走向拆除：泡沫破灭后的西班牙鬼城

    在马德里以北200公里，省会城市萨拉戈萨坐落在一片半干旱平原上，拉穆埃拉是这里的一座郊区小镇，被大片大型风电设备包围着。人们也许会想，在这片唐吉诃德的故土，这些庞然大物在警示着和幻想作战的危险。

    漫步于拉穆埃拉街头，不久后人们便会发现他们已经离开了小镇。离镇中心仅两个街区的地方，古香古色的石头房被一栋栋由栅栏隔开的完建公寓楼所代替，而公寓楼里却是空空如也。再往前走，锡制栅栏环绕着没有窗户的联排别墅和公寓。而在小镇遍布矮树的边缘地带，一栋建造了一半的混凝土骨架伫立在那里，里面的楼梯却不知通往何处。

    拉穆埃拉城市规划部的工作人员恩尼克•巴拉奥称，在这个只有5,000人的小镇中心，已建成的空置房屋可容纳约2,000人，而未建成的可容纳1,000人。

    49岁的维克多•卡纳雷斯指着自己联排住宅对面大门紧闭的建筑说：“空置房太多了；谢天谢地，人们没有像去大城市那样蜂拥至这个小镇，那里有很多人会擅自占用空房。” 受小镇高质量的生活条件吸引，卡纳雷斯于1999年将家人从萨拉戈萨搬到了拉穆埃拉，那时，小镇拥有2,500名居民。

    与西班牙的很多城镇一样——更不用说内华达、佛罗里达、加州和爱尔兰——拉穆埃拉在90年代和00年代期间也曾掀起一轮房地产投机热。市长玛利亚•维多利亚•皮尼拉（María Victoria Pinilla）——自受到与房地产相关的腐败指控之后——利用从风电和房地产开发所获得的资金，修建了一个斗牛场、一个音乐厅、一个体育馆、一个观鸟园和三个博物馆。（该镇已关闭的旅游办公室所贴的告示称，这些博物馆“因技术原因暂时关闭”。）

    拉穆埃拉并非个例。即使西班牙房价自2007年高峰以来下跌了38.9%（房地产咨询机构Tinsa提供的数据），待售新房仍有约75万套。既然地产泡沫已经破灭，那么接下来问题在于，过剩的房屋将何去何从。问题的答案或许很简单，却很残酷：拆除。

    布鲁金斯研究所（Brookings Institution）城市政策项目研究员阿兰•马勒克（Alan Mallach）说：“如果在可控时期内，例如5年内，没有出现房屋需求，那么封存这些房屋的成本，哪怕是已完建的房屋，如果要保持它们在未来的耐用性和可居住性，是非常昂贵的。如果你不封存的话，那么这些房屋就会逐渐变成其周边居民的眼中钉和心头痛。”

    尽管我们难以弄清空置房屋会对经济造成什么样的影响，克里弗兰德联邦储备银行（Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland）最近所做的研究表明，如果一栋房子500英尺（约152米）范围内存在空置房屋，那么房屋售价至少会被拉低1.4个百分点。

    当然，对于政客来说，做出拆除房屋的决定是危险的，尤其是在危机当头的情况下，因为很多人由于丧失抵押赎回权而失去了自己的住宅。这或许解释了很少有过剩房屋被拆除的原因，以及西班牙房屋问题监管部门并未将拆除作为首选解决方案的原因。

    西班牙成立了一个“不良资产银行”，即Sareb，旨在接管金融危机期间产生的不良房地产资产。目前，该行不良资产存量达到了约9万套不动产（包括5.5万套房屋）。该行已拨出1.03亿欧元（约合1.4亿美元）作为拆除资金，但Sareb传播负责人苏珊娜•迪亚兹（Susana Díaz）强调，该机构并没有确立明确的拆除计划，而且绝不会拆除具有价值的房屋（然而，这一声明并没能阻止该国拆迁公司招兵买马的步伐）。

    On the outskirts of Zaragoza, a provincial capital on the semi-arid plains 200 miles north of Madrid, fields of huge electricity generating windmills surround the tiny town of La Muela. One might think that, in the land of Don Quixote, these giants would serve as a prosaic warning of the dangers of engaging in flights of fancy.

    Walking the streets of La Muela, it quickly becomes clear that they have not. Barely two blocks outside of the village center, historic stone houses give way to condo complexes that have been finished, boarded up, and left empty. Further out, tin fences surround windowless townhouses and condos, and at the edge of town, where it returns to scrub, a half-finished concrete skeleton features stairways to nowhere.

    There is finished, empty housing for some 2,000 people and unfinished housing for another 1,000 just in the center of the 5,000-person town, according to Enrique Barrao of La Muela's town planning department.

    "There are so many empty houses; thank god people haven't gone in like in the big cities, where there are squatters," says Victor Canales, 49, as he gestures at a shuttered building across from his row house. Canales brought his family from Zaragoza to La Muela in 1999, attracted by the quality of life of the small town, which then had about 2,500 residents.

    Like many towns in Spain -- not to mention Nevada, Florida, California, and Ireland -- La Muela tried to ride a speculative real estate boom during the 1990s and 2000s. With money coming in from the windmills and real estate developments, mayor María Victoria Pinilla -- since brought up on real estate-related corruption charges -- built a bullring, a concert hall, a sports stadium, an aviary, and three museums. (The museums are "temporarily closed for technical reasons," according to a sign on the town's tourism office, which is also closed.)

    La Muela is not alone. Even with a 38.9% drop in home prices since a 2007 peak, according to real estate consultancy Tinsa, there are still about 750,000 unsold new housing units in Spain. Now that the bubble has popped, the question is what happens to all the excess housing. And the answer to the problem may be simple, and ugly: demolition.

    "If you can't anticipate demand for housing within a manageable period, say five years, the cost of mothballing houses, even completed ones, to keep them serviceable and habitable for the future is very expensive," says Alan Mallach, a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. "And if you don't, it gradually turns into an eyesore and blight for people who live around it."

    While it's hard to pinpoint the economic effects of vacant houses, a recent Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland study finds that having a vacant property within 500 feet reduces a house's selling price by at least 1.4%.

    Of course, making the decision to demolish housing is dangerous for a politician, especially during a crisis when many people have lost their homes to foreclosure. This may explain why so little excess housing has been demolished and why those overseeing Spain's housing problems are not touting it as a top option.

    Spain set up a "bad bank," known as Sareb, to take over bad real estate assets during its financial crisis, and it now has an inventory of about 90,000 properties (including 55,000 housing units). The entity has set aside 103 million euros (about $140 million) for demolition, but Sareb's communications head, Susana Díaz, stresses that the entity has no definite plans for demolition and would never demolish housing with value (though this hasn't stopped the country's demolition companies from preparing for business).