You have to be a complete moron (and pretty ignorant) to believe housing prices are so high because “there is simply not enough supply”. Have you lot slept through the last decades? Do you know anything that’s happening?
Loads of people want to live in cities today, and at least in the west, it’s become more and more difficult to build housing. Therefore demand far outstrips supply.
It’s speculative investments, housing as assets instead of, well, housing. In almost every major city in the west there is an astonishing number of empty apartments. In my hometown of Berlin there is essentially one large corporation that owns most of the city as investment.
Also, new housing is constantly being built - but not for (average) people to live in it.
You may also recall that the whole thing came crashing down in 2008? Or have we just forgotten what happened there and the effects it has to this day.
The US is uniquely fucked. What the rest of the west shows though is that the housing crisis exists even without the idiocy that is American suburbanism. The consistent factor across the board is housing-as-profit.
You have to be a complete moron (and pretty ignorant) to believe housing prices are so high because “there is simply not enough supply”. Have you lot slept through the last decades? Do you know anything that’s happening?
What else is it?
Loads of people want to live in cities today, and at least in the west, it’s become more and more difficult to build housing. Therefore demand far outstrips supply.
It’s speculative investments, housing as assets instead of, well, housing. In almost every major city in the west there is an astonishing number of empty apartments. In my hometown of Berlin there is essentially one large corporation that owns most of the city as investment. Also, new housing is constantly being built - but not for (average) people to live in it.
You may also recall that the whole thing came crashing down in 2008? Or have we just forgotten what happened there and the effects it has to this day.
Supply is definitely part of the problem. I’m not familiar with a single expert who claims otherwise.
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The US is uniquely fucked. What the rest of the west shows though is that the housing crisis exists even without the idiocy that is American suburbanism. The consistent factor across the board is housing-as-profit.
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