So there’s a ton of countries that I’ve heard have had truly unaffordable housing for decades, like:
- The UK
- Ireland
- The Netherlands
And I’ve heard of a ton of countries where the cost of houses was until recently quite affordable where it’s also started getting worse:
- Germany
- Poland
- Czechia
- Hungary
- The US
- Australia
- Canada
- And I’m sure plenty others
- It seems to be a pan-Western bloc thing. Is the cause in all these countries the same?
- We’ve heard of success stories in cities like Vienna where much of the housing stock is municipally owned – but those cities have had it that way for decades. Would their system alleviate the current crisis if established in the aforementioned countries?
- What specific policies should I be demanding of our politicians to make housing affordable again? Is there any silver bullet? Has any country demonstrably managed to reverse this crisis yet?
In my own Portugal, which is a very turistic country and also towards the bottom of the GDP-per-capita scale in the EU, things that would likely work very well would also be:
Portugal currently has a massive house inflation problem (extra massive, because of how low average incomes are here) and a lot of it has to do with residential housing being removed from the housing market and turned into short term turist lets (for example, over 10% of housing in Lisbon has been turned into AirBnB lets) and foreign investors (not just big companies but also individuals, such as well off pensioneers from places like France) pulling prices up by being far less price sensitive than the locals as they’re buying residential housing as investments having far more money available than the average Portuguese.
Having lived in both Britain and Portugal during housing bubbles, what I’ve observed was that the politicians themselves purposefully inflate those bubbles, partly because they themselves are part of the upper middle class or even above (especially in the UK) who can afford to and have Realestate “investments” and hence stand to gain personally (as do their mates) from Realestate prices going up and partly because the way Official GDP (which is supposedly the Real GDP, which has Inflation effects removed) is calculated nowadays means that house price inflation appears as GDP “growth” since the effects of house price increases come in via the “inputted rent” mechanism but the Inflation Indexes used to create that GDP do not include house price inflation, so by sacrificing the lives of many if not most people in the country (especially the young, for example the average age for them to leave their parent’s home in Portugal is now above 34 years old and at this point half of all University graduates leave the country as soon as they graduate) they both enrich themselves and can harp in the news all about how they made the GDP go up.
All this has knock on effects on the rest of the Economy, from the braindrain as highly educated young adults leave and the even faster population aging as people can’t afford to have kids, to shops closing because most people have less money left over after paying rent or mortgage so spend less, plus the commercial realestate market is also in a bubble so shops too suffer from higher rents. However all this is slow to fully manifest itself plus those who bought their houses before when they were cheaper don’t feel directly like the rest, and they generally don’t really mentally link the more visible effects (such as more and more empty storefronts) to realestate inflation, much less do more complex analysis of predictable effects, such as how the braindrain and fall in birthrates will impact their pensions in a decade or two.
I see, yes I definitely agree that AirBnB is part of the problem (it’s happening too here in Prague), although I think it can’t be the main cause because the price rise is also being felt in other parts of the country where there are practically no tourists…
Whilst I would be wary of saying AirBnB is the main cause (more likely it’s a big one but not the only one), keep in mind that when realestate prices go up in major cities, that pushes out people who go to cheaper places, pushing prices up in those places which in turn might push some out from those places and into even cheaper places.
So housing bubbles centered in main cities do naturally spread out from there to places were the original causes of the bubble are not present.
That is certainly a good point
Ah, yes, I forgot to mention AirBnB! Those are both good calls.
The AirBnb issue is a little complicated because I’ve seen some good arguments that it can help people afford to keep their homes. But I think that could easily be addressed by a single, simple rule: you are only allowed to rent your primary residence as determined by tax records.
This is actually a good argument but I believe it’s only valid when people sub-let empty rooms, and don’t buy whole new houses to rent out as is now more commonly the case.
In addition to only renting out single rooms, I also thought of the scenario where someone goes to visit a relative and rents their whole apartment while they’re away, perhaps when there is some major event in their town that causes all hotels to be sold out. Both of those scenarios would be addressed by the rule I proposed to only allow renting out the primary residence on AirBnB.
Agreed
Yes this sounds like a good (and importantly very simple) rule
I think I had heard of the idea before, so I didn’t come up with it. I just did a quick search and one of the first results says LA does this. There are probably other cities too…
https://www.steadily.com/blog/airbnb-short-term-rental-laws-regulations-los-angeles
Actually, this is impressive. LA seems to have it’s shit together on this issue. Do you know if house prices are still a problem there?
Most definitely. Southern California in general has some of the highest housing prices in the US. I think the AirBnB regulations are only part of the equation. They need to drastically reduce the barriers to construction of higher density housing, for instance.
LA actually has “vanlords”, people who rent out old, beat up vans parked on the street to homeless people, for hundreds of dollars a month. Some real dystopian shit if I’ve ever seen any.
Free
Social
Housing
Stop making it more complicated
Oh, I agree if you’re talking about addressing homelessness. That makes sense. If you’re advocating free social housing for every single person in the country, I’m not sure how that could be done or if it’s ever been done anywhere ever? I would be curious to hear about possible solutions though.
Massachusetts has a regional transit system, and just used that to mandate transit oriented development for all towns and cities served. It requires they zone higher density housing “as of right” within half a mile of transit. I have high hopes for that, but it will take decades and we’re starting at such a high cost of living.
However we also have the problem of a stagnant population and very little room for new development. It’s infill and replacement housing so will be even slower
Good to hear about any moves in the right direction anywhere.
I think money should be invested into investigating ways to retrofit the current urban sprawl neigborhoods to make them higher density.
The problem is everything with buildings is slow. Who can afford to replace functional buildings, and buildings remain useful for decades or more? There’s only so much you can do with infill. The only other option I can think of is to change zoning radically enough that it becomes profitable to bulldoze functional buildings. Of course that has additional environmental costs but over time should be fine
I’m personally not a fan of higher density buildings by themselves. That’s just a recipe for annoying people enough that you hope they demand better before they give up and move away. Higher density buildings needs to have some thought put into walkability, personal mobility, and transit
This is also what my knee jerk reaction would be. Do you know if it’s actually been done in any country, and whether it worked?
I don’t know, and based on a quick search, it doesn’t appear that it’s been done. California is currently working on a law to limit corporate ownership to 1,000 homes, lol.
Lol. At least a step in the right direction I guess. They should make it decrease by 100 each year
No doubt!