this lies what truly fuels the anger. Millions of young Spaniards continue to live with their parents or share flats with strangers, and housing appears as the country's primary problem. When land is scarce, every flat bought to rent to tourists is a flat not bought to live in.

Recipes clash. Some call for building more, freeing up land, and deregulating rentals to increase supply. Others demand a firm hand against tourist rentals and against purchases by non-residents. And a third group points to the local owner selling their inherited flat for a price no one would refuse: the business starts at the front door.

With these ingredients, Liv's case serves as a mirror. No one disputes her right to invest. What is disputed is the land where she invests.

Spain was the second most visited country in the world in 2018, with 82.6 million tourists, and second by revenue, with 90 billion euros, according to data in the discussion. Anyone looking at these figures will understand why the wellspring won't dry up on its own.