I'm not convinced that all of these places are suffering a shortage of accommodation (a shortage of property investment opportunities, certainly). It's worth r

I'm not convinced that all of these places are suffering a shortage of accommodation (a shortage of property investment opportunities, certainly). It's worth remembering that a speculative boom creates extra demand. As far as I recall it was almost universally accepted that Ireland had a shortage of supply ten years ago. Then the GFC happened and it very quickly became apparent that the shortage was of investment opportunities, not homes. EDIT: For some actual data related to this phenomenon, consider the Speculative Vacancies Report[0] published each year by Melbourne group Prosper Australia. Melbourne is, like many major anglosphere cities (London, Sydney, Vancouver, Auckland, etc), suffering something of a property price crisis. Each year Prosper Australia determines which Melbourne properties are vacant using water consumption data provided by the city's water utilities[1]. If you accept the narrative that is usually presented in the media; "prices are high because of a shortage of homes", then you would expect areas with the highest capital gains to be closely correlated with the areas that have the lowest vacancy rates. In actual fact the correlation is unintuitively the other way around - the areas with the highest capital gains have the highest vacancy rates (approaching 30% in the case of Melbourne's Docklands area). [0] https://www.prosper.org.au/2015/12/09/speculative-vacancies-8/ https://www.prosper.org.au/2015/12/09/speculative-vacancies-... [1] Compare with the method for determining vacancy rates that is typically reported in the media: asking property managers what proportion of properties on their books are currently vacant.