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The Spanish home ownership sector has been hit hard by the economic crisis. Repossessions stand at around half a million in the period from 2008 to 2014. This article investigates how the authorities, both at the level of the Spanish state and of the autonomous communities (regions), have responded to this problem. We investigated whether they assist troubled home owners and aim to design a less risky housing system, with more (social) rental housing. Our research in Catalonia, the Basque Country and Andalusia shows that Autonomous Communities are playing an increasingly important role in this matter. This finding fits well with theories on the formation of regional varieties of welfare, which indicate that flaws of the central governments in providing social welfare, are increasingly addressed by regions. The Basque Country seems to be on the way of designing the most comprehensive system of housing policies of the three regions, including a strong Right to Housing. All three regions regard the mobilisation of the large vacant dwelling stock as an important means to provide more affordable rental housing. However, the owners are often unwilling and the three regions have proposed drastic measures, such as fines and even temporary expropriations. The central government resists such measures, because they might interfere with the proper working of the country’s financial system. It shows that certain policy competences can never be totally isolated from other policy fields and multi-level distribution of competences makes it all the more complex.

Purpose The global economic crisis and the housing bubble meltdown have had a significant impact on the Spanish property market. As a result, the homeownership–tenancy dichotomy has become a matter of discussion, and efforts are made to discover formulas that provide affordable, stable and flexible housing access. Taking this background into account, the Catalan lawmaker has implemented the so-called “intermediate tenures” (temporal ownership and shared ownership) into the Catalan Civil Code, which are conceived as a middle ground between ownership and renting. This paper aims to explores how these “intermediate tenures” work. Design/methodology/approach These tenures are conceived as a middle ground between ownership and renting and may be used for a variety of purposes. As the Catalan lawmaker has fragmented the right of ownership on the basis of English law, which is a great breakthrough regarding the long-standing conception of the right of ownership in continental legal systems, the paper explores how these “intermediate tenures” work, as regulated in Act 19/2015, in a comparative perspective. Findings The paper offers an overview of how these “intermediate tenures” are regulated and which are the problems arising from legislation and the potential uses. Originality/value As the temporal ownership confers on the titleholder the domain of an asset for a specifically defined period of time, it does not conform to the right of ownership as it is currently conceived in continental European legal systems, given that it is based on the English leasehold; shared ownership confers on the buyer a property share in the thing, entitling him to the full possession, use and exclusive enjoyment of the thing and to gradually acquire the remaining share. Both are based on the English shared ownership scheme and leasehold, and are legal transplants worth to be analysed.

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