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Ibiza locals living in cars as party island sees rents soar
- tayo42 2y agoIs there any where in the world that's not feeling pain from housing? I'm pretty sure the entire world is struggling. Peppe I know across the US can't make housing work. Idk how I can realistically purchase a house. I was just in Europe talking with people who brought up how hard it is to buy a home. I think each little area focuses on some red herring. Transplants, tech workers, digital nomads, foriegn investors, airbnb, but can those really be the same problem everywhere in the world? Idk seems like something else is going on.
- foobarian 2y agoI wonder if the "American dream" has managed to spread to the rest of the world and now young people have unrealistic expectations that they can buy a house like young people used to be able to in the States while it was still filling up. This was not a thing in most other places, with multigenerational living being the default.
- RowanH 2y agoThe 'American Dream' is very similar in a lot of the OECD nations. NZ'er checking in. Late 40's - a good portion/most of my peer group bought houses in their mid 20's to 30's. Now the same age range can't unless they've got mega inehitances or very, very, good jobs. Ditto UK/Australia/Canada etc. All countries to a greater or lesser degree have the same cost of living crisis (arguably NZ is one of the worst at the moment).
- jeffbee 2y agoAmerica did not have 200 million naturally-occurring houses that needed to be "filled up". 20th century Americans had to build them all. This is still the obvious and best way to relieve housing costs.
- AmVess 2y agoThis county owns land which it is going to develop for housing. Their goal? $450k houses because that will bring in more tax revenue than the same number of affordable homes. Clown world indeed.
- mixmastamyk 2y agoWould kill for a $450k house. Here a 1970s condo needing complete renovation goes for 750k.
- ravelfan 2y agoWhile this is true of course, it is easy for knowledge workers to say this when we aren't the ones pounding in nails all day. We speak as if the houses just build themselves and we just have to press these buttons in the right combination like software. Everyone involved basically has better options than to build more housing so it should be no surprise we have a shortage.
- jeffbee 2y agoSure but it's a matter of turning some policy knobs, and we know where they are and how much to turn them. The policies that prevent us from building are favorable tax treatment of existing properties and financial penalties for building new ones, favorable treatment of professional labor and penalization of productive labor. The "better options" of which you speak are policy outcomes and we can change the rules.
- msie 2y agoYeah, it’s silly. There aren’t enough foreign investors to go around causing RE prices to soar everywhere.
- prpl 2y agoIt’s definitely a combination of airbnb/tourism/digital nomads on the low end, and the rich buying shit up on the high end, with both ends facing little international resistance, and pleasant places get hit hard.
- mixmastamyk 2y agoDon’t forget NIMBYS at the middle end.
- laurieg 2y agoJapan. Housing is affordable here. There's plenty of supply of single person apartments. Regular people can buy houses. Often the statistics hide this fact by comparing price per square foot, but the average apartment or house here is a lot smaller than in other places.
- standardUser 2y agoOne of the benefits of a shrinking population.
- chaostheory 2y agoThey also do not have NIMBY legislation. They are able to build and have mixed use buildings ie business on the bottom and homes on top. The reason why there’s so much inventory is that rarely any of it is a single family home with a yard. They’re an outlier.
- kalleboo 2y agoBut also just more permissive zoning. I live in a depopulating city, but even so, whenever a single-family home in my neighborhood is torn down, it is replaced with a 3-4 story multi-family unit, increasing densification. An old bowling alley was torn down and is being replaced with a massive 14-floor, 200-unit condo. Empty space near the train tracks has become two huge condo buildings (200 units each, built by Japan Rail, of course). And this is just in the past few years. Even in depopulating areas, huge projects are happening to increase housing supply as multi-generational households lose favor.
- aikinai 2y agoTokyo is not shrinking yet, but Tokyo housing is still plentiful and affordable.
- makeitdouble 2y agoI wondered if it was just a perception difference...I didn't get the feeling housing was still affordable, but it might depend on individual needs. To get an external perspective, average house pricing [0] and average rent [1] have stably rose, while average wages have stayed basicslly flat [2] during these years: [0] https://japanpropertycentral.com/2019/09/new-apartment-prices-in-japan-since-1956/ https://japanpropertycentral.com/2019/09/new-apartment-price... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1202559/japan-rent-for-apartments-in-greater-tokyo-by-layout/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1202559/japan-rent-for-a... [2] https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01631/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01631/
- 121789 2y agoJapan?
- mopsi 2y agoYou just don't hear news about affordable places because there's nothing to report. In Europe at least, housing is quite affordable outside of major cities and tourist hotspots like Ibiza. A couple with average income can get a nice home with reasonable ease in secondary cities. All you need is a 20% down payment and a steady income, of which your payments must not exceed 35%. This is not a very high bar. And it's not like the price of all real estate is that high either; the average price of 1 sq m was 3k EUR in Germany in 2023 and a typical apartment is 80-90 sq m.
- tasuki 2y agoWell yes in Germany. In the Czech Republic, an average monthly salary buys you about half a square metre. Supposing you don't spend on anything else. And most people earn less than the average...
- xattt 2y agoI am trying to imagine what relief is going to look like, but I can’t think of any easy scenario.
- ensignavenger 2y agoThere are many places in the US that still have reasonably affordable houseing.
- jeffbee 2y agoHousing costs in Italy fell continuously for the last ten years, except in the very recent past, just the last few months, there have been real-money price increases. They have no economy and nobody wants to live there.
- iancmceachern 2y agoIt's not the housing, it's the people making money off squeezing us all for housing, and the laws that allow them to do so.
- codersfocus 2y agoAnother comment mentioned it, but Austria, specifically Vienna.
- nonethewiser 2y ago> Is there any where in the world that's not feeling pain from housing? Probably 90% of the United States by area. Honestly its just an urbanization problem. There are huge amounts of homes in safe neighborhoods in places you dont want to live in for 200k. See 95% of Pennsylvania for example.
- spanktheuser 2y agoThe solution to being priced out a market is impoverish the island until is homes are affordable again. A general strike should do the trick.
- TacticalCoder 2y agoThat island lives thanks to rich tourists. What's the plan? Turn Ibiza into a slum so that rich foreigners owning houses there sell their houses? Not collect garbage? Allow crimes to run rampant? You could turn Ibiza into "not Ibiza", but be careful you may get what you ask for: a place without any economy anymore.
- AmVess 2y agoI've seen a few towns where everything shut down. Supermarket, all restaurants, gas stations closed because people working those jobs can't afford to live there at all. They even thought about bussing people in, but they had 0 takers.
- ptero 2y agoCan you name those towns and the approximate times it happened? I would likevto learn more.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoGovernment sponsored non market housing is a sustainable solution. See Vienna for an example. The problem is that you must lock away the real estate from capital, otherwise it becomes yet another asset for chasing yield. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38117223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38117223 (citations)
- mahatofu 2y agoExcellent examples. Very similar projects in Barcelona as well.
- andrewstuart 2y agoAustralia is heading this direction too. The government is obsessed with obtaining economic growth via unrestrained population growth. There's simply not enough houses to increase the population of Australia by 1 million in 18 months and keep adding 2,000 population per day into the future. People say "this won't end well". It's already ended badly and getting worse. And the government - mostly landlord owning multi house portfolios - have zero interest in fixing it.
- pcthrowaway 2y agoAhem, have you heard of Canada? About 36% more populous than Australia, with more than double the immigration target, and less habitable land.
- andrewstuart 2y agoYeah I watch with pity our Commonwealth cousins in Canada - terrible in Australia, worse in Canada. The thing is - why? Politicians want "economic growth" at literally any price. And seemingly, the population of Canada (and Australia) want this too - the politicians keep getting voted back in. Though I must say here in Australia the current government at no point gave "unconstrained population growth" as one of its policies - and an election is coming - we'll find out then if people care or not. The Australian government made a big announcement in December that it would be cutting back population growth perhaps because so many people are angry about it. And yet last month we had the largest population growth in 70 years announced - apparently the government has nothing at all to stop the additional 2,000 people a day arriving. Australia is in its worst housing crisis in its history, and at the same time there is no restriction at all on foreigners buying Australian housing, real estate is exempt from international money laundering laws - making Australian real estate one of the top places to put your criminal money from Russia or China or Burma or whatever, the government pays tax benefits to property investors so young people cannot buy, houses are being converted into AirBNB tourism accommodation. And still the government fails to act on any of this - the cynical might wonder if all these things driving up house prices is in fact enjoyed and loved and making the landlord politicians happy.
- somewhereoutth 2y agoWhen wealth becomes more unequal (across the globe), of course the rich will want to vacation more often, leaving their homes empty, while the poor will have to live in cars/tents in order to make way. Either fix strictly monetary inequality, or make sure the wealth (housing etc) is spread around more equally regardless of how much money is in someones's bank account. This needs to happen right now.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- teruakohatu 2y agoIn New Zealand we have the same problem, in sub-zero temperatures, in our alpine party capital Queenstown which is popular with international movie stars and musicians [1]. The house prices and rents are crazy high, but the tourism sector "needs" (wants) young low wage workers. You would think an equilibrium would be reached where the tourism sector / luxury housing size is limited, but it has not yet. [1] https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/queenstown/queenstown-housing-crisis-sleeping-car-sub-zero-temperatures https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/queenstown/queenstown-housing-...
- mr_toad 2y agoThe problem would solve itself if it wasn’t for local government regulations. Zoning laws mean you can’t just build large volumes of cheap accommodation.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoIt also won't solve itself if you have people who choose to live in cars so they can be there.
- mkl 2y agoI don't know about that for Queenstown. There's quite a bit of construction, but the town is beside a lake in a glacial valley, so there's very little land available (it's sandwiched between the lake and very steep hills). There's basically one narrow main road to get to other nearby towns, which have seen a lot of construction due to the demand (and in some cases have sprung into existence).
- svnt 2y agoThis argument is tired and simplistic. Zoning and other homebuilding laws also prevent large-scale tragic disasters that occur because of self-interested corner-cutting and profiteering. Many people died on a regular basis because of the unregulated living spaces you’re fantasizing about.
- diordiderot 2y ago
- franciscop 2y agoThis article is leaving a lot out IMHO. I'm from Spain and I've had friends and family working and living in Ibiza. It is a "financial paradise" to work because you make a crazy amount of money in very little time, if you can stand the drunken/drugged culture. Both "peninsula" (mainland) people and locals go work there in summer to make a little fortune. It is known that many locals work OR rent out the 2-3 summer months and with that they have enough to live for the rest of the year. While it's true that summer rent is very expensive, people who work there can definitely pay it, but then you would not save THAT much, so people find their way into cheaper accommodations, whatever that means. So while I don't know the personal story of the interviewee, it's definitely not because a lack of jobs or low pay (a problem that DOES plague most of the country). For hacker news, imagine if this article was about the "poor Google employee living in a van and cannot afford rent", you'd laugh at its face.
- DLion 2y agoAgree, I spoke with some taxi drivers who were there just for the summer season and they told me that they've been doing that every year, sharing a small flat with other taxi drivers/workers to save money and to earn enough to live the rest of the year back in their towns.
- Spooky23 2y agoThese little hacks exist everywhere. The guys who sell Christmas trees in NYC used to all be all from the Balkans. They’d show up on a tourist visa, sell their trees, live in sketch accommodation and boogie home when they sold their allocation.
- hasty_pudding 2y agoNews needs sensationalism. Thanks for posting another side of this. What you're saying makes a lot of sense.
- Terretta 2y ago> imagine if this article was about the "poor Google employee living in a van and cannot afford rent", you'd laugh at its face. You don't have to imagine it, you can read that article: "23-year-old Google employee lives in a truck in the company's parking lot and saves 90% of his income." -- https://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truck-in-parking-lot-2015-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-tru...
- Dibby053 2y agoThere is a significant number of empty houses in Ibiza because people and especially large landowners don't want to rent them because if the tenants can't pay and refuse to leave it can be hard to kick them out. Lack of renting options drives the property prices up, so there is no pressure to sell, and makes renting even more risky. It's a vicious cycle.
- mahatofu 2y agoAt the very least, Spain taxes a house for being empty and that revenue is recycled into free healthcare.
- nonethewiser 2y ago> At the very least, Spain taxes a house for being empty and that revenue is recycled into free healthcare You described the healthcare as free in the exact same sentence where you identified who pays for it. I think socialized healthcare is the correct term.
- kristiandupont 2y agoThis pedantic objection is silly. First of all, nobody (well, no adult) is going to think that free means that it didn't cost anything -- there is no manipulation going on. But secondly, I would argue that the word doesn't mean what you are implying. If a bar offers you a free beer, would you also object that it was in fact paid for by someone? What would ever be "free", by your definition? Weather?
- yuppiepuppie 2y agoSource on this? Been living in Spain for 8 years now, and my wifes family have a number of empty of apartments here. AFAIK, they do not pay tax on any of them for being empty. IMO that is one of things they can do to address the housing issue we have but I have seen no mention of this policy anywhere.
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- aorloff 2y agoEvery tourist island is having this problem.
- greybox 2y agoI live in Iceland, and the exact same thing is happening here. If fact it's worse here.
- tinakelley612 2y ago[dead]