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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

#581

Post by hadlock »

FerociousTimes wrote: post #307
capableweb wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The nice thing about indoor space is that we can make pretty much as much of it as we'd like. What? Have you ever been in Lisbon? The city is pretty dense as it is. You could mostly just build higher, and that has its limits too, depending on the structure and foundation. Adding more housing outside the core of the city might not be attractive enough. And increasing the density of people also means you need to incr…

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.

Libson is a global city, easy air access to pretty much everywhere in europe/us/asia, good international schools, low cost of living, and very importantly, very mild, california-like weather. Once you have kids, you need access to good international schools so that they can integrate back into US public schools/colleges without getting left behind academically. Also you have access to a lot more culture and night life than out in the country. For young people the dating pool in large cities is very deep. Getting out of Libson/Porto as an expat, dating can be difficult if you're not a fluent speaker of the local language, and Portuguese is wildly different from Spanish when spoken, even though they look similar on paper.

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

#582

Post by pjmlp »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #554
screye wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airbnb and uber for all their benefits have taken away a lot of urban planning capabilities of local govts. At the same time, they expose the general unwillingness of local govts to accomodate the need of the population or those who bring in economic value (tourists, transplants). If you are becoming a tourist hub, then create an off-town tourist area and add a convenient transit line/people mover to the central part…

> Prohibition never works, and piracy is a reflection of an unmet need. Banning things merely airs out open wounds, and leads to grey-markets such as shady uber/airbnb equivalents within the city. What do you mean by "works"? Yes, grey markets will pop up, but if Portugal banned AirBnB style renting that the market for that housing wouldn't shrink? It seems to me that prohibition might be a useful tool in a more comp…

Nowadays people offering AirBnB rentals have to register themselves or they will be fined.

How much control is happening, no idea, probably none as usual.

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

#583

Post by mmarq »

rjzzleep wrote: post #57
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.

Everywhere you prefer to rent to a local than to a foreigner, it’s not a German thing.

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

#584

Post by sudosysgen »

aperson_hello wrote: post #424
andrekandre wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

none of those things gets rid of the root causes: too much financialization and speculation alot of these things used to be regulated, discouraged or prohibited, but with deregulation of much of finance more and more wealth is generated from speculation, rents and leverage... if people can make money passively from doing nothing but owning something (real or virtual) there is less motivation for "real productive work…

The only real way to fight this is oversupply imho. Can't financialize something that doesn't generate outsized returns. If expected returns are lower (and risk higher) than the next financial class, money will move to that other financial class instead. Right now, real estate is low risk/high reward compared to the next best option (stocks?). So...money pours into real estate. Increase that supply to the point where…

Oh but yes you can financialize. Financializatuon of real estate isn't really about outsized returns, it's the return to risk ratio that has potential for massive leverage.

So if you increase supply and then people get bigger homes, etc..., until prices reach an equilibrium, then as long as rents exceed maintenance costs and land doesn't depreciate, you have a leverage (read: financialization) opportunity.

Then prices rise again until you do something else, and eventually you approach infrastructure scaling limits.

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

#585

Post by 3qz »

The xenophobia in this thread is shocking. Foreigners have just as much of a right to live in Portugal as people who were born there. Nobody is entitled to live somewhere just because they want to and there are still lots of affordable countries if you don’t want to put in the work

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

#586

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

confidantlake wrote: post #499
mensetmanusman wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has found or discovered such policies that work across-the-board.

I think the housing crises has caused a lot of it. I am trying to have kids in my mid 30s, in large part because it took that long until I was financially stable. I can't even imagine what it must be like for a non software engineer. Maybe a lower population -> lower housing prices -> easier to start a family will cause some sort of equilibrium.

>Maybe a lower population -> lower housing prices

That's not how real estate pricing works in the real world capitalism. Germany's population has been on decline for ~30 years due to demographics, yet housing has been getting more and more expensive, far outpacing wage growth in the last few decades, especially after the QE bull run from ~2013, so much so that owning your home is impossible for the average German.

Why is that you wonder? That's not how free market economy should work right? If now there is less demand for a good due to population shrinkage, then prices should come down right?

Well, that's because housing is not a good, it's a speculative investment asset, so as soon as people die and are not replaced, their free houses don't magically end up in the hands of those who would need them the most to buy at a discount, but end up on the "free market" being bough by existing rich home owners, investors, speculators and publicly listed real-estate conglomerates, using their existing assets and capital as leverage to buy even more houses for their investment portfolio. And governments and banks have ensure the policies to make sure this asset keeps going up, up, up.

When housing is an investment vehicle, then it can never be affordable, regardless of the population decline.

Like a commenter above said, which explains why home prices are not coming down despite population shrinkage: "people are not competing for houses, piles of money are. The bigger piles are winning."

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

#587

Post by mahkeiro »

refurb wrote: post #560
tjr225 wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can argue it all you want but the numbers don’t support it. If the demand is going down then why is it becoming more expensive? Also, white flight in the 60s was a move to the suburbs- many would consider that given the density of 2020, the suburbs are feeling the same crunch. Bellevue and other suburbs are more expensive than Seattle. I’m guessing there are suburbs of SF that are more expensive than SF.

Prices are dropping in San Francisco, especially condos which are below pre-Covid prices now. And you yourself said "Bellevue and other suburbs are more expensive than Seattle." Which would infer that yes, people are leaving the city and moving to suburbs.

Of course they are as interest rates are rising quickly. Nobody is talking about it, but free (or almost) money was also a good reason why prices increased that much.

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

#588

Post by raverbashing »

FerociousTimes wrote: post #408
samatman wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see so much as a tiny shred of evidence of this, it doesn't pass the smell test. Austin? Ok, sure. How many Californians are expatriating to Lisbon? Is it that many? Ok, let's do Londoners next. A lot more right? Principal factors, you say. Let's see it.

By searching "Californians in Portugal", just one of many on the top search results page: Welcome to Portugal, the new expat haven. Californians, please go home https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-05-12/califo...

(Turning my sarcasm down here a bit), a west coast newspaper isn't the best source about the foreign resident situation in Portugal and where they do come from. Google translate and all that

Instead let me propose an alternate origin of this story: "Hey have you heard that Jamie just moved to Portugal? Maybe we can write a story about that"

> “I’d say 95% of my clients are now Americans,” said André Fernandes, a 38-year-old Porto-based real estate broker who, upon seeing the surge in interest in his homeland, moved back from New Jersey three years ago and switched from installing fire sprinklers to selling housing

Only shows how most journalists will go far for a story. Oh and by far I mean the East coast.

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

#589

Post by bennysomething »

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…

There was a post on hacker news a while back about a study in Finland showing that it doesn't matter if the new builds are "luxury", they increase so supply which will always eventually stop/slow/reverse price increases.

This actually makes sense in terms of supply and demand but more interestingly it's because people tend to "upgrade" when they move this then frees up space at the lower end of the market.

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

#590

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

42e6e8c8-f7b8-4 wrote: post #562
mensetmanusman wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has found or discovered such policies that work across-the-board.

Then implement a bunch if them. Pornography is know to decrease drive. There are tax benefits that can make things happen as well. The desire to get it done just needs to emerge.

Europeans aren't having kids because they aren't having sex drive. They are having sex, just with protection, as they don't want kids, because the job and housing markets are too fucked to support a family without massive stress and anxiety for the parents.

Fix those first so we can have a stable income and affordable housing from a young age, and then we'll take off the condoms.

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