The Ibiza City Council has detected a total of 230 homes that are operating as tourist apartments, despite the fact that this activity is prohibited in multi-family blocks, and 546 that are empty after door-knocking the owners or tenants of just over 17,800 homes, 75% of the municipal census. One hundred allegedly illegal tourist apartments have been found this summer, as reported yesterday by the Consistory.

Thirteen surveyors from the University-Business Foundation of the Balearic Islands, hired by the City Council, have already 20 weeks of field work to review the municipal census and create a census of housing in the municipality. With a duration of one year, this project has a cost of about half a million euros. The objective is to map the situation of the housing stock of the city, which stands at 23,759 homes.

List of homes used as tourist apartments sent to Consell

The Consistory has transferred a list to the Consell with the address of the apartments that are being used for tourism purposes so that the inspection service can visit the properties and open the corresponding sanctioning file, as reported yesterday by the City Council. “These 230 homes should be in the hands of people who want to live here all year round,” said the Councillor for Housing, Aitor Morrás, of Unidas Podemos.

“They are not inspectors”

In statements to this newspaper, Morrás pointed out that, with this fieldwork, the City Council does not act as “tourism inspectors or collect evidence” of the alleged illegalities. It is “a verification of the housing situation” according to the answers that the owner or tenant provides to the surveyor about the use of the property, the tenancy regime and the price of the rent or mortgage, among other things. It also checks the number of people living at the address and whether they coincide with those who are registered.

“The work of verification and actual inspection, as well as sanctioning, corresponds to the Consell. We do not intend to exercise any coercive action, but to help with the information obtained so that these homes become residential use, and not tourist apartments,” says Morrás, referring to the fact that “the tourist accomodation law provides the remission of up to 80% of the penalty to be imposed (which can reach a maximum of 40,000 euros) in the event that the apartment is rented throughout the year”.

The Consell de Ibiza has already initiated some more than twenty sanction proceedings with the first list of 129 tourist apartments that the City Council sent at the beginning of the summer. Some had already been initiated before, points out the first vice-president of the insular institution, Mariano Juan, of the PP. “Any help is good. I am happy that Vila has joined this, which also make the municipalities of Sant Josep and Santa Eulària,” he says, to explain immediately after that Sant Josep and Santa Eulària provide “a police record” that gives “faith of the accuracy” of the data provided, such as “the identification of the tourist and the person who has rented the property, photos, the reservation, the rental contract or the advertisement of the tourist apartment in networks. “All this serves us to move forward. It’s not the same as sending a list of addresses,” Juan points out.

For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.