Comment by reed1234 - Hacker Neue

reed1234 Dec 18, 2025 parent

Is it not a supply and demand problem? Then the only rational solution to get prices down is to build more housing.

em500 Dec 18, 2025

Almost everywhere the issues with housing boil down to 1) location constitute a large part of the value and desirability, 2) substitutability between houses in different locations is limited, 3) the most desirable locations will have the strongest opposition from local residents to increase supply.

nemomarx Dec 18, 2025

More supply is crucial but efforts to reduce demand in the mean time probably won't hurt either. If tourists can stay in hotels and hostels that take up less housing that seems good?

But you still need to build more housing obviously

reed1234 OP Dec 18, 2025

Wouldn’t that cause an artificial pressure against construction?

skeeter2020 Dec 18, 2025

I don't think dramatically, because the issue right now is that residential housing can be used for short-term commercial accomodation. It feels like the connection between these supply & demand curves is limited.

mrtksn Dec 18, 2025

It's not that more houses are needed, its that more houses are needed at specific location and the people in that specific location don't like the idea of demolishing houses and make them taller or turn a city park into housing.

There are so many empty and decaying homes all over Europe, in Italy they sell houses for 1 Euro. Yes there's a catch but that catch is that you are supposed to renovate the house for a cost that ranges from 20K euros to 100K euros and this is still quite cheap considering that you end up with a proper house at a picturesque location.

IncreasePosts Dec 18, 2025

The problem is people don't "just" want cheap housing - they want the character of the area to remain the same. But, those two things are frequently incompatible.

vvpan Dec 18, 2025

Some places derive their identity and tourism income largely from how they look. Building could be slaying the goose that lays the golden egg.

embedding-shape Dec 18, 2025

Also, some places physically cannot grow outwards anymore, either because other cities are in the way or because of geographical elements like mountains being in the way. Barcelona is one such city, with one of the highest population density per km2. Only way is to build taller buildings, but no one wants to live in a city where you can't see the sky (ya ya, except Hong Kong and other places, don't ask me how they do it).

FabHK Dec 18, 2025

Quality of life in HK is quite high, btw, plenty of green, parks, and sky. (However, no cycling in the centre, only the outer areas or islands.)

embedding-shape Dec 18, 2025

Yes, I know, I was there again very recently and it's still mostly as nice as I remembered, lovely city all around and fascinating buildings, infrastructure and overall city :) It's quite different than other metropolitan cities, and I didn't mean it as a jab or anything, was just trying to "paint a picture", no offense meant :)

earthnail Dec 18, 2025

I’d argue it’s not as simple as that. A city like Lisbon with a sudden influx of expats risks moving to a very unhealthy economic environment.

Expats come, locals are pushed out, existing business is replaced by business catering towards expats. But an economy built on being a trendy expat location is not sustainable. Expats will leave to a new place eventually, and then the city is dead. This dynamic is accelerated by the fact that locals are forced out when expacts come, but the city was attractive in the first place because of how charming locals made it.

If you run the city - and imagine it’s a company, and you’re the CEO - you can see that your city is falling for a hype train that will eventually kill it. The smart thing is to not let that hype train happen.

Because expat purchase power is a mutliple of your locals, you need to find other levers. Every company would do the same thing.

This item has no comments currently.

Preferences

Keyboard Shortcuts

Story Lists

Navigation

Miscellaneous