[lrem]

A colleague told me about the setup in their home country some weeks ago, I _think_ that was the Dutch one, excuse my fuzzy memory... Once your €1500 tenant leaves, you have 3 or 6 months to find the next one. If not, the city will offer your place in parallel as social housing and you'll get €400 (flat rate for the whole municipality per size band) if that gets filled first. On a three year contract. Makes for a very good incentive to meet the market.

[roel_v]

That's totally nuts and it's not the Dutch system.

[rorykoehler]

It's good and I wouldn't complain if this was an outcome however better yet would be a system that allows people to buy their own homes. One of the major pitfalls and imo systemic national security risks in Europe are the high income tax rates. This coupled with foreign investment in the property market means that regular Europeans are effectively priced out of the market with no way back in. Long term this is a crazy risk to run for the sake of maintaining inefficient bureaucracies that don't remotely cater to the pressing needs of citizens.

[lrem]

I'm afraid that even without the foreign investment one can't win this. Europe still sees a minor population growth. More importantly, there are large migration flows between countries, regions and to cities in general. This means that even in places with no/very low foreign ownership and virtually no vacancies, you still have runaway markets. Dublin is a good example of that. Same stands for almost every place where I lived. With the exception of the French Riviera, where the runaway market is indeed fuelled by vacancies, likely foreign-owned.

[rorykoehler]

I'm from Dublin and Dublin's problem is two fold. First of all, many of the politicians are landlords so have a massive conflict of interest. Second is zoning laws are outrageously bad. Urban sprawl is the name of the game.