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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

#51

Post by bombcar »

davidw wrote: post #44
mupuff1234 wrote: post #26

I wonder how much Airbnb is to blame on the raising rents around the world. Why charge a "local" rate when you can charge 5x that rate for a tourist paying in $$$? Even if you don't, just knowing about Airbnb's extremely high prices will most likely put inflationary pressure on rents.

I live in a touristy place in the US, and while STR (short term rentals) clearly don't help, the city's own statistics show they're not a huge factor. More than anything, NIMBY neighbors keep killing less expensive forms of housing... 100's of homes, I would say, in the time since I started observing the situation. STR's make for a convenient bogeyman that people can point their finger at. It's a bit more disturbing…

STRs almost by definition can't be the entirety of the problem, except in cases where there's an absolute limit on available units, and it's highly desirable as a tourist destination (Venice, for example).

STRs just slipped past the NIMBYs because they weren't on the lookout for it; it won't happen again!

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

#52

Post by paxys »

mtw wrote: post #34

This is not just Portugal. I see similar sentiment in Canada where young professionals in Vancouver or Toronto complain they can't buy their first home and Vancouver has been "sold out" to foreigners. Similar sentiment in Australian major cities as well.

I can't think of any major urban area in the world and any time period in history where "housing is too expensive" hasn't been the popular sentiment.

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

#53

Post by andrepd »

consp wrote: post #12
TekMol wrote: post #7

I hope Portugal won't tackle it like my country, with a cap on rent and other market distortions. I think that only makes it worse. Fun fact: I - as a single - live in a way too big, luxurious and expensive apartment because of this. I rented it, when I was still working for the man and was making a killing. Now I live a much more modest 4-hour-workweek life. It would be better for me to move to an apartment half the…

There are other ways to be stuck, I'm in subsidized housing which I would like to give to the less fortunate but buying is impossible and leaving would mean half the space and four times the rent making me have less remaining per month than the less fortunate in my current appartment.

Large amounts of public-built housing (and I mean large, in the order of at least ~20% of the market) have a track record of working amazingly well to lower the cost of housing to acceptable levels and to give everyone a chance at homeownership.

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

#55

Post by beebeepka »

cpach wrote: post #14
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #2

This same story seems to be playing out anywhere that attracts it and allows it.

Unless you have really crappy weather, like here in Sweden :-p

With global warming, the north is going to have the best weather in a few decades, maybe less.

You guys are going to have it all.

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

#56

Post by happyopossum »

davidw wrote: post #33
gr1zzlybe4r wrote: post #20

What countries aren't struggling with this sort of dynamic? I almost think that the US is doing pretty well with this in the sense that you can still move somewhere that's cheap relative to your salary, but that only holds true if you're able to do it with remote work. So, maybe it's not true at all.

The US is pretty bad from this point of view from what I recall, compared to other places where it's generally legal to build a broader variety of housing in cities. But perhaps it just got bad here early compared to other places. Portugal's demographics, like much of western Europe, didn't look like they were going to change dramatically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Portugal - so getting set up to…

> The US is pretty bad from this point of view from what I recall, compared to other places where it's generally legal to build a broader variety of housing in cities.

It's really impossible to make generalizations about the legalities go building in the US, as there is no federal control over such things. There are some state-level laws in some states, but for the most part zoning is left up to cities and counties, leading to literally thousands of disparate sets of laws and regulations.

My city has historically heavily restricted high density housing (until the state stepped in), while the city literally next door has added enough high density housing for ~20k people in the past decade.

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

#57

Post by rjzzleep »

TekMol wrote: post #7

I hope Portugal won't tackle it like my country, with a cap on rent and other market distortions. I think that only makes it worse. Fun fact: I - as a single - live in a way too big, luxurious and expensive apartment because of this. I rented it, when I was still working for the man and was making a killing. Now I live a much more modest 4-hour-workweek life. It would be better for me to move to an apartment half the…

I don't think Germany is a great example at all cause they would rather rent out to a good German girl who's dad has money than to a foreign professional who has a longterm work contract in Germany. I agree that the annoying lifestyle expats are a problem, but bringing up something completely unrelated with a whole host of its own issues is a really weird way to make a point.

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

#58

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

blfr wrote: post #10

I do think that a state should exist primarily for the benefit of its citizens but this view had long been decried xenophobic at best. However, you can't have it both ways. If > countless stories of flats left uninhabited by some rich person who arrived at the building, bought two flats so that he could get a visa, and doesn’t even live there then clearly not > wealthy foreigners from all over the world, to whom we o…

Not contradictory at all - they buy property, sit on it, and vacation there

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

#60

Post by andrepd »

dougmwne wrote: post #16

Sounds like the Portuguese government should start building flats as fast as possible. Other countries in the EU do it and it works.

Unfortunately in Portugal as in almost everywhere else the government has little incentive to do so: as the ruling class is comprised almost entirely of wealthier people with lots of assets, they (1) don't suffer from the insane housing prices and (2) indeed as proprietors benefit from the surge in housing asset prices.
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