Barcelona buys apartment building at center of eviction protests

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-17/barcelona-buys-apartment-building-at-center-of-eviction-protests

by toomuchtodo • 1 year ago

130 320 1 year ago

pestatije2• 1 year ago

i have to pay €950 for an apartment 30km from the CBD, why on earth does this guy have the right to only pay €700 to live bang in the middle of the CBD?

bell-cot4• 1 year ago

You're paying (my guess) a market rate, which scales decently.

He's getting a "fame du jour" special deal - which for-sure does not.

pestatije2• 1 year ago

whatever the deal hes getting, why is it on my and everybody elses taxes?

Ambolia• 1 year ago

It's a publicity stunt to score points while solving nothing. Same issue in Spain with squatters, it allows the goverment to confront tenants with landlords while the goverment does nothing.

ljm2• 1 year ago

Your problem still isn’t with the guy paying lower rent, but scarcity amplified by companies repurposing residential housing stock as tourist accommodation.

You too could live right in the city at an affordable rate if AirBnB and property owners didn’t force out the locals to make a quick buck on holiday makers.

energy1232• 1 year ago

Out of all the misdiagnoses of the housing crisis, this is the one I appreciate the most due to its adjacency to the truth.

By blaming AirBnB as the root cause, you're implicitly admitting that the problem is too little housing supply.

Great. So how can you increase housing supply? Your solution would be to ban AirBnB, which frees up only less than two years worth of new housing stock, while simultaneously reducing tourism revenue. This is a temporary and non durable solution that solves none of the underlying problems that will lead to a lack of supply 5 or 10 years down the road.

The durable solution is to increase housing starts by deregulation and financial incentives or public housing. If you double housing starts, in a decade you would have to ban more than five AirBnBs worth of houses to break even. This is the durable solution.

miguelxt4• 1 year ago

Hard banning Airbnbs will for sure push long-term rent prices down, but not by an amount enough to make them affordable. We already have evidence from cities with active bans. Prices in NYC or Lisbon have not come down significantly.

We still have to wait a few years to see the real effect that bans have on prices. Lowering prices at most 3-5% by banning Airbnb won't make anybody happy and will come with some negative effects like reduced tourism (and other economic activity), which is a very important part of Spain's GDP.

glompers• 1 year ago

The article says that renting residential units for short terms (of less than 32 days) is already banned citywide in Barcelona. Tourists can stay in hotels.

yes_really4• 1 year ago

No. It seems very clear that his problem is with the guy paying lower rent than him for a better apartment.

If the subsidy is done by the government (though regulations, direct subsidy, rent-control, etc), and if he pays those taxes, then his feeling of injustice are perfectly valid.

It's one thing for the government to take your money to feed people that are in need. It's another thing for the government to take your money to give someone living conditions better than your own!

motorest6• 1 year ago

i have to pay €950 for an apartment 30km from the CBD, why on earth does this guy have the right to only pay €700 to live bang in the middle of the CBD?

You have to pay €950 for an apartment 30km away because the average rent in the city center is €2000.

The average salary in Barcelona is €2800, whereas the average rent is €2000.

Do you understand the problem? I mean, answer your own question. Why do you pay €950/month to live in the boonies? Would you pay €950/month to live 30km away if you could pay less than that to live closer to the city center?

Xenoamorphous• 1 year ago

But why would anyone be entitled to be in the center? Am I entitled to a €80k BMW too?

The most desirable areas to live are not for the average salaries.

Don’t get me wrong, I think housing is one of the most basic rights that every human being should have. That doesn’t mean rent should be as cheap in highly desirable areas as in not so desirable ones. If people are living around big populous cities due to work then make public transport good, cheap etc.

jddj• 1 year ago

This sounds like the market has reached equilibrium with the average dual income family paying 35% of their gross income on shelter.

35% is a touch high but not out of line with the 30%ish recommendations from banks/estate agents over the years.

It might be an issue that the cost of the average 1br flat isn't attainable on a single average income. But I think we can see how we arrived here.

smikhanov2• 1 year ago

But why not?

guax2• 1 year ago

Maybe the best sentiment is to ask why do you have to pay 950 and not why some small minority can get a better deal.

titanomachy2• 1 year ago

30km? And you commute to Barcelona?

bell-cot4• 1 year ago

Interesting that the article talks about similar housing crises in other major European cities. But never hints at Vienna having solved the problem a century ago -

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-11-08/the-desig...

wesselbindt• 1 year ago

But think of all the poor landlords who'd be out of work if we adopted Vienna's solution on a larger scale. And what about the profit margins of Blackstone and the like? Have you no heart?

ido3• 1 year ago

Did it solve it?

I used to live in Vienna for 8 years (2005-2013). Looking at https://www.immobilienscout24.at/regional/wien/wien/wohnung-... the prices per square meter are a lot higher than I paid at the time: the cheapest rentals I saw was just above €10/m^2 (rare) and more commonly were around €15-20/m^2. When we left in 2013 we were paying €480 per month for a 65m^2 apartment (that was already cheap at the time but is even more out of the ordinary today).

Anecdotally everyone I know in Vienna started complaining about housing unaffordability around the time we left (it was never a topic when I got there) & that seems to still be the case.

barrenko• 1 year ago

Guess what happened in 2013?

hiatus• 1 year ago

€480 in 2005 is €738 today from inflation alone. The prices are almost on par with 2005 accounting for inflation.

orwin2• 1 year ago

As oh 2025, prices in Vienna are much more affordable than other European capitals. The reason is obvious, only ~10% of the available to rent housing supply is free-market, almost half is municipal housing, and the rest is a mix of other non-market housing and rent-controlled housing.

truculent• 1 year ago

They weren’t cheap, either: About 25% of a tenant’s wages went toward monthly rent

This obviously a lot to pay for such miserable housing, but it’s also significantly less than private renters currently pay in the UK[1]:

Excluding housing support, the average proportion of income spent on rent was 37% for social renters and 45% for private renters.

I’m not trying to suggest the current situation is as bad as early C20 Vienna. Thankfully, such poor conditions are not, to my knowledge, widespread. I imagine other needs like food and clothing are more affordable than they were then.

However, it does point to how expensive things have become. If we removed some regulation, would housing be pushed further towards cheaper but substandard dwellings?

I don’t think housing at 25% of low-income exists in the UK. If we extrapolated from the current, more expensive housing options, how different would 25% housing be from those in Vienna?

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/chapters-for-englis...

motorest6• 1 year ago

But never hints at Vienna having solved the problem a century ago -

You seem to be confused, and a tad ignorant too. Public housing investments are nothing new, and Barcelona has already benefitred from a massive urban development program at the turn of the century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eixample

Barcelona has already one if the highest population densities in the world. The examples you listed in Austria are already eclipsed by the massive appartment blocks in Barcelona and neighboring municipalities. Your average city block in Barcelona is already 6 stories high or greater. It's a dense urban area covered by massive residential blocks.

Even if you start demolishing blocks to replace them with hongkong-style skyscrapers, you would need a few decades to increase supply in a meaningful way, and even then the impact would be negligible.

Barcelona's problem is not supply.

codingbot3000• 1 year ago

Barcelona resident here. I think it is a combination of not enough new supply and a stupid legal situation.

As mentioned in the article, it is most attractive to rent out your apartment temporary from 1 to 11 months. Longer renting contracts are quite risky from a landlord's perspective. E.g. in Spain if your tenant goes bankrupt and does not pay the rent anymore, you cannot kick them out until they have found something else. Good luck on that. The law sounds nice because no one wants people to end up on the street, but it effectively makes small landlords exit the rental market. Protection from squatters is also nonexistent. Local newspapers are full of stories of places being occupied by squatters while empty for renovations.

Also there are these stupid local regulations around having to create social housing in every building / renovation project. That also significantly reduces new supply.

miguelxt4• 1 year ago

The fundamental issue cannot be ignored: supply and demand. Spain population has increased by 2 million in just 2 years, far outpacing residential construction. Right now, the system excludes those who cannot afford the ever-increasing rents. Rent control, although well-intentioned and a very popular policy, has numerous negative effects supported by a variety of studies both in Spain and abroad. Rent control or any other alternate system to allocate the scarce units will leave many without access to housing.

The solution, IMHO, building more, could be theoretically be championed by the State, but with ever-increasing construction costs, regulation, taxes on everything, scarcity of land in big cities, and pensions entitlements, where will the money come from? It's not cheap to build with the quality standards that we all desire everyone to have.

Building co-ops like those that exist in Vienna do exist in Spain, but they are not a panacea, the same problems that a State-run initiative has will apply.

smikhanov2• 1 year ago

    numerous negative effects supported by a variety of studies both in Spain and abroad

Would be interesting to hear about any of those effects, if you can elaborate.

dmix2• 1 year ago

Right now, the system excludes those who cannot afford the ever-increasing rents

It also creates a system where the only new buildings are luxury condos because on paper it’s usually the only thing that would turn a profit after investing a decade of hoop jumping and political wrangling. No affordable development would ever pass that sort of system.

So the gov is tasked with building affordable housing. Creating a bad situation themselves, pointing the finger at developers and only offering very expensive bandaids as the solution that happens to give them more power, money, and control over the city.

Kingmakers in an high end market while feigning solutions for the low end, and pushing the middle to the suburbs and small towns.

dumbledoren12• 1 year ago

Rent control, although well-intentioned and a very popular policy, has numerous negative effects supported by a variety of studies both in Spain and abroad.

No, it doesn't. Everywhere in Spain it works well. It was always there. Those 'studies' come out of mainly the bloated neoliberal Anglloamerican investment circles like the Brookings institute - which was cited just in this discussion.

The solution, IMHO, building more, could be theoretically be championed by the State, but with ever-increasing construction costs, regulation, taxes on everything, scarcity of land in big cities, and pensions entitlements, where will the money come from?

China is able to build housing like that for ~1.5 billion people and they don't run out of money. Maybe the problem is the bloated, destructive real estate investment sector in the West?

eitau_1• 1 year ago

Vienna is less populous now than it was 100 years ago.

awongh• 1 year ago

Singapore has also solved it to a certain degree.

aimanbenbaha3• 1 year ago

IMO if there is any model to follow to solve the housing crisis it should be Japan/Singapore. Vienna is too unique of a case and its housing market still suffers from negative externalities.

Singapore is also hard to achieve but the HDB mandate made it that the government own monopoly on land so they're incentivized to provide maximum land utility to its population.

Japan has the best land use zoning in a way it makes it so easy to build and develop. They also have a very practical view on housing and do not see it as an appreciating asset critical to accumulating wealth.

franciscop2• 1 year ago

Japan has the best land use zoning in a way it's makes it so easy to build and develop. They also have a very practical view on housing and do not see it as an appreciating asset critical to accumulating wealth.

I want to note that this is in big part due to earthquakes and nature in general. In Spain 100-year old houses (like in the article) are renovated and relatively easy to maintain. However in Japan, between the earthquakes, typhoons, and the weather in general, not only you need to be actively maintaining it (typhoons), but they become worse over time (earthquake damage accumulates).

Source: Spaniard who lives in Tokyo.

appreciatorBus4• 1 year ago

What does "solved" mean in a non-market context?

Does it mean that anyone, at any income level, and any family situation, in Austria can elect to move to Vienna and get a reasonable sized apartment within a short period of time, perhaps 1 month?

There's nothing wrong with believing that non-market housing is the way to go, but we can't judge success on rents alone.

Mistletoe• 1 year ago

That looks awful though, like a prison. If all of Vienna looked like Karl Marx Hof no one would want to go there.

owenversteeg• 1 year ago

Vienna is highly unusual because about 100 years ago, they built massive social housing projects and then the population peaked, declined precipitously, and has still not reached its former peak. Recent construction hasn't caught up with population growth so it's not a given that they will be a great example in a few decades. To be fair, the Viennese government is much more serious about building than other governments; for example, they have large amounts of buildable land "banked" for future construction [0] [1] so we shall see.

But even looking at Vienna, it's obvious that the answer to affordable housing is to build more housing. It doesn't matter who builds or who owns it. It could be a corporation building Levittown. It could be the SPÖ building the 1.1km long Karl-Marx Hof. It could be Khrushchev building Khrushchevkas. And it doesn't even have to be ugly (on the subject of Vienna, see the George-Washington-Hof.) But you do have to build, more or less continuously, and if you don't you better have a large building boom to make up for it.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/10/the-soc...

[1] https://www.wohnfonds.wien.at/english_information

freefaler5• 1 year ago

Strange that the main problem is not even mentioned:

The entire process from urban planning to construction completion can take 10-12 years, including about 5-6 years for general urban development planning and 2 years for partial planning and urban development projects.

source: https://www.bbvaresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Low-...

So may be if you solve the supply first, then you won't need to try to regulate the pricing. The law of supply and demand is like the Newton's laws of physics, it works.

But in Europe, the bureaucrats try to solve the problems created by regulation with even more regulation. It'll end badly when the far left/right use this to win the elections and who knows what will happen.

fph• 1 year ago

Systems theory tells you that everything with a big lag in it is difficult to stabilize. It's like when you want to set the correct temperature on your shower; the longer it takes for you to feel the results, the trickier it is.

hombre_fatal2• 1 year ago

Use binary search and you can get that shower dialed in three moves.

PicassoCTs• 1 year ago

But the market does not want to devalue the immo-coin by mining more coin. The market wants to pump and dump.

kubb5• 1 year ago

The law of supply and demand is like the Newton's laws of physics, it works.

Do they teach this to you guys in school? Many people religiously believe it.

Newtonian physics is a model approximating reality, but it breaks down if you analyze cases that can be safely ignored for many engineering purposes, like traveling at high speeds.

Supply and demand are worse. They’re concepts approximating certain trends in economic outcomes that almost always break down in real world situations.

For example: more supply can generate more demand. Demand can be inflexible with respect to supply. Supply and demand are unstable and can change unpredictably. In a monopoly situation price can be manipulated. Short term large supply can hamper long term.

It’s weird that people try to explain the world with supply and demand as if everyone else was an idiot who doesn’t understand simple truths, while in reality they are the ones who don’t appreciate the complexity of things like urban development.

Etheryte3• 1 year ago

While this is true, roads in urban planning are a good example of this, the more lanes you build, the more traffic you induce, I don't think it applies to housing. For most part, housing really is a simple matter of we don't build enough housing in desirable areas. In many countries worldwide, housing construction doesn't even remotely keep up with immigration and as long as that's the case, the problem won't go away no matter what spin you put on talking about it.

miguelxt4• 1 year ago

You are disregarding supply and demand because it's not a 100% bullet-proof model that can predict all price movements in all markets, times, places, or any combination of factors, and at the same time are introducing your own imperfect models and formulations:

For example: more supply can generate more demand. Demand can be inflexible with respect to supply. Supply and demand are unstable and can change unpredictably. In a monopoly situation price can be manipulated. Short term large supply can hamper long term.

Any model that tries to predict human behaviour will be imperfect, we all know that.

There is hardly a monopoly of housing in Spain, if we keep the current disconnection between supply and demand, prices will for sure keep increasing. There is evidence that building more reduces prices. It's not the only condition needed to reduce prices, but it's an important one:

https://commonwealthbeacon.org/housing/study-says-boosting-h... https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/new-construction-...

lottin2• 1 year ago

All the law of supply and demand says is that the market will reach an equilibrium where the quantity demanded equals the quantity supplied, and that such quantities as well as the equilibrium price are determined jointly by supply and demand. It doesn't say that the demand and supply curves are unmovable or that they have a particular slope.

freefaler5• 1 year ago

Newtonian physics is a model approximating reality, but it breaks down if you analyze cases that can be safely ignored for many engineering purposes, like traveling at high speeds.

It's a very good approximation and there are special cases that it doesn't work. But for a practical human life-scale reality almost all of daily use technology is based on these laws.

Does the supply/demand work in all situations? No, you need to have a at least some resemblance of a free market to let the market forces work.

The reasons we know that this law is working are not only empirical understanding (try selling your laptop on ebay and you'll empirically understand why) but there were at least 2 testing approaches that validated it:

1) Experimental validation via:

- Market simulation: Repeated trading rounds (Chamberlin, Smith) show prices converging to equilibrium when participants learn from prior outcomes. Public price data accelerates this process.

- Policy tests: Lab experiments confirm tax/price controls create predictable shortages (e.g., rent controls reducing housing availability).

2) Modeling approaches:

- Random coefficients logit models: Isolate price-quantity relationships by controlling for unobserved factors like brand loyalty.

- Industry analyses: Cement and airline markets demonstrate markup adjustments aligning with supply-demand predictions under competition.

- Instrumental variables: Cost shifters (e.g., raw material prices) validate causal price-quantity responses.

It’s weird that people try to explain the world with supply and demand as if everyone else was an idiot who doesn’t understand simple truths about the world, while in reality they are the ones who doesn’t appreciate the complexity of things like urban development.

This is a strange argument. So basically the supply/demand curve works, but there are some consequences if you change the supply. Yes, they are. But if you want to have cheaper housing you will not save it if you don't build more even if there are other negatives from increased supply. And yes, urban development might be complicated, but the basics of "people need to live somewhere" is not. You might get favelas like in Brazil, but if your city grows and you don't build, because the people in the government and landlords get squeeze more profit from the market the problem will not be solved.

atmosx2• 1 year ago

Do they teach this to you guys in school? Many people religiously believe it.

Well, up until 2008, that was common wisdom. Post-2008? Anyone still pushing that line won’t get far. In this case, that must be the free part of OP’s nickname speaking, right before the faler kicks in.

aimanbenbaha3• 1 year ago

For example: more supply can generate more demand. Demand can be inflexible with respect to supply. Supply and demand are unstable and can change unpredictably. In a monopoly situation price can be manipulated. Short term large supply can hamper long term.

What you're describing here is jevon's paradox and it particularly works on unfulfilled markets with high price elasticity. Additionally the field of economics deals a lot of what you're describing in the contexts of monopolies/monopsonies.

But as a general rule of thumb, if something has an inelastic demand (as in housing) the law of supply and demand will always be the guiding concept to explain the shortage and high prices.

whatshisface3• 1 year ago

All of the scenarios you're talking about are covered in economics 101. You're describing supply and demand with them.

In supply and demand, you have these things called "supply curves," and "demand curves." The price is on the x axis, and the volume cleared in the marketplace is on the y axis. Changes in the situation move the curves around.

Gimpei• 1 year ago

I’m sad to say that you are the one who does not understand urban development. There’s actually quite a lot of research on induced demand (which is the name for what you’re talking about) and there isn’t any evidence of it in the housing market. Rather, new construction lowers rents across the board. Which makes sense. If a bunch of new people want to live in a place and no new housing is made for them, what else can happen but a rise in prices?

Here’s just a taste. Do please read and if you have a problem with the identification strategies, I would love to hear it.

- https://blocksandlots.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Do-New-... - https://www.dropbox.com/s/oplls6utgf7z6ih/Pennington_JMP.pdf... - https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/316/ - https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1325... - https://furmancenter.org/files/Supply_Skepticism_-_Final.pdf - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009411902... - http://andreas-mense.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Mense-202...

BurningFrog• 1 year ago

I'm sorry, but you are completely clueless about supply and demand. All the gotchas you think you've discovered are well known and covered in economics 101 or at least 102.

I strongly recommend you find a good book and educate yourself. Grasping this stuff is the easiest way to understand the world better than most. It's also a source of lifelong frustration as you see how cluelessly the world is governed...

yes_really4• 1 year ago

Supply and demand are worse. They [...] almost always break down in real world situations.
For example: more supply can generate more demand. Demand can be inflexible with respect to supply. Supply and demand are unstable and can change unpredictably. In a monopoly situation price can be manipulated. Short term large supply can hamper long term.

Supply and demand do not "break down" in any of your examples. You literally wrote how supply and demand apply in each of your examples. It is simply wrong to say they "break down".

raverbashing• 1 year ago

And to be very honest, the problem in Spain is much lower than in other European countries (including the UK) and they keep building

mihaaly• 1 year ago

Property market in prime spots has to be regulated everywhere and is regulated everywhere including the (soon to be changing) freeest of the free country of US.

Probably the real problem is the not enough regulation against investment focused property dealings when the population suffers with this essential (next to food, water, health) immediate and everyday human need. Those not letting the money do what it is for and not spend it but want to park it as long as possible drawing out increasing amount from the circulation laying dormant in property where it is not even not doing anything useful (but the fake value increase generated by parking itself) but suffocate the remaining part of society and economy sucking away money from other places dearly needed. Pulling back functional economy a lot.

Law makers usually have high stakes in property ownership or are influenced very heavily by those with lots of wealth to be parked for the eternity and there are not enough regulations against speculative investments in this essential and everyday human need, distorting it, ruining it for the population really need it for its real purpose: shelter.

Normally I'd say let people do what they want and after they drove the cities into ground with creating unlivable situations, take away its essence and charm and attractiveness as places where people live and strive then it will reborn on the ashes made by excessive tourism and investments, have a natural cycle of birth and death, but those could take several generations and we all live only a single one, it is difficult to watch the cities ruined by the greedy and the selfish while having a coffee with a 'this is fine' look.

jisnsm• 1 year ago

Not only is the supply side constrained; Spain has received over 2 million immigrants in the last five years who need housing and who tend to go live in the cities since that’s where jobs are.

thrance4• 1 year ago

How's the free market working for you? Is rent cheaper on your side of the pond? Can you afford your medicine?

I am tired of this zealotry toward free market absolutism, thougtlessly reciting econ 101's tenets as a mantra. Free stuff is good actually, some industries just work better and more efficiently as a centralized common: electricity, water, rail, healthcare... That's an empirical fact. I believe housing too could be on the list.

There is more to the economy than rational agents systematically looking for what's best at the lowest prices and lawful entrepreneurs tirelessly striving to improve the utility of their customers.

dmix2• 1 year ago

Housing is as regulated in American big cities as it is in Europe. That’s always been the critique in SF and NYC and elsewhere?

Aggressive city planning, outdated unchanging zoning, backlogs, rapid growth of heritage building, NIMBY protectionism supported by municipal gov, extreme tenant laws disincentivizing renting half empty properties, etc etc. The only solutions they’ve tried are rent control and extremely slow gov investment in housing which have done nothing to help (rent control historically reduces supply making the problem worse). They’ve tried everything except liberalizing the market and letting people build.

We don’t need to wait for huge gov spending programs to solve a problem when there’s already a mountain of capital waiting to build the second the gov lets them do it.

robocat3• 1 year ago

some industries just work better and more efficiently as a centralized common: electricity, water, rail, healthcare... That's an empirical fact.

Not a fact. Easily demonstrated by falsification by examples of each of those where they have failed because of centralization. Infrastructure is deviously hard to get right. Edit: we can find examples of decentralized infrastructure that works great (internet, Apps, banking).

Healthcare in particular must always fail because there's an unreasonably infinite cost for and ideal service. There's no good answer to what price (what resource limitations) we should put on fixing little Jimmy's cancer. Governments struggle to make compromises in healthcare, and plenty of citizens are super unhappy with any compromises made. Of course a free market can't fix that problem either. Disclosure: I'm not a free market zealot.

Too many people want to define sides and then get idealist about "their side"; how tiresome. Perhaps you are similar to the free market zealots?

I believe housing too could be on the

Be careful of what you wish for. Government housing is rarely brought out as an example of success? Maybe Singapore. "Too much government" is a common reason for housing (market) failure. Supply availability is mostly constrained by regulations. Demand is driven by desirability. House prices are driven by mortgage availability in developed countries. House unavailablity is often because of governmental choices over regulations and interest rates. Governments obviously mostly fail to get those right. What makes you believe a government can get socialised housing right?

We don't have infinite resources. Neither government provided services nor free markets solve that. Anyone answering with either of those solutions is the same.

You might find this article interesting: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/08/30/libertarians-took-c...

ipsento6062• 1 year ago

How's the free market working for you?

There isn't a free market in housing in any large American city. They all have overly zealous zoning policies that restrict density, driving up prices.

temp00345• 1 year ago

The law of supply and demand is like the Newton's laws of physics, it works.

Adam Smith was not aware of advertising. Suppliers can fabricate demand to manipulate the price. It's not a law, it's an assumption about human psychology and a wrong one.

In the case of Barcelona, supply is limited due to the geography of the area (sea/mountain) and the inner city is already extremely dense.

freefaler5• 1 year ago

Suppliers can fabricate demand to manipulate the price. It's not a law, it's an assumption about human psychology and a wrong one.

Really? Try selling pork sausages to Saudi market. There are many failed startups with huge marketing budgets failed, because there were not enough demand for their products.

guax2• 1 year ago

That's why real estate in New York and SFO is so cheap and accessible. Free market!

mmiyer• 1 year ago

The housing market in San Francisco is very much not free. Most areas are single family zoned so you are not allowed to build apartments (which are very much needed to meet demand), and extensive approvals are required to build anything. https://thefrisc.com/how-long-it-really-takes-to-get-a-build...

Although it is true that the problem of excessive bureaucracy is not exclusive to Europe and very common in the US too.

BobAliceInATree2• 1 year ago

Who said a free market must be cheap or accessible?

appreciatorBus4• 1 year ago

If real eastate in NYC & SFO is a free market, why do homeowners & landowners need to go through a political process & seek favour with neighbours in order to get permission to build a 3 storey apartment building?

A world where bakers had to seek permission of other bakers to increase their daily bread production wouldn't be called a market, it would be called a cartel, and no one would be surprised to see bread prices rising through the roof if the cartel members were successful at enforcement.

Oarch• 1 year ago

It's the wild profiteering that must be addressed first. Otherwise the already wealthy buy up the new properties and the problem grows worse

Funes-• 1 year ago

main problem

You mean mass immigration and greed?

atmosx2• 1 year ago

The situation is much the same in cities like Dublin, Athens, and London. The issue lies in voter demographics. Older generations, tend to be homeowners and homeowners have a vested interest in rising property values, not declines. As a result, politicians cater to them because they are the ones who turn out to vote.

jsdwarf• 1 year ago

IMHO the crisis is fueled by the fact that more people want to enjoy the beauty of barcelona short-term (tourists) AND long term (digital nomads moving and working from there). Short term stayers "pay" with increasing hotel&airbnb prices, long-term stayers with low salaries. According to Glassdoor, a software engineer in Barcelona has a 30-40% lower salary than the same position in e.g. Vienna or Berlin. And believe me, hiring in Barcelona is easy.

holoduke• 1 year ago

Finding good talent is hard. Spain is filled with low grade coders. A bit unrespectful, but I have experienced it already for many many years. And not only tech. Also sales etc. Quality output is hard to find there.

vrnvu• 1 year ago

Spain is filled with low grade coders.

Are you hiring junior or lower-budget developers? That might explain your experience. I've worked with great engineers in Spain, but of course, like anywhere, quality varies.

dumbledoren12• 1 year ago

The way I see it, the biggest factor that is amplifying the crisis is that the investors (mostly American companies and individuals) and nomads (Apparently 50% of them American or something), have much more usable cash compared to Europeans due to the bloated investment tools and high cost of living in the US. As a result, they buy the housing under the house of Europeans in multiples, swiftly gentrifying neighborhoods with short-term rentals or just parking cash on housing to make a quick buck.

mezod• 1 year ago

Never let a good crisis go to waste. If you can use this one to finish the catalan middle class, go for it!

bombcar5• 1 year ago

Has this been tried? Create a non-profit (coop perhaps?) company that owns a residential building and rents at something akin to market rates or near it, but continually invests any profit into producing additional housing?

pintxo• 1 year ago

It is a common model in Germany, together with city/state owned companies. The latter have often be privatized in the early 2000s, unfortunately.

clayhacks• 1 year ago

I’ve heard of this project [0] creating a housing commons that owns the building and sells fractionalized “rent credits” to fund the initial purchase, with the plan of once one building is paid off they can purchase more. Not sure how it’s doing tho

0: https://www.lowimpact.org/categories/economy/housing-commons...

carom• 1 year ago

The problem with rent control policies is the value of properties have gotten away from what the rents justify. For a normal investor this means evicting everyone and rebuilding. For a coop that is trying to keep things rented it means that they are unprofitable.

In LA for example, you can never get a rent controlled rent back to market. If someone is paying $600 for a 1 bedroom you're never going to catch back up to $1800.

All that said, I don't know why it has to be non profit. What you described is a just a real estate developer. Zoning is a more limiting factor than anything else.

bombcar5• 1 year ago

The idea would be a real estate developer that has no reasons to extract profits beyond what is necessary to operate.

By staying near market rates you’re not “lottery winning” some people. By reinvesting all profit into additional units, you’re going to slowly drive the costs down.

kjkjadksj• 1 year ago

It depends on the market. Rent control in LA is 4% a year allowable increase. Rents supposedly went down over the last year or two so rent control worked in the favor of landlords that year who raise it 4% no matter what happens. And once you have priced out your tenant with the constant march of yearly 4% increases you can set rent at market rate or even higher if you’d like after they move out.

In other words the $600 rent controlled apartment is a myth.

derdrdirk3• 1 year ago

IMO it is good that Barcelona bought the building. I don't think regulating rent prices and the housing market helps lower rents.

In Poblenou, a district of Barcelona where I live, the city has decided that 50-70% of each property sold has to be purposed for social housing, i.e. limiting the rent to a fourth of the market price and choosing the tenants. Many of the district buildings are abandoned factory halls. I am rennovating one of them to become a house for my family, but am now forced to rent half of it to a poor family. From what I can see from the neighborhood is that there is almost no building activity and that private investments have stopped.

MysticFear2• 1 year ago

Europe will do everything, except build more housing supply, to lower rents.

betaby• 1 year ago

Europe is not unique in this. Canada will go extra mile in order not to build.

epistasis8• 1 year ago

It's the perfect political position if you want to pacify the less economically literate non-land-owners while also pleasing the land-owning class.

So we do it inside US cities too.

mytailorisrich6• 1 year ago

Or limit immigration to reduce demand...

In some European countries population growth is only due to immigration. In Spain almost 19% of the population is foreign-born and annual population growth is >1%!

It's quite odd that everyone is concerned about the "housing crisis" but few people want to mention the biggest root cause, even here which is supposed to be about curiosity...

cyberax8• 1 year ago

Building more housing does not reduce rents (longer-term). It increases them.

Your _only_ option is to make smaller cities (and suburbs) more attractive.

Sorry. Harsh but true.

cycomanic• 1 year ago

But if you look at many cities you'll see that population has not grown significantly. What has happened is Airbnb which has made it viable to take a significant portion of the housing stock off the regular market. Just look at the inner cities of many places (e.g. Nice) in the off season, they are completely empty. The other thing is that rents going up dramatically is a global phenomenon, e.g. Australia's building industry is relatively unregulated and it experienced a housing boom (as did many places in Europe btw), and still rents shot through he roof.

The argument that high rents are mainly due to large regulations and lack of building is largely not supported by the evidence. I mean, in most Europe there was such a building boom (due to low interest rates) that sand for concrete was getting scarce.

Tade02• 1 year ago

My very much European country has been building like crazy for the past two decades. Real estate still shot up in lockstep with the rest of the world because you can't and you won't build faster than people who see homes chiefly as an investment buy property.

It got to a point where construction isn't even really providing housing, because the units are unusable for regular people. There's an apartment block of just studios in my neighborhood which are not up to code (too small) but were grandfathered in as construction started before it changed. The change was enacted so that developers would stop making such useless buildings.

China built enough to house its entire population twice over. Didn't help them keep housing affordable just how the price of gold goes up and down despite a steady increase in supply.

We're well past the point where naive supply and demand is effective. There's infinite, induced demand.

motorest6• 1 year ago

Europe will do everything, except build more housing supply, to lower rents.

I recommend you open Google maps, google Barcelona, and look at it. The whole city is a dense urban area, surrounded by steep hills. The whole city is covered with >6 story apartment blocks. This isn't the US, where you need to drive 8h to the nearest town.

gadders• 1 year ago

Or prevent mass migration.

whyever• 1 year ago

Except for Vienna.

regularjack• 1 year ago

In many cities in Europe, including Barcelona, there is no space to build more houses, so alternative solutions are required.

mytailorisrich6• 1 year ago

Rent controls don't work because they do the opposite of what would be needed: they reduce supply and increase demand whereas you'd want to increase supply and reduce demand.

righthand2• 1 year ago

How do you reduce demand on an over populated planet where building happens slower that selling?

righthand2• 1 year ago

If private investment had allowed for people of all income types to live in your neighborhood, then the investment wouldn’t stop. However from your description it sounds like the “private investment” was people similar to you that wanted to create a neighborhood of ONLY private investor housing (wealthy). That’s why Barcelona decided that 50-70% must be available for lower income levels. Otherwise it ends up like America where only 0-20% of housing must be affordable and the market ends up being mostly 2nd homes for the wealthy. Mostly empty buildings, dead neighborhoods, and airbnbs.

derdrdirk3• 1 year ago

There are many people that are willing to rent at the market rate? I would argue that if there is more supply on the market property owners will be forced to rent at lower prices?

For those who do not I would create incentives like raising taxes for empty property.

simplerulezzz• 1 year ago

Simple rules can fix this and technology can help. Only residents can buy real estate. Only one property per household. They have to live in it at least 6 months a year. The rest of the 6 month they could rent, but only at a long term price. If a rental developer wishes to buy they should be steered in a area where rental development is allowed and encouraged. And then enforce the squatting laws. Because that is hurting the local population as well.

radu_floricica5• 1 year ago

And, I'm saying this in the nicest way possible, gives you the right to make up rules on what I can do with my property?

Measures as drastic as this need correspondingly dire reasons. You can call it "housing crisis", but the truth is there are many ways to fix this that don't come even close to this level of communism.

Dezoning, for once - I've linked this before: https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-japan-succ...

Simply building more, and encouraging people to build (instead of encouraging them to do absolutely anything else)

Or, of last resort, what this article is describing - use public funds to buy buildings and rent them cheaply. It's insane, if you do the math, but it's a lot less insane than rent control or what you're suggesting.

(apologies if Poe's Law).

IncreasePosts3• 1 year ago

Emancipate your child and sell it to them!

crooked-v2• 1 year ago

I don't think regulating rent prices and the housing market helps lower rents.

We have proof from studies that rent control actively makes things worse for everyone, including the people currently on rent control, because owners convert buildings to condos or exit the market entirely, actually raising average rents for rent control tenants. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-eviden...

dumbledoren12• 1 year ago

We have proof from studies that rent control actively makes things worse for everyone

There is rent control everywhere in Spain and it didn't make anything worse. For some reason this 'rent control make everything worse' always originates from the Angloamerican financial discourse. And not surprisingly, the reference you gave is from a neoliberal institute...

consumer451• 1 year ago

This anecdotal, but rent control sure was nice in Santa Monica when I lived there. I could have never stayed there as long as I did if not for rent control. Neither could any of the old ladies in my building. Everyone aside from the land lords seemed to love it.

dumbledoren12• 1 year ago

private investments have stopped

Amazing how you say it as if it was a bad thing. Those 'private investments' are precisely what are bloating the price of housing.

derdrdirk3• 1 year ago

From the sample of my direct neighborhood I can tell that there are many empty former warehouses that could be turned into housing stock. I don't see the city developing any of those neither.

stackedinserter2• 1 year ago

It's not "Barcelona" that is buying it, it's the rest of the city residents.

rexpop2• 1 year ago

Or is it their constituent cells? Or their constituent molecules?

stackedinserter2• 1 year ago

You can try to be a clown as much as you want, but there's no "city money", it's tax payers' money that city gave to a bunch of assholes that decided they're entitled for $700/mo rent in one of the most desirable city of the world.

dumbledoren12• 1 year ago

Europe builds housing as fast as it can. Barcelona added 100-200k units in the last few years at least. But Europe is small and the regions like Barcelona etc that are targeted by external investors can not cope with the domestic demand and the housing price bubble the enormous quantities of cash those investors are pouring. There is limited space. Texas is half the size of entire Western Europe. Places like Barcelona are just Mediterranean river basins that are squeezed in between mountain ranges and they have even less space.

Basically there is no way any European country can handle the real estate bloat that American and other foreign investors are causing and they have no obligation to do that either.

Barcelona buys apartment building at center of eviction protests

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