The solution to house prices increase is to build more houses, but the protests demand to freeze prices instead of building more. Are they dumb or is it intentional to keep their cities small and exclusive?
> Are they dumb or is it intentional to keep their cities small and exclusive?
Madrid has 3.4Mln people and is the second-largest city in the EU. How big do you want it to become?
I disagree on "just build more". There was a time where salaries moved more or less line with cost of living, and especially rents, but with AirBnB and estate funds sucking up any and all places they find, there's an enormous pressure that drives up rents for common people, which already struggle as-is to make ends meet. "Just build more" would simply keep pushing those towards the edges of town over time, while the city becomes a glorified luxury hotel that only rich people can afford. I welcome new regulation to combat this.
I just hope this event shatters any hope for the ultra-right parties that voted against it, and that people remember this. Ultimately, if anyone will build more, it'll still be the large real estate companies and funds that keep increasing rents on their tenants.
Nothing wrong with estate funds owning homes as long as you keep building. They will invest at slight profits and that is why to give flexibility that renters need.
Just need to prevent them from hoarding land or delaying building.
> Madrid has 3.4Mln people and is the second-largest city in the EU. How big do you want it to become?
Bigger, obviously. Because the number of people who want to live in Madrid or visit it is higher than that. This can create a lot of economic surplus. Part of that surplus can be used to pay off locals (e.g. with housing in the newly built stock) so they win too.
The real problem, as far as I can tell, is that there's no socially accepted system for paying off locals. So locals end up resisting growth, because there's nothing in it for them except higher rents, and everyone loses.
Last time they touched the housing laws one of the brilliant things they did was to force the owner of the flat to pay the expenses for signing the leasing contract of their tenants, before that change this was paid by the tenant. What happened is the landlords switched from long term rentals to short term rentals because they did not modify that clause for those type of rentals, so the tenants got the worse outcome: rental contracts of 11 months instead of 5 years, which also opens the door to massive rent increases every 11 months or eviction instead of just the inflation rate of the year under the other contracts.
They also keep increasing the difficulty of evicting non paying tenants, taking a lot of rentals out of the market because owners are simply afraid of not being able to evict a non paying tenant, or making prices increase to account for that risk.
> was to force the owner of the flat to pay the expenses for signing the leasing contract of their tenants
The reality is, anyone renting in Spain can readily tell you things don't work this way, if you query this, they go with someone else. Tenants paying the contract fee has an enormous momentum and it's way to easy for landlords to ignore it, in our hot housing market.
I also reject "just building more", at least in already too big cities. I think a more viable long-term approach would be to foster the economy in such way that creates more jobs in smaller cities. Spain needs cities like "Düsseldorf" or "Austin".
I am sceptical of this kind of central planning. Fighting against organic growth and artificially trying to increase jobs in other cities seems like it would cost a lot more as a whole than trying to solve the problem where it actually exists.
You are right to be sceptical and should be. However in this particular case, what we see today, is exactly the outcome of central planning, from the previous regime that ended in the 70s, which effectively decimated industry on the countryside and forced everyone to live in large cities.
You keep building until everyone has a house. There is no such thing as "too big".
The Dutch government designed entire cities and reclaimed land from the sea in the 1970s and it's already full. Human civilization is endless growth or death.
Tokyo has almost 15 million and works very well as a city. China is building many new cities close to the big cities to allow housing. The young population needs to live in the big cities because where the jobs are. Freezing prices will not solve the problem for the vast majority of the people besides the ones that were lucky to born in the place before the freeze.
jadermcs · · focus · HN ↗
plqbfbv · · focus · HN ↗
Madrid has 3.4Mln people and is the second-largest city in the EU. How big do you want it to become?
I disagree on "just build more". There was a time where salaries moved more or less line with cost of living, and especially rents, but with AirBnB and estate funds sucking up any and all places they find, there's an enormous pressure that drives up rents for common people, which already struggle as-is to make ends meet. "Just build more" would simply keep pushing those towards the edges of town over time, while the city becomes a glorified luxury hotel that only rich people can afford. I welcome new regulation to combat this.
I just hope this event shatters any hope for the ultra-right parties that voted against it, and that people remember this. Ultimately, if anyone will build more, it'll still be the large real estate companies and funds that keep increasing rents on their tenants.
cinntaile · · focus · HN ↗
Ban AirBnB's and ban estate funds from owning homes.
Ekaros · · focus · HN ↗
Just need to prevent them from hoarding land or delaying building.
cinntaile · · focus · HN ↗
cousin_it · · focus · HN ↗
Bigger, obviously. Because the number of people who want to live in Madrid or visit it is higher than that. This can create a lot of economic surplus. Part of that surplus can be used to pay off locals (e.g. with housing in the newly built stock) so they win too.
The real problem, as far as I can tell, is that there's no socially accepted system for paying off locals. So locals end up resisting growth, because there's nothing in it for them except higher rents, and everyone loses.
ErneX · · focus · HN ↗
They also keep increasing the difficulty of evicting non paying tenants, taking a lot of rentals out of the market because owners are simply afraid of not being able to evict a non paying tenant, or making prices increase to account for that risk.
ricardobayes · · focus · HN ↗
The reality is, anyone renting in Spain can readily tell you things don't work this way, if you query this, they go with someone else. Tenants paying the contract fee has an enormous momentum and it's way to easy for landlords to ignore it, in our hot housing market.
ErneX · · focus · HN ↗
danaris · · focus · HN ↗
ErneX · · focus · HN ↗
ricardobayes · · focus · HN ↗
cinntaile · · focus · HN ↗
ricardobayes · · focus · HN ↗
TitaRusell · · focus · HN ↗
The Dutch government designed entire cities and reclaimed land from the sea in the 1970s and it's already full. Human civilization is endless growth or death.
jadermcs · · focus · HN ↗