Americans Who Can’t Afford Homes Are Moving to Europe Instead | Hacker News Reader

Americans Who Can’t Afford Homes Are Moving to Europe Instead

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As an European, I dread this. Americans are not the best negotiators and some even seem to be OK with being overcharged, raising prices of all sorts up. At the same time, I myself am planning to move to Asia because it's getting expensive here. Good luck.

"Americans are not the best negotiators"

There are 300m Americans. They vary widely in their approach to negotiation. Some of the best books about negotiation are by Americans.

This is one way to spot a small minded European. "Americans are X", "Americans do Y"....

I think what they're trying to say is "people who have high purchasing power get a bit excited by the relatively low prices and don't bother to negotiate."

Though I think it's less of negotiation skill and more of unfamiliarity with the market. This gets fixed quickly one year in, in my experience.

When I first moved from the US to Romania, I was offered a studio apartment for 300 euro a month. I thought it was super cheap and signed immediately. Little did I know I overpaid by a lot. This hurts the locals, who start getting priced out of the market.

I just hope these aren't the same America's that voted to get their country/state into such a situation. Although I see way more Europeans adoring the American "freedoms" and trying to turn Europe more American.

Could you elaborate on how American "freedom" has led to a housing crisis there? Is this situation correlated with an increase in whatever you are calling "freedom"?

The areas most severely overpriced in America (university education, medical care, housing) actually have massive government involvement, and in my opinion that's not a coincidence.

Of course there's legitimate reasons and benefits for some of that involvement, but maybe the pendulum needs to swing back a bit.

The European countries with good healthcare and education actually have their governments play a central role. How do you think Germans afford university? It's the type of government involvement you take issue with.

By "freedom" I mean the lack of government regulations and controls allowing companies to "freely" abuse workers etc. Same goes for banks not being held accountable for bad deals and knowing they are too big to fail. Or that a large company that has committed a crime can opt for deferred prosecution (because it would hurt too many people if they were held accountable) only to have the whole thing dismissed years later or fined a tiny fine.

Many of us are the Americans that have been desperately trying to vote our country out of this situation for our adult lives, and are tired.

That's been largely the impression I've got from my US friends who moved to the UK. They're all fed up off the political situation and decided to leave.

Then they get here and realised they should have flown about 200 miles East

As a European, I wish Europe was a bit more like America in some respects. Namely, seeing the embarrassing way how Europe has responded to Russia's aggression has for the first time made me question my staunch europeism.

Suppose for the sake of argument that Americans were no better or worse at negotiating that anyone else. What do you expect would happen to the prices then, with the current influx of Americans?

Most of them will likely end up in few hotspots causing gentrification there, but there will be plenty of fine places left. Europe isn't _that_ small.

As an Asian I dread this. Europeans are not the best negotiators and seem to be ok with being overcharged, raising prices of all sorts. :-p

you forgot

> I myself am planning to move to Africa because it's getting expensive here. Good luck.

I laughed, but as a Turk, I am a hardcore negotiator and most locals hate me, you will be OK I think.

As someone interested in becoming part of this "problem", does anyone know if there's been movement on the tax structure challenges for non-EU nationals https://rebase.co/portugal refers to? I'm basically waiting for that to clear up before forking over cash to get things moving.

I moved to Cascais near Lisbon from the UK 5 years ago. It find it remarkable how many Americans I have met, that have moved here recently, especially from California. They all seem to be happy with their decision.

I mean it's just cost arbitrage for all of these Americans. Soon enough, it's already happening, they will be out-pricing each other. They are willing to pay rents which would be average monthly salary in Lisbon.

The annoying aspect of this is that Americans with their higher purchasing power sell the narrative that Europe is cheap. It's only cheap if you are making American salaries. For locals and large number of Europeans, it's far from cheap.

https://archive.ph/hljO0

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