Comment by spaniard89277 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spaniard89277 | Hacker News Reader

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This problem will only grow because there's an increasingly large number of people in Spain unable to rent.

At this very moment the profile of squatters is diverse, but with such large pockets of spaniards staying just above of the poverty line, many people will be forced between squatting or just become homeless.

Just for reference, I live in a flat in a building from the 50s. Very poor insulation, 5º with no elevator, etc. I pay 475€ for it (small sized city), I've been living here for +5 years.

The guys in the 3rd floor came in recently. They pay 1100€ for basically the same flat.

The modal income in this city is 16k. I work on IT and I'm barely above 20k (well, was, as I'm now unemployed).

I go for the listings and there's almost nothing listed and everything is > 800€/month. If I increase the range to 1h from any potential job location it goes down to ~500 for shitty places. Also, not precisely a lot to choose from, so probably wouldn't be able to rent neither.

Can anyone tell me how is exactly this going to work out? Not to mention all the "expats" and "digital nomads" that are willing to pay whatever the landlord says because they really really want to live here without thinking about the consequences, but that's another story.

Of course buying is totally out of the question with the current prices, and that's me that I got lucky, with the new prices no one will be able to save anymore.

You are in IT earning only 20K EUR per year? That is unbelievable! Why is the housing crisis happening? What changed? Did you have a population boom?

    > Not to mention all the "expats" and "digital nomads" that are willing to pay whatever the landlord says because they really really want to live here without thinking about the consequences, but that's another story.

Hmmm. Do you have any stats on this matter? It seems easy to lash out against this group because they are outsiders. The "expats" will pay tax, and plenty of it, because they are higher income. "Digital nomads" are another issue -- I am not a big fan because they usually pay no income, nor residence, tax.

> You are in IT earning only 20K EUR per year?

Do you realize most people working in IT are paid minimum wage or close to that? Most sysadmins and developers i've met here in France are under 2000€/month and it's only on places like HN that i read about huge salaries in IT. (sorry i don't have stats this is just anecdata)

Spain has exceptionally low wages in the IT sector though, taking cost of living into account and all.

Why don't people move to a place with higher wages? Spain a member of the EU.

And, why do people enter IT in Spain, if the wages are so terrible?

Where would you move, and how? Wages are not better in surrounding countries, unless you work in specific companies it's not easy to get in. You also need the opportunity. Most people living paycheck-to-paycheck have little time and mental space to radically change their situation...

The Spanish population in general ain't that good when it comes to English and the quality of living in Spain is, in general, quite good. Weather and food are hard to replace.

Which begs the question: "Well why don't they work remotely from Spain then?" and the answer to that is that the Spanish IT sector does a whole lot of that to begin with, so a business in the market for it can just hire one of the many consulting business there.

It is a pretty normal salary here in Spain. The housing crisis is happening because of several factors, but mostly because there's a huge increase in demand due to immigration (millions of people coming) from all profiles (richer and poorer) so we're getting squeezed hard.

The regulations around housing are so bad that almost nothing is getting built. What's getting built is for wealthy people, and no public housing in sight.

And yes, of course rich foreigners play a role here. You maybe don't like to hear it because you're likely richer than the average spaniard, but they are plenty, and we can see what they do once they arrive here.

This is no second-hand information. Because the housing situation is so bad they go on sprees trying to convince landlords to rent to them by offering more money.

Also, getting out of cities is problematic because we can't save money nor have disposable income, so owning and maintaining a car is quite an effort, and that in a city where I don't need a "B" stick to enter the city, in other cities it's worse because you're only allowed a subset of cars which are more expensive. There aren't cheap cars anymore, even shitty Dacias are +20k and anything under 10k second hand is close to junk.

We're fucked honestly. I'm willing to move, but I don't know where...

I can suggest Romania. Depending on your IT skills, 2000 euro in IT is considered minimum and country is still very cheap to live in. There is a great shortage in IT there..

Climate also similar to Spain in sommer , you will get used to winters as well. Seaside and mountains are available.

Great suggestion. Plus, the language will be easy to learn for a native Spanish speaker.

> Did you have a population boom?

Unchecked (or even encouraged) mass migration, yes.

Anecdote but I visited Barcelona just pre-Covid, one of my California friends met another California friend who had bought a condo for the bargain price of 500,000 for a vacation home (and they spent time and money to renovate it) right next to the most popular touristy section of town and only lived there about a month a year, and airbnb'ed it the rest of the time. There were already things on the news that I could follow about hostility to short term rentals to tourists in the city.

These sound like numbers from Seville or somewhere deep South. Just for reference I mention that in Munich you could also rent something for 475€ and your salary would probably triple overnight. https://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/radius/wohnung-mieten...

> Can anyone tell me how is exactly this going to work out? Not to mention all the "expats" and "digital nomads" that are willing to pay whatever the landlord says because they really really want to live here without thinking about the consequences, but that's another story.

Slowly, more regulation is added to get the problem somewhat under control. Rents capped by index, annual rent increases cap, introduction of "tense housing markets", new upkeep for vacant properties, bonuses for renting out to younger people and more are being introduced, at least here in Catalunya. Unsure exactly what of those things are on the national level but guessing something similar is being introduced elsewhere in the country if it isn't already.

I don't think that helps honestly. What would help IMO is a lot of new housing close to jobs where foreigners can't apply. Because no matter how much you build, if someone from overseas is going to say "I pay double of whatever you've been offered" I can't compete.

And I know that's happening because my Gf has to work with this sort of people, sadly.

> I don't think that helps honestly. What would help IMO is a lot of new housing close to jobs where foreigners can't apply. Because no matter how much you build, if someone from overseas is going to say "I pay double of whatever you've been offered" I can't compete.

But if the law blocks "I pay double of whatever you've been offered" from happening (which is true today, they cannot increase the rent to whatever they want), then you'd have a chance to compete because the competition is no longer about who can pay the most.

No, because the landlord would either get the rest under the table or the competition would move onto risk profiles, where someone earning 4/5k month would beat any spaniard with our unstable and poorly paid jobs.

In the end, we either do it like in Vienna or Singapore, or we're not going to solve it.

Singapore, I know about: A huge amount of decent public housing. Is Vienna similar? Is there no political pressure in Spain to build more decent public housing?

Vienna has a massive public, universal, rent system. Like 50% of the total housing stock.

Everyone says they're going to make public housing here in Spain, nobody does anything.

more details on vienna: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40257927

You're correct, the competition wouldn't be on rent prices anymore. But since the shortage of houses is not solved, competition would just move to some other area.

E.g: which candidate does the landlord like the best, or who was on some waiting list for the most years, etc.

Technically we have that, it's called VPO.

Really that won't help. These kind of regulations have been tried in so many countries before and the result is always the same: cap the rents => landlords will take houses from the markets and sell them instead => there will be a shortage of properties for rent so finding them will be very hard, and the few landlords left will be extremely selective when choosing from the many candidates.

What does help: increase the supply. Make it easier to build or let houses by reducing bureaucracy, invest in housing projects etc.

Increasing supply won't work with places where the demand is virtually infinite. You have to cut the demand somehow, and in the case of Spain it means preventing foreigners to access such stock. That means public housing, or some law that creates a lot of friction.

Cheaper housing in Spain will lead to induced demand, because there's just too many people willing to move here.

Yes you're right, reducing demand will also work. Which is exactly what capping rents won't do, this will actually increase demand ..

> Really that won't help. These kind of regulations have been tried in so many countries before and the result is always the same: cap the rents => landlords will take houses from the markets and sell them instead

Good. Too many people are forced into renting due to insane property prices as is.

> cap the rents => landlords will take houses from the markets and sell them instead => there will be a shortage of properties for rent

Won't step 2 increase the supply of houses for sale, thus lowering the prices, thus decreasing the demand for rentals?

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