What’s propping all of these property prices up? Supply and demand rules don’t seem to apply at all. You might have thousands of empty apartments in a city yet the price only keeps going up.
Everything is broken, but housing is particularly broken.
I’m not even sure if this Globalization was worth all that much. It’s made some people very wealthy, some people well-off, but its also made lots of people very poor and very angry.
I’m okay with living in a world with fewer millionaires but also fewer people sleeping on the streets.
It was an interesting argument that globalization was an American security development not an international economic development.
Did you mean billionaires? Because a million isn't what it used to be...
Money printing, first and foremost
The alternative of a mineral backed currency that can’t adjust with population levels and is inherently deflationary we know to be far worse.
Smaller cities and towns are cheap. I've seen government auctions selling apartments for under €5000 which nobody wants. Why? Because people are moving to larger cities. People want opportunities, and the idea of working in some chicken factory (which may have been a perfectly respected career for our parents) is not appealing for the current generation. And the problem in these small towns, is the chicken factory is really the only career prospect you have, so people move elsewhere.
Of course there are rich foreigners buying apartments as investments and renting them on Airbnb, but that's a very small percentage of the housing market. And even if they rented them normally, they'd still be asking for prices that are unaffordable for the average person. I know that because that was me, I emigrated here and bought a luxury apartment and lived in it for 7 years (paying taxes) and now want to rent it out as I moved outside the city.
Unless I rent or sell it for much lower than the market rate, even on the lower end it's still too expensive for the average person. If I sell it, it's probably just going to be poached by someone who will use it as an investment and put it on Airbnb.
My city is building a lot of new developments, but space is limited as young people want to live close to the city center, not somewhere 30 minutes drive away. That is driving up the average price, so you end up with studio apartments costing upwards of €4000/m2, which you need to earn at least €2500/mo to afford, which is well above the average salary. With rising inflation the problem isn't so much people can't afford the mortgage payments (which are slightly lower than renting), but they can't afford to save the 15% needed for a deposit.