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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

#591

Post by jhugo »

pjmlp wrote: post #582
Hermitian909 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is the type of thing that controlling is very difficult and thus expensive. As a result it's done at a pretty minimal level everywhere.

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

#593

Post by glcheetham »

3qz wrote: post #585

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

No, foreigners don't have just as much right to live in Portugal. That's what this article is about. Foreigners need an investment visa, so they have to buy the right to live in Portugal. A literal condition is that you have to buy property over €450,000 and restore it. This selects for rich foreigners so the house value increases.

If you are Portuguese you get the right to reside in Portugal for free. Everyone else (apart from EU citizens) must buy it.

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

#594

Post by TheGigaChad »

_vbnz wrote: post #193

Europe is facing complete economic collapse in the face of hyper-inflation, energy shortages, the Euro collapsing in value and rising interest rates. It's a shame that the continent that was once the birthplace of democracy, the scientific method, the industrial revolution and socialism has been reduced to nothing more than an open-air museum for wealthy Americans and a refugee centre for the victims of their wars. W…

No post body was provided.

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

#595

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

tuatoru wrote: post #559
zizee wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to follow your arguments. "Boomers don't like immigrants/workers, therefore life is getting really expensive" doesn't really sound like good reasoning. If the population is shrinking, demographics doesn't explain it by itself. Housing should be getting cheaper if there are less people competing for it. There must be another factor here.

"Boomers don't like immigrants/workers, therefore life is getting really expensive" mischaracterises my argument. In hindsight I should have left out superfluous phrases. The fully elaborated argument is long and somewhat nuanced. If you want a soundbite, how's this: "Boomers own all the stuff (to a first approximation). Two other things: first, due to their wealth they can outbid Zoomers for real estate as it comes…

Isn't it weird that we allow home/land ownership to a family/individual in perpetuity and then complain about high prices and scarcity for newcomers?

Just think about it for a second, we in the west allow people to buy a piece of the Planet Earth, and hold on to it forever, virtually tax free(in Western Europe at least).

How is this nothing else but blatant feudalism? And how is it still allowed? Royal families and landlords were beheaded in the past by angry mobs over abusing this system for their personal gain.

Why don't we have taxes or a system in place to prevent this accumulation of land by those who got in the game early? Why can't we just lease land instead of allowing land ownership in perpetuity? Like, "this land is leased to you/your family for the next 100 years, after that it goes on to the market again where your offspring will have the chance to lease it again if they wish at the future market rate". Something like that, as our current system is basically a zero sum game which just encourages land hoarding through inheritance.

Those who's families go cheap land for peanuts ~100 years ago, are now leveraged to acquire even more of it while those born now without family wealth have no leverage to buy anything. Insane!

Imagine you have to start paying Monopoly from square one, while others get to continue where their parents left off. How is this fair? Why don't we have a system that resets this real-estate monopoly board every generation or so?

With our current ways, instead of creating a system that rewards individuals through hard work and innovation that contribute to society and human-kind, we're creating a system that encourages asset hoarding and rent-seeking that contribute nothing to humanity, rapidly going back to feudalism, where a few landlords, both corporate and private, will own all of the available land, and most of the people will be serfs for life, without the chance of ever owning anything, no matter how hard they work.

So, again, why do we allow people to own pieces of Planet Earth in perpetuity, virtually tax free?

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

#596

Post by jhugo »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #107
TekMol wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those really making a dent? What percentage of Lisbons apartments stay empty? What percentage is used for short duration rental? I would think only a small one-digit percentage?

There are tons (like, really many) of empty, closed rotting buildings in Lisbon. My assumption is the owners are waiting for prices to increase or simply demanding unreasonably inflated prices until they find a buyer. I'd like to know the reasons for it. Anyway, whole blocks are empty. Heck, there is a large empty building directly next to the German embassy (and, ironically, part of the German embassy is also abando…

Hard to understand why anyone thinks gentrification or foreign buyers/renters are the problem if this is the case. Put people in the houses you already have, and build some more if needed, and you will likely find the price drops. But perhaps the people with decision-making power are hoping the price continues to rise.

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

#597

Post by jhugo »

nicolas_t wrote: post #563
TekMol wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those really making a dent? What percentage of Lisbons apartments stay empty? What percentage is used for short duration rental? I would think only a small one-digit percentage?

I have an apartment that sits empty, I'd love to rent it, I even have a license to rent it for holiday rental but it took 2 years and an half for the proper permits to be filled for me to renovate the apartment, once that went through, covid happened and it was not possible to find anyone to do the work, eventually the constructors I hired started doing the work but stopped in the middle claiming they can't find empl…

You can hear a version of this story from apartment owners in many European cities, meanwhile the newspapers attribute out-of-control housing costs to a laundry list of more sensational causes...

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

#599

Post by jhugo »

mmarq wrote: post #583
rjzzleep wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are a great many countries where property owners would rather rent to a foreigner, due to foreigners having on average higher spending power.

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

#600

Post by BlargMcLarg »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #595
tuatoru wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Boomers don't like immigrants/workers, therefore life is getting really expensive" mischaracterises my argument. In hindsight I should have left out superfluous phrases. The fully elaborated argument is long and somewhat nuanced. If you want a soundbite, how's this: "Boomers own all the stuff (to a first approximation). Two other things: first, due to their wealth they can outbid Zoomers for real estate as it comes…

Isn't it weird that we allow home/land ownership to a family/individual in perpetuity and then complain about high prices and scarcity for newcomers? Just think about it for a second, we in the west allow people to buy a piece of the Planet Earth, and hold on to it forever, virtually tax free(in Western Europe at least). How is this nothing else but blatant feudalism? And how is it still allowed? Royal families and l…

>How is this nothing else but blatant feudalism? And how is it still allowed

Because the moment anyone mentions this, they get bombarded with "think of the poor old people who sit on a big house! They worked hard for it!"

We as a society have a tendency to prefer leaving lucky people as is while the remainder fights for the scraps. Why this is, no clue. Beyond voting being in favor of those already owning homes (too fractured to oppose grandfathering politically), I come across this attitude among the young way too often. It doesn't take a genius to realize sharing less with more will cause people to go hungry eventually.

Those same young people are all pro-grandfathering until they realize the bottleneck bites their life goals at age 30 and beyond. By then its too late, many of them stop caring as they become part of homeowners, and the cycle continues.

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