Comments by "looseycanon" (@looseycanon) on "Why are European Rents Skyrocketing?" video.
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There's whole host of reasons for this.
1) If you own a piece of land, you can't build a dwelling on it. It needs to be prezoned for residential purpose... which makes spread between farming land and construction slab some twenty to to forty to one...
2) Landlords don't have any incentive to lower their income by lowering rents, and have all the power to shift ANY increases in costs and taxes on to the tennant. Meaning that landlords essentially created a cartel, without ever meeting. We Czechs deregulated rents a while back with promisses of lower rates and better maintained buildings, because the market would force home owners to compete... But someone with microeconomics 101 course under their belts would tell, that doesn't happen to a service, that's this price inflexible as housing!
3) Environmental regulation for new construction forces all of us to invest more in unnecessary things like solar panels, or having to use thermal pumps instead of gas, coal or wood furnaces. The green ideology is coming home to roost. Only those, who don't support it, now have to pay the price of it in completely unaffordable housing, returning us to the effective status of serfs. Basically all other environmental regulation inteisifies this problem, because it increases other costs of living and holding down a job, while not providing corresponding increases in incomes, meaning, people have to save longer for down payment, which is all but preempted by points 2) and 4). Making life more expensive is not going to help and will not save the planet either.
4) Employers are not willing to hire and pay at rate of minimum economic wage (one that covers housing, food and drinks, clothing, expenses to hold down the job, transportation and some small past time activities). I take wage just below median. My wage would have to double, if it were to satisfy the above mentioned definition. As a result, I and others like me, have to stay with our parents in our childhood rooms, instead of setting up and raising families of our own and having children. Currently, even families earning median wage qualify for housing assistance from the state, how low wages are.
So, what needs to change?
1) Land ownership needs to guarantee ability to build any housing for one self and their family, irrespective of parcel type.
2) Rent controls need to be brought back, along with huge empty homes tax. Accounting of landlords needs to be made public. The aim being, to force properties owned by investors to get activated, turning them from investment to rental properties, or get them on the market to be sold to actual families living in them.
3) All environmental regulation needs to be scrapped.
4) Employers need to be forced into hiring people, training them for their jobs and paying them a living wage. No more crying, that they can't find the talent, when those same companies are turning away graduates.
Note that I didn't mention interest rates so far. That is, because they mean nothing for housing! Housing is one of basic necessities to maintain income, kind of like fuel for your car or a tram card, meaning, you always pay, what the last housing unit costs, irrespective of price! Interest rates work for consumer loans, not mortgages, because a drill or a fishing rod are not a freaking house! Those you can go without!
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