The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal • Hacker News Board

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

#671

Post by tiagod » Fri, Sep 02, 2022, 9:11 AM UTC

killingtime74 wrote: post #639

rgmerk wrote: post #628

Portuguese can't afford to live in Lisbon for two reasons: 1) it's a nice city with nicer weather than most of the places within convenient travel range 2) the economy is remarkably unproductive, leaving Portguese people poorer than, say, Estonians, let alone Germans: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

What struck me was this "There isn’t an average Portuguese who, even if earning two thousand euros a month — I don’t know anyone who earns that much". Thats only 24k USD a year!

I don't know where they got that number... most of my friends in Lisbon (outside tech) make some 900€ a month if they're lucky :( Qualified make more than 1k, but still less than 2k

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

#672

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Sep 02, 2022, 9:18 AM UTC

jhugo wrote: post #650

intothemild wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unf…

Well, it doesn't help that many inspectors actually have to use public transports and be paid later from their travel expenses, so their control area is anyway minimal.

At least that is how remember how bad it used to be.

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

#673

Post by glanzwulf » Fri, Sep 02, 2022, 9:19 AM UTC

tenpies wrote: post #405

googlryas wrote: post #288

Isn't it more accurate to say the Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Lisbon(or Porto, or some other desirable city)? If you have a city with X housing units, but 5X people from within the city + all over the country/world want to live there, and for whatever reason no one wants to/can build 4X more housing units, how do you fairly determine who gets to live there and who doesn't? * Is it fair if you were born…

> If you have a city with X housing units, but 5X people from within the city + all over the country/world want to live there, and for whatever reason no one wants to/can build 4X more housing units, how do you fairly determine who gets to live there and who doesn't? The phenomena that honestly pisses me off, is that all of these countries touting their immigration policies are lying to immigrants. They're selling th…

It's not though, not entirely at least.

For an immigrant from eastern europe, yes, Lisbon is not the great place it was 20 years ago.

But for an immigrant from US/Canada, Germany, UK, or whatever rich country. Yes, it's a great place to go to. A high rent in Lisbon is nothing to them, and the rest (utilities, restaurants, commerce) is still pretty cheap.

Good weather, good food, cheap lifestyle is quite attainable... just not for everyone.

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

#674

Post by tiagod » Fri, Sep 02, 2022, 9:20 AM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #60

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.

I'm pretty sure you hit the nail in the head right here.

I wish we had public data showing how much each person in parliament/city government gets each month as rental income... would probably be pretty enlightening.

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

#675

Post by Elinvynia » Fri, Sep 02, 2022, 9:22 AM UTC

borski wrote: post #492

keepquestioning wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a cap on property ownership for those in the political class. That's the key to fairer policies.

Is it fair to prevent wealthy people from going into politics? Does a politician have to be poor or middle class, or not own homes? At what point do the restrictions begin to become 'unfair'? Some people are born with wealth, which under this system would put them at a disadvantage in politics...fair? Fair always has two sides, and it's "impossible" to come up with a perfectly fair system.

You can always lose your wealth, pretty much instantly and painlessly. The inverse is not true.

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

#676

Post by ngc248 » Fri, Sep 02, 2022, 9:26 AM UTC

citilife wrote: post #275

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…

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…

>>> If you want to decrease unemployment, you add tariffs for imports enabling more businesses to open domestically (i.e. tariffs effectively increase import costs).

This is very simplistic. You first start building local expertise/domestic businesses and then increase tariffs to wean off imports. Don't put the cart before the horse.

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

#677

Post by ngcazz » Fri, Sep 02, 2022, 9:26 AM UTC

tijl wrote: post #669

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…

Some things I noticed as a foreigner exploring the Portuguese house market for the past 6 months: Indeed, prices in Lisbon and Porto are insane. Yet, even in those cities (especially in Porto) there are quite a lot of old buildings, often in bad shape, and often empty, or sometimes inhabited by just one elderly tenant. You don't see that elsewhere in Europe in cities with similarly high prices. You would expect someo…

The problem is not the odd elderly tenant, the problem is at most lack of capital to renew privately-owned derelict property in urban areas

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

#678

Post by MrPatan » Fri, Sep 02, 2022, 9:28 AM UTC

galfarragem wrote: post #459

jseliger wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Portugal should build more housing, which is a simple, effective solution if the rent is too damn high: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/the-ren... . The nice thing about indoor space is that we can make pretty much as much of it as we'd like.

Nope, that’s the ultimate illusion. Portugal is already one of the EU countries with more houses per capita. More houses means more houses for foreigners. Locals would never be able to afford them. This is just the dark side of globalism cheered by Portuguese politics for decades. Competition is global now. Local middle class is having their lunch eaten by foreign rich people or even middle classes from wealthier cou…

> More houses means more houses for foreigners. Locals would never be able to afford them

How do you arrive to that conclusion?

- If you built 100 million new houses in Lisbon, would prices fall?

- If you built 10 million new houses in Lisbon, would prices fall?

- If you built 1 million new houses in Lisbon, would prices fall?

- If you built 100k new houses in Lisbon, would prices fall?

- If you built 10k new houses in Lisbon, would prices fall?

- If you built 1k new houses in Lisbon, would prices fall?

Even if you have a model that says that building more houses raises prices for some number of houses, surely increasing the number will eventually make prices fall, wouldn't you agree?

Where is that number? Shouldn't the discussion about how big is that number, and how to achieve building that many houses?

"Supply increses lead to price increases" is a pretty extraordinary claim, and the only charitable interpretation of it is with the addition of "up to a point". Where is that point? Why not make the charitable interpretation yourself that people recommending more housing are recommending more housing past the price increase point?

To be clear, I don't believe that the supply/price curve is anything but sloping downwards, but even if your one does have a hump, being against housing still sounds like a bad conclusion.

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

#679

Post by ngc248 » Fri, Sep 02, 2022, 9:29 AM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #573

mensetmanusman wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because no western country has tried lowering housing costs yet. And I mean actually lowering housing costs, not just talking about it on TV, posturing, political promises or making stupid mistakes like rent-freezes and such. But blaming the poor young people priced out of their own country for not breeding, and just bringing third world immigrants with no living standards, is much easier than improving the living st…

Its not just lowering housing costs. Raising a child does not just include housing cost, it also includes a ton of other costs, and since families have become nuclear and both parents work, it is hard to birth more children since cost/time that you need to spend on child rearing will be more. What is the solution to this? No idea

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

#680

Post by ngcazz » Fri, Sep 02, 2022, 9:31 AM UTC

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #532

The main problem in Portugal is a lack of wealth generation more than Housing. It doesn't matter if rents are curbed under 1k a month. The median under 25 earns less than 700 euros a month. I talk to people in Portugal and I hear more or less the same salary discussions and ranges for more than 20 years. It is a stagnant labour market for literally +20 years! When adjusted to inflation it becomes even more ludicrous.…

Absolutely, and low wage growth is endemic in Portugal due to cultural factors - business owners are famously greedy, small-minded, and given to mistreat workers, including by paying them miserably.

Tech businesses thankfully have been leading the way, aware that intrinsically remoteable work means they're competing with foreign capital for workers, but the situation is nowhere near where it needs to be (higher wages across ~more~ all trades and industries).