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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

#681

Post by ngc248 »

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…

As you rightly say real estate is treated more as an investment, so those who have bought in will never sell for a price lesser than what they bought in for. Hence real estate prices will never crash, unless something disastrous or apocalyptic happens to that country/area.

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

#682

Post by hnbad »

That's just market forces optimizing for supply and demand though, isn't it? Portuguese can't afford living in Portugal but other people can. It's more profitable to rent out apartments as BnB's for days than to tenants for years so that's where the market moves. Investors make more money refurbishing housing into luxury apartments so ordinary citizens get priced out of their homes.

You can either have a housing market or you can make sure everybody has affordable housing. But that means making housing a public good rather than leaving it up to investors, but this requires the opposite of the austerity that was imposed on Portugal during its debt crisis.

If you think that's utopian thinking, consider Red Vienna and its housing projects which continue to exist today and still provide affordable decent quality public housing in the city: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Vienna

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

#683

Post by glanzwulf »

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.

It's quite a high blame I'd say. I actually have a friend who does this. He's been in the Airbnb game since pretty much they showed up and he now has 4 or 5 flats.

He could rent them out, but the long term rent contracts would not net him the same amount in a year than what he gets in just the summer months. Plus, long term contracts have a lot of other expectations from him as a land lord, whilst Airbnb is pretty chill.

From his point of view, airbnb is amazing, from my point of view when I was searching for a flat, I wanted to stab him in the face. It is what it is.

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

#684

Post by polotics »

joshlemer wrote: post #160
polotics wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland does not qualify as a microstate at all. You're looking at a population that would fill Los Angeles, twice over... The one thing that is sure is public transportation is night and day, and this helps a lot fight the mad-commute effect for non-millionaires.

Not twice over, Swiss population is 8-9 million. 10 million live in LA.

we are both right, wikipedia to the rescue Population (2020)[8] • Total 3,898,747 • Density 8,304.22/sq mi (3,206.29/km2) • Metro[9] 13,200,998 (2nd)

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

#685

Post by galfarragem »

MrPatan wrote: post #678
galfarragem wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What works in theory doesn't work on reality. That's why I called it the ultimate illusion. With such a global demand for houses here is not feasible to increase the house supply fast enough to drop prices in a way that locals can afford them. You're just feeding the beast: globalization. The only way to tackle it is on the demand side.

Globalization is inevitable. What I don't buy is the rate of change, it _must_ be smooth or the system may implode. Blind and raw globalization is just a way to feed the nationalisms that most people are afraid of.

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

#686

Post by ngc248 »

ravenstine wrote: post #466
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…

> It's crazy because all new homes and apartments are "luxury apartments" with insanely high pricing both for buying and renting. They're mostly empty or are (often illegally) rented out as holiday apartments. You'd feel at home in LA. I've seen this trend here for at least a decade now. I know some people who say that the construction of these luxury apartments is a sign that the economy is recovering, but I remain…

Its the same trend all over the world. No one wants to build/sell affordable housing since margins on that area very less. Everywhere its luxury housing.

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

#687

Post by roenxi »

unmole wrote: post #552
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation isn’t terribly bad in countries that didn’t print wild amounts of money. Like in India, inflation is almost back in control, and we didn’t print much money. Same in China. I haven’t run the numbers but if you were to chart inflation vs the money printing done by an economy, you’d likely find a positive correlation.

If inflation is a purely monetary phenomenon caused by printing money , why do Telangana and Sikkim experience higher inflation than the national average? > I haven’t run the numbers but if you were to chart inflation vs the money printing done by an economy, you’d likely find a positive correlation. As a member of the Eurozone, Estonia can't print money . That didn't stop it from inflation hitting 23%. It's almost a…

> As a member of the Eurozone, Estonia can't print money. That didn't stop it from inflation hitting 23%.

Actually, according to Wikipedia, Estonia joined the Euro in 2010. There have been a lot of Euros created in the last few years (looking at the M2, we're roughly at the point where most Euro appeared after Estonia joined in to the project).

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

#688

Post by leg100 »

Tade0 wrote: post #654
ssizn wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Many thousands are going to freeze to death in their homes this Christmas. Unlike in Europe. Oh wait.

Every time this topic is touched I learn something new about the standard of comfort that western Europe enjoys. I've been told that in Germany the gas-saving measures will make people turn down their temperature during winter to 20-21°C from the, supposedly, standard 24-25°C. But that can't be right, can it? When I lived in Italy we had below 20°C during winter because the wooden windows from the 70s not replaced si…

I'd be careful with these ideas of countries being generally wealthy these days. Germany and the UK as with elsewhere has a large minority who could only dream of such temperatures in the middle of winter in their home. Many will go without heating as they have done in previous winters. Standard of comfort is highly variable within countries.

But yes, generally speaking, people have got used to setting the thermostat higher.

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

#689

Post by dagw »

niemandhier wrote: post #602
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My observation is, that it is about child care. Guarantee all parents affordable child care close to their work or home and many people settling for one kid will have two.

Guarantee all parents affordable child care close to their work or home

Sweden has that (and generous parental leave policies) and still has both low and declining birth rates.

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

#690

Post by bruce343434 »

immibis wrote: post #204
asdff wrote: post #203

Why is the situation always "lets attempt to tax investors who are notorious for skirting around their full tax burden" instead of directly attacking the conditions that lead to this area being a favorable area to park money in the first place? Namely, you have too many jobs and not enough housing. Sometime in the last 100 years, leaders around the western world realized the massive real estate opportunity of strangl…

Nobody wins elections by promising to destroy jobs.

So build houses
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