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by nagrom 5822 days ago
This is absolutely true. I am moving to CERN this weekend and found that securing somewhere to live was extremely stressful, not to mention expensive.

I am actually surprised that, given that housing is a basic human need, there is no mass-market apartment-finding company that takes all the horrible awkward work out of finding an apartment and makes it easy and convenient. I've no idea how you'd do it - maybe build entire neighbourhoods based on typical lifestyle choice sets and market those individually. Maybe something like that exists in the US? I've never seen someone successfully do that in Europe.
1 comments
enjo 5822 days ago
Why is housing so hard to come by anyways? I'm just curious.. it would seem like someone would rise to fill that need if people are literally standing in line to be interviewed for the chance to rent a place.
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mattm 5822 days ago
In my city, the average family income is about $60k but housing is expensive to buy. One-bedroom condo's start at $200k so a lot of people rent. Unfortunately, since developers can earn so much by selling units instead of renting them, they all veer towards that.

I'm sure rent control plays a factor too. Rent can only be increased by 3% per year or something like that.

End result, there hasn't been a new building built for rental apartments in my city for over 30 years.

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pavel_lishin 5822 days ago
Seems like unless there's a constant influx of people, eventually everyone that wants to buy a condo will end up with one... leaving a lot of built-up condos ready to sell, with nobody buying. Wonder how long it'll take.
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c1sc0 5822 days ago
Renting regulations are pretty notorious in Switzerland. There seems to be a rule for everything & it is notoriously hard to get rid of a bad renter. Also, as a foreigner, it is often difficult to acquire property in certain kantons.
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draebek 5822 days ago
If I had to guess I'd say the demand is for "housing within N kilometers of point X" and there is nowhere left to build housing in that area, whether because of physical constraints or legal/regulatory constraints (e.g. can't get a permit to demolish that block and put up a dense high rise).

(Edit for non-USA-ian units, since we were talking about Geneva.)

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