You would be surprised about the sheer number of spaniards that would welcome this second-order effect.
In the last ~10 years, renting has skyrocketed, due to the discovery of the spanish renting market by international money, and renting laws relaxation (demand side). Meanwhile, this has not increased the supply of homes, as it is felt that there is oversupply, the demand is very concentrated on selected cities, and the turnaround of building to rent or sell is long. This double-whammy has made renting quite onerous, and buying directly out of reach, for a lot of people.
Some extra tidbits:
- Buying: Upwards of 40% of home purchase is without mortgage (not a pattern of someone buying for the first time)
- Renting: In Madrid, on average 62% of salary before taxes goes to renting; 58% in Barcelona (https://www.fotocasa.es/fotocasa-life/alquiler/los-espanoles...) (how is that even feasible? well, young people end up just renting a room)
Because of the additional risks of squatters, landowner will either have to take additional security measures (and make up the costs with higher rent) or accept the risk of squatters (and make up that risk with higher rent). In either case, the rent getsor expensive.
If it is less profitable, they either further raise the prices or they get out of the market; the ratio of those two options depends on price elasticity. And prices don't have a lot of room to grow further in my opinion... unless of course the wages grow quickly (and minimum wage indeed has done it in the last 5 years). But then the country needs to be more productive or people get poor (fired!), which is also not good for the renting business, etc.
At the end of the day you're betting on the spanish market either squeezing people further, or gaining productivity real quick. And real estate is not very liquid, yet is typically long-term, and those investors are risk averse. So... there will be some that will exit the market.
This is as nonsensical as the proposals in San Francisco to prohibit the construction of apartments to try and reduce rent. Dissuading people from renting out apartments reduces the supply apartments. There is zero possibility this results in better rental prices.
Yes.
> This is as nonsensical as the proposals
Its not nonsensical. Its what is happening. Use it or lose it. Works. Find a good tenant, rent it for decades - like how it is supposed to be.
> you're also making it more risky and thus less profitable to buy and rent out apartments
When something becomes riskier, fewer people do it unless there's some other incentive.
A vacancy tax could incentivize renting, buy enabling squatters does nothing but making rentals more risky. The only thing that can solve a shortage is increased supply or reduced demand. The latter is not feasible since people need housing. The former requires that land owners take the risk on renting out apartments, and anything that increases the risk means less people will do it.
> Find a good tenant
That's easier said than done. The better way to convince prospective renters to rent out their property is to make it easier to kick out bad tenants. If evictions are backlogged, then a landlord risks being stuck with a non paying tenant for a long time.
This kind of thing baffles me. Im telling what is happening here. A guy on the internet refers to another on the internet who 'explains' to me that what is happening where I am in the actual reality is not real.
That's literally crazy. It feels like you people are preaching. Against the reality.
A more likely outcome is that condos and houses get more expensive because of the shortage of apartments. And fewer apartments get built because investors know that they will not be able to kick out squatters.
As for apartments, they will still be financed by people who intend to live in them. Removing the landlord removes a huge margin, because you're nourishing a stranger.
> You would be surprised about the sheer number of spaniards that would welcome this second-order effect.
Lots of spaniards would clap at this, even if they're mistaken (what your arguing for). So peter335's argument would not be listened to.
It did that here.
> A more likely outcome
You are literally making up stuff and preaching a false reality as you go. No wonder how the US housing market got shafted - seeing what kind of mentality you people subscribe to.
More likely it's other factors like remote works becoming less common once covid subsided.
Edit: ah, sorry I had mixed you up with the previous commenter.
Great. They should get the hell out asap.
When renting becomes less profitable, real estate prices fall as landlords want to get rid off their bad investments. That means people can buy instead of rent, which means more rentals become vacant as renters become owners, which means that rents go down.
> and make up the costs with higher rent
This is not how it works. Landlords will always extract maximum rent possible from tenants.
Landlords are competing in a market. The maximum possible rent has to do with how much the rest of the market is charging. That in turn is capped from above by how much a would be landlord would pay to buy a unit and start renting it out. If that price goes up, then landlords can charge more.
There is also a maximum amount that people can pay, but they have little choice but to pay whatever the market is charging, or else live on the street.
If landlords prefer to let their investments sit empty instead of selling, because their profits from renting aren't enough, then that is a foolish decision. But you shouldn't annihilate a whole nation because of such folly.
Pass a law either limiting or banning outside real estate speculation.
As the constitutional right to housing is being basically circumvented through just not protecting that right, yeah, squatting seems to be the best way to protect that right.
I have a good handle of problems regarding this, and a lot of other things, however I unfortunately don't have the time to take action on any of them. So, sorry, I wouldn't be able to get in contact or do anything else.
Second: can renters be hurt even more? Are landlords the most vulnerable people right now? The situation is pretty awful right now, while at the same time there are people whose sole contribution to society is "owning flats".
And I agree on increasing property taxes (any progressive taxes over capital would do).
https://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B...
I wonder if the difference could be that the policies that he advocate would require bought and paid for politicians to act while squatting is something that an individual can do?
Love these religious-sounding sermons. Im telling what is happening here, a lot of 'free market' types are preaching to me that what is happening here is not happening and something else should be happening per the magic of 'free market' or capitalism or whatever. Hearing these, one understands who the US ended up with housing being unaffordable for 99% of Americans...
Personally, I'd like there to be so much more housing that landlords have to compete with each other for who can provide the best apartment for the lowest price rather than potential tenants competing with each other for who can pay the most for the only apartment that is available.
All of these are just wishful thinking based on non-scientific economic hullabaloo that was developed in the past 200 years. They never worked anywhere. They never will.
In the end, it comes down to the concept "Housing should be for living in, not for profit". Its a fundamental necessity/infrastructure. And privatizing it makes as much sense as privatizing the military or the police. The moment you allow it, those with bigger pockets will f*ck everything up.
Increasing risk will eliminate a lot of the "mom and pop" landlords (widows, former small-business owners, retirees, etc.). If it is too risky to own only a few extra condo units or a single small apartment building, then those properties will go to large corporate landlords.
> there are people whose sole contribution to society is "owning flats".
Landlords make sure the utilities (water, electricity, heat, etc.) work, that the roof doesn't leak, fix plumbing issues when they arise, take care of pest infestations, etc. Even landlords who don't personally fix things are employing managers and tradespeople. And with big corporate owners, the shareholders are usually pension funds which effectively are the retirement savings of people who have already "contributed to society".
Landlords generally spend much less than 5% of their yearly rent income on maintenance. If they actually do something to improve an apartment, that is just an investment in their own real estate, that they own 100% even after having other people pay for it several times over during decades.
Edit: Or look at it this way: Would you hire and pay somebody a good salary for working maybe 5 or 10 days per year for you?
You might be surprised to learn that many small rental properties are heavily mortgaged. Along with insurance and property taxes, the biggest cost is usually mortgage interest. Some owners even lose money for a few years until the rents rise to meet the costs so that they can break even. (These owners are playing the long game, believing that rent and property values will go up over time and eventually their investment will be a good one compared to their other investment options.)
> the biggest cost is usually mortgage interest.
The tenant is paying for that.
The situation is absurd. The tenant is paying the entire mortgage and interest for the property and can be kicked out at any time, while the landlord does basically nothing, pays nothing, and the bank can not kick him out just because they please.
Since the factor limiting supply is not cost or demand, prices keep ever-increasing with no gains for society; just filling the coffers of the haves.
You should really watch out with insults of economic illiteracy :)
Boomers retiring will create a permanent labor shortage for the foreseeable future. People just don’t want to be construction workers, and who can blame them? Especially with how construction workers got screwed over after 2008. That nuked the construction sector so hard that employement in construction has just barely recovered to 2008 levels.
It would be beautiful if housing was the pure demand-supply curve that many claim it is- but currently it isn’t. Letting the market solve the housing problem doesn’t create additional future housing as that is blocked by house construction output, all it does is allow maximizing profit on existing real estate.
With the extreme anger and complete societal gridlock that the first world housing crisis is fomenting, if the fix was “just unregulate lol” politicians would have done that by now.
The rest of the world is not the US, and people don't have to work for dimes in jobs that can go away the next day just because they would starve or cant afford healthcare if they don't. As a result, people prefer stable jobs. If that sounds implausible to you, it is a sign of how perverted the mentality of your society has become that you expect people to be like disposable lemmings that will pour out to whatever pays them some money.
> What about zoning laws? To the extent a country with high unemployment can’t find enough construction workers it’s likely to be some kind of government/regulatory failure. Read Matthew Yglesias, he’s great
You don't know anything about the country that you speak about. You are referring to an American who has his ideas existing only in various books. Dont make holistic statements without knowing enough about what you are talking about. In this case, an entirely different country and society.
If only Spain could profit from helping murder brown people in 3rd world countries overseas and by speculating on banking, then forcing the bailout of those sunken PRIVATE banks on other countries and then forcing them to privatize their national assets to buy those assets dirt cheap - like how Northern Europe did to Southern Europe, including Spain. Forcing the Spanish taxpayer to bail out sunken private Northern European banks and then forcing austerity on them to have them privatize their society. The biggest bank scam of the century in every way.
And yet, all of you Northern Europeans seem to want to move south to that 'economically illiterate' society and its 'failing' welfare state for some reason. To the extent that you literally filled out some cities and zones. What you say and what you do contradict.
> illiterate
You don't know even the topic that you are talking about, yet you are talking about economic illiteracy. And the one thing that you have that you refer to, is an American author and its book. As if a random American author is the all-determining authority for anything.
> you're also making it more risky and thus less profitable to buy and rent out apartments
Okupas force the property owners to rent their properties to avoid losing them. It increases property available for rent - does not decrease it. Again, you don't know what you are talking about, and no, Matthew Yglesias, the glorious American author that you slapped everywhere in this thread as if he was a prophet, is not a reference that changes this particular phenomenon either.
This is what happens where 'economically illiterate leftist lawlessness' doesn't exist.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homes-for-sale-affordable-housi...
You mean like when Spain colonized Americas?
What's more, Spain treated the 'colonies' as parts of Spain and it spent all its money developing them. From the first university in the Americas to all kinds of hospitals, schools, infrastructure was built by the Spanish state with Spanish money. Thats why Spain lost the imperial race: Building up the locals instead of exploiting them - leaving aside not murdering them all to replace them like the Anglosaxons did.
The native Americans became Spanish subjects in 1519. With all the good things and the bad things that being the subject of an average European feudal kingdom brought along with it.
Nobody declared them 'non-human' and started eradicating them like the English did. That's what you should be being cynical and sarcastic about.