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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

#641

Post by citrin_ru »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #576
lr4444lr wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>Europe largely isn't reproducing. Yeah and why is that? Is it because the young are now competing in a zero-sum capitalism squid-game economy, where good jobs are scarce and super stressful to get, requiring you to grind away the most fertile years of your life, and that lawmakers, banks, speculators, foreign buyers and NIMBY boomers have made owning a family home completely unaffordable for the young in most cities…

> Is it because the young are now competing in a zero-sum capitalism > No, it must be porn

Both are unlikely explanations given inverse GDP per capita and birth rate correlation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

More plausible explanation - many people don't like children and want to live for themselves but in poor/developing countries they have to 'invest' into children so they will take care of parents later. In countries with more or less stable economy people can rely on own investments or state pensions to not face extreme poverty after retirement.

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

#642

Post by intothemild »

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…

I wish more cities would ban or limit AirBnB.

Take Amsterdam for example.

A good decade ago, it was crowded in the tourism months (summer), but not too bad. Now it's crowded in the off season too, and during the summer months even more so, to the point where walking around is really hard.

The mayor seems to constantly want to get rid of cannabis, which won't solve the problem, the issue isn't the weed tourism... it's the unfettered tourism.

These things can be controlled, you can control how much tourists you have by limiting the amount of hotels you have in your city. But with AirBnB you lose all control on how many tourists.

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

#643

Post by iggldiggl »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #586
confidantlake wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Wh…

> Germany's population has been on decline for ~30 years due to demographics

The thing is – within that time frame it hasn't, actually. There have been some years with slight decreases, but those have been balanced by other years with increases, and compared to 1990 population is actually definitively slightly up (83.2 millions last year vs. 79.8 millions). Combined with a decreasing average household size (2.27 in 1991 vs 1.99 in 2019) and internal migration those things by themselves will probably generate enough pressure on the housing markets in and around the prospering parts of the country, even without any added financial shenanigans on top.

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

#644

Post by intothemild »

jhugo wrote: post #591
pjmlp wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is... it's not actually. If you made a law to force AirBnB to share data on who is making the listing with the government, you have your register of who to tax/etc.

You could also make laws to limit the number of properties per person, and if you're even smarter, you could use that in conjunction with a map of relationships between people, so you could limit the number of people putting listings in their family members names to get around any limitations.

AirBnB has the data to assist governments.

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

#646

Post by jbm »

mmarq wrote: post #625
jbm wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an egregious misreading of the parent comment. Someone in a position of economic vulnerability isn't going to invest in housing to rent out if there is a non-insignificant chance of damage to the property. Moreover, this uncertainty has the perverse outcome of pushing the potential small landlord to use his funds to invest in something like a real estate investment fund - which will result in less local contr…

Are these 150K being used to build a new house or to buy an existing house? I think it’s time the English speaking world realised that landlords are not providing a service, they are extracting a tax on people that don’t have 150K to pay a deposit.

Portugal is not part of the "English speaking world".

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

#647

Post by tumetab1 »

stainforth wrote: post #228
tumetab1 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That's one of the reasons why portuguese renting market is so bad. There were rent control policies for like 40 years. It has been phased out but the market still has the signs of its damages. There also other contributing policies and the policies change almost every two years. I'm on…

So either we preference your 150000 euros (and of course interest and margin on top) or someone having a roof over their head, running water, and even the ability to stay in the same are and building community instead of moving each year due to capital seeking max gains.

That's not how that works.

I can have 150000 euros which I can use in an emergency, like being unemployed, long sick leave, needing move out of country due to family reasons OR I can risk not having it available when I needed and earn some money. Without the profit I have no reason for the risk.

Furthermore, me not investing removes a house from the renting market which makes it harder for people with less income, specially young people. To have a place to live because the same house will be available for purchase through a mortgage... and mortgages are not good.

You have to make a 10% down payment and you're almost always tied to a flexible interest rate... so people with less economic freedom are the ones to suffer the most.

You might disagree that things should not be like this which is fine, I'm only arguing over what happens now.

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

#648

Post by pydry »

dionidium wrote: post #421
armchairhacker wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve literally seen this same exact comment many, many times except with different locations. Eastern Mass, New York, Ontario, Britain, and even starting to hear it from suburban areas. The exact same concepts: cheap grandfathered lease, hoping the landlord doesn’t cancel, can’t afford rent despite making >100k, “luxury apartments”, empty apartments, illegal renting (e.g. AirBnB) and shadiness.

The underlying issue is that demand for these places has increased in our new globally-connected world. That's not going away. Cute little lake houses aren't going to be a local secret anywhere in the world, anymore, and the sooner people realize that, the sooner they can think about how to adjust to it. We are currently in the "denial" phase. We can't get to "acceptance" fast enough.

The underlying issue is wealth inequality. There's a glut of capital chasing returns internationally that grows bigger every year.

If 10 people with $1 to spend on an apple, and one person suddenly had $11 you could say demand for apples had "doubled", implying that this the result of an implacable, impersonal, unchangeable force but it absolutely isnt.

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

#649

Post by tumetab1 »

mmarq wrote: post #625
jbm wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an egregious misreading of the parent comment. Someone in a position of economic vulnerability isn't going to invest in housing to rent out if there is a non-insignificant chance of damage to the property. Moreover, this uncertainty has the perverse outcome of pushing the potential small landlord to use his funds to invest in something like a real estate investment fund - which will result in less local contr…

Are these 150K being used to build a new house or to buy an existing house? I think it’s time the English speaking world realised that landlords are not providing a service, they are extracting a tax on people that don’t have 150K to pay a deposit.

The down payment would only be 10% of that. Existing or new house would be same, houses that are bought for rent are only available through mortgages which are a pain.

When I was younger I would really like to have more houses to rent... I don't really care if they provide a service or not, it's the cheapest and more liberating option available.

If the neighbors are a hell... I could just move out. Or if the house was not close to a gym I liked... move out.

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

#650

Post by jhugo »

intothemild wrote: post #644
jhugo wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is... it's not actually. If you made a law to force AirBnB to share data on who is making the listing with the government, you have your register of who to tax/etc. You could also make laws to limit the number of properties per person, and if you're even smarter, you could use that in conjunction with a map of relationships between people, so you could limit the number of people putting listings in their fa…

> If you made a law to force AirBnB to share data on who is making the listing with the government, you have your register of who to tax/etc.

Airbnb will probably follow your law, but other platforms that do not will flourish. They will be difficult to regulate, given that they won't be in your jurisdiction.

> You could also make laws to limit the number of properties per person.

Many laws already exist that give unfavourable tax treatment to second and subsequent properties. They are widely avoided through family members and legal entity structures and a hand-wavy "map of relationships between people" isn't going to magically fix that. This would also have a fairly obvious negative effect: it would artificially limit supply in the rental market, driving up prices. A person who could have invested in multiple properties and supplied them to the rental market will instead supply at most one, and invest the rest of their money elsewhere.

There isn't some nefarious conspiracy preventing effective regulation in this area. It's just a legitimately hard problem.

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