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The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

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Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#411

Post by teachrdan »

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #381
jonathanstrange wrote: post #97

Yes, the situation is dire. I live in Lisbon as a foreigner for more than 12 years now. We pay a rent for a small flat that used to be very expensive and now is on the cheap side in our quarter of the city. Luckily, we have an older contract that cannot be changed as easily as newer ones. I'm not thrilled by the possibility that our landlord might cancel it some day, however, e.g. for relatives to move in. Rents in t…

> or example, if you own three ordinary apartments in Lisbon, you can live in one of them and easily make a good living by renting out the other two as holiday apartments. Because cleaning services, guys who do repairs, etc., are cheap in Portugal, this involves almost no work. Moreover, the net worth of your property will continually increase while you do (almost) nothing. I'm a bit conflicted on this. I definitely…

> But it should be noted: property is simply an asset like any other

> So I don't really see a structural problem with this system.

This is the disconnect. Residential real estate is fundamentally different than owning stock, in that people need a place to live and building residential construction is much more difficult than issuing stock. When wealthy people from abroad buy multiple apartment buildings in desirable cities, and then proceed to keep living elsewhere (probably in a different residence in another desirable city) they create a problem that in no way resembles the result of buying stock in a company.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#412

Post by ginja »

arinlen wrote: post #388
tuatoru wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, facts. Demographics explains most of what's going on. Portugal's working age population is declining[1] while its 60-plus population is increasing.[2] Old people own most of the real estate and don't care much about workers. They also tend not to like change, which immigrants bring. So they dislike immigrants despite depending on them. (//TODO: find papers supporting these assertions: they're factoids of the "e…

> Old people own most of the real estate and don't care much about workers. Lisbon's local government is renowned for being the largest property owner in the country, with over 60% of Lisbon's real estate owned by the city.

> over 60% of Lisbon's real estate owned by the city

I'm from Lisboa and this can't be true unless you're using some very strange definition of real estate. What's your source for this?

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#413

Post by NoLinkToMe »

petre wrote: post #174
mariojv wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think this is likely to happen? I don't know enough about the politics of the region to know if this is something they would do.

Yes, it's quite possible. After Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigned, the current Algerian government started working against France and the EU. Lots of French investment in Algeria, so they're basically also working against themselves, betting most if not all of their economy on oil and gas. Apart from ocasional territorial disputes, Spain and Morrocco are on okay terms and the current Spanish goverment is supporting the M…

> Spain is walking on quite a thin line in Africa. I need not remind you that virtually all of their gas comes from Hassi R'Mel, Algeria.

Eh, not anymore...

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#414

Post by FerociousTimes »

the_gipsy wrote: post #379
FerociousTimes wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does everyone want to live in Lisbon? There are other decent metropolises in Portugal and other fun spots around the country not to get crammed in the capital.

That's where job opportunities are, and that's why more housing will increase the opportunities, and then the price of housing...

For a post-Covid world where remote job opportunities are on the rise, this is becoming less and less of a pressing matter.

People can work from nearby towns where housing costs are relatively moderate and just hit the head office in Lisbon one or two times a week.

Corporations and people need to adapt to the changing circumstances and to be open to make the necessary adjustments to advance in this world.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#415

Post by 42e6e8c8-f7b8-4 »

lr4444lr wrote: post #356
citilife wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many dislike the idea, but this is why people turn to "nationalism". If you want to decrease unemployment, you add tariffs for imports enabling more businesses to open domestically (i.e. tariffs effectively increase import costs). Similarly, you can loosen building codes to increase production of homes, limit visa duration, require citizenship for home ownership, etc. Those are some obvious fixes, why is the governme…

Europe largely isn't reproducing. It has to allow immigration for its survival.

It can also put in place policies to increase native population growth.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#416

Post by capableweb »

kranke155 wrote: post #396
sriram_sun wrote: post #361

Tokyo seems to have solved this by building houses and transportation right? What's preventing other governments from duplicating this? Politics? If so what was unique about Tokyo?

Tokyo also bans Airbnb, period. Something most people here don’t understand.

So Airbnb is facilitating illegal renting of properties?

https://www.airbnb.com/s/Tokyo--Japan/homes?adults=2&refinem...

Why wouldn't the government crack down on this?

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#417

Post by cinntaile »

dougmwne wrote: post #36
cinntaile wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What EU countries? The only ones I am familiar with have housing prices spiraling out of control just like in Portugal.

I believe most EU countries do this in some form, but Austria by far has the largest and most successful public housing scheme. It is very effective at controlling prices.

How so? It makes it cheap for the people inside the system but expensive for those that are outside of it. You don't solve a housing crisis by essentially subsidizing the cost.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#418

Post by 42e6e8c8-f7b8-4 »

woodpanel wrote: post #301
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a problem everywhere around the world in big cities. What’s propping all of these property prices up? Supply and demand rules don’t seem to apply at all. You might have thousands of empty apartments in a city yet the price only keeps going up. Everything is broken, but housing is particularly broken.

> What’s propping all of these property prices up? Money printing, first and foremost

Via the process of federal-reserve style banks, mostly. They are allowed to create money. They don't lend out money of the depositors. They create it out of thin air by the authority of the government who has allocated these banks a special position, thus making these banks unfathomably wealthy. Unbelievably corrupt.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#419

Post by pessimizer »

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #397
ttymck wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting, because (at least in America) the current rhetoric is that housing was laughably affordable up until the 70s(?). Now, even in suburbs, housing is far more expensive than most wage earners could expect to afford. Maybe we are thinking of two different sides of the same coin, but I would genuinely be interested in reading articles from the ~mid-century describing what you suggest.

> This is interesting, because (at least in America) the current rhetoric is that housing was laughably affordable up until the 70s(?). I always find this a bit of a disappointing discussion, cherry picked to the extremes. If we're being honest in talking about the cost of housing, we'd try to make apples to apples comparisons. For example, if we used to eat apples that were 2 inches in diameter, lacked sweetness, ha…

Housing prices rose with inflation for 400 years, and after 2000 suddenly started hockey-stick growth. Unless you think the quality and size of housing that people demanded only radically changed within the past 20 years, your theory is lacking for me.

I sometimes put a footnote in when I mention that house prices haven't changed in "400 years" because the records are from the Netherlands, but in your case that makes them more relevant.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#420

Post by thematrixturtle »

kranke155 wrote: post #396
sriram_sun wrote: post #361

Tokyo seems to have solved this by building houses and transportation right? What's preventing other governments from duplicating this? Politics? If so what was unique about Tokyo?

Tokyo also bans Airbnb, period. Something most people here don’t understand.

Japan (including Tokyo) legalized short-term rentals (minpaku) in 2018. However, there are reasonably toothy licensing requirements and you're capped at 180 days per year.
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