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The Albanian government is preparing changes to property taxation, which are expected to directly affect citizens who own more than one home.
Regarding this, real estate expert Armand Shkëmbi, on the show 'Frontline Interview', said that there will be a doubling of this tax.
' Whoever has a second home will pay more property tax. Today, in Albania, we pay 0.05% of the reference price of the property as property tax. That means for a property that has a reference price of 100 thousand euros.
We pay 50 euros per year in property tax, which amounts to 3 to 5 euros per month. Now the government should give municipalities the opportunity to tax from 0.1% to 0.2%, which amounts to double to 4 times this tax. So from 5 euros per month it could go to 10 or 20 euros per month. Combined with this and an increase in the reference price, it could go even more than that, for the second property ,' he said.
According to the expert, this will affect those owners who currently own second properties and those who will purchase them after January 1, 2026, when the law enters into force.
' It is the second and third properties that will be taxed and it will come into effect from January 1, 2026. It will be for both those who have them today and those who will buy them after January 1. The tax on the second and third property, by exerting fiscal pressure on people who keep them empty, I think they will be forced to sell those properties, more properties will come on the market and we may even have price reductions within 2026,' he said.
Asked how long it might take a young couple to buy a home, he said it takes many years since prices are high.
'A life. In Tirana there are 70 thousand empty apartments and working class and ordinary people cannot buy houses, the prices are high. Only in Albania is this mechanism that you can buy under construction, in the Western world you can reserve and not buy. And it is this phenomenon that the builder has no fiscal weight that has led to a lot of money being spent on new buildings ,' he said.
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