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If investing in housing is made less profitable, there will be less investing and consequently less supply in the long run, thus making the housing problem worse.

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Except in this case, what is less profitable is investing in land/infrastructure that could serve as housing but leaving it vacant. That is not investment in housing, simply speculation on land and buildings.

Investment in housing (ie actively rented places) are unaffected, so there is no reason there woukd be less investing on that front

That's not how businesses work. Nobody spends millions building a house so that they can leave it vacant once it's finished.

Except they do. That is the problem.

See for example:

https://m.murciatoday.com/almost_half_a_million_vacant_new_b...

https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/posts/the-empty-house-a...

It isn't a particularly Spanish problem either: following article about the American version of it

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/empty-office-buildings-doom-loo...

These aren't examples of houses kept vacant intentionally by speculators. The first articles literally says in the headline that the houses are empty because "no-one wants to buy them". The second one states that the reason the flats are empty is "unlikely to be property speculation".

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