[mtw]

This is not just Portugal. I see similar sentiment in Canada where young professionals in Vancouver or Toronto complain they can't buy their first home and Vancouver has been "sold out" to foreigners. Similar sentiment in Australian major cities as well.

[ginja]

Yeah, but it's much worse in Portugal, especially Lisbon. Here are some median home price to median income ratios for various cities (from Numbeo: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/in/Lisbon and corresponding pages for other cities):

  - Lisbon: 18.06
  - Porto: 13.55
  - Sydney: 9.09
  - Melbourne: 7.05
  - Vancouver: 12.62
  - Toronto: 11.82
  - San Francisco: 7.02
  - Los Angeles: 7.47
  - New York: 9.99

[Mandatum]

Wow, Auckland is 12. Didn't realize they were that bad comparatively.

[simplyaccont]

- Tel-Aviv: 20.42

[paxys]

I can't think of any major urban area in the world and any time period in history where "housing is too expensive" hasn't been the popular sentiment.

[ttymck]

This is interesting, because (at least in America) the current rhetoric is that housing was laughably affordable up until the 70s(?).

Now, even in suburbs, housing is far more expensive than most wage earners could expect to afford.

Maybe we are thinking of two different sides of the same coin, but I would genuinely be interested in reading articles from the ~mid-century describing what you suggest.

[NoLinkToMe]

> This is interesting, because (at least in America) the current rhetoric is that housing was laughably affordable up until the 70s(?).

I always find this a bit of a disappointing discussion, cherry picked to the extremes.

If we're being honest in talking about the cost of housing, we'd try to make apples to apples comparisons.

For example, if we used to eat apples that were 2 inches in diameter, lacked sweetness, had lots of seeds in them and started to rot after two days, and then 50 years later the average apple was tasty, 10 inches in diameter, seedless and juicy and lasted two weeks, you wouldn't necessarily conclude that because its price had doubled that apples have become more expensive.

But we kind of do that with housing.

Since 1969, homes have more than doubled in average size. Such homes were shared by 3.3 people, now by 2.5 (or 25% fewer people per house). And we used to pay 10% interest, now 5%.

So we have 2.6x as much square footage per person, and pay half the financing cost as we did before. And median nominal personal income tenfolded since the 60s. Of course you expect home prices to increase by a lot, it doesn't mean housing was laughably affordable and now isn't.

In fact there's quite a few studies which show that a unit of housing (e.g. the percentage of income spent on a square foot used by 1 person) has gotten cheaper. We just happen to consume more of it, and share it with fewer people, and pay less to finance price levels, which pushes the price levels to new heights without housing itself having become more expensive. [0]

If you then take into account the quality of housing and neighbourhoods, you see even the above is still an apples to oranges discussion. The amenities inside the home and in the neighbourhood are simply no comparison. I literally have a supercomputer allowing 3D simulations of any kind known to creativity on a screen with better quality than a 1970s movie theatre (I'm talking about a PS5 on a 4k screen) in my home. And I live in a town with 190 nationalities and as many kitchens within a 15 minute commute, just like parties with every denomination of music and dance, multiple universities and schools teaching just about any skill, shops selling just about any worldwide product I'd like. Of course all this access comes with a price because there was scarcely a place on earth like it 50 years ago, and now my city (Amsterdam) has many equivalents around the world, Lisbon being an example named in the thread's article. If you put our lifestyles and general wealth of pretty ordinary people like myself in these cities to the test of any city 50 years ago, you'd maybe find some of the very elite in NYC and London living like that, and that's it.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2021/06/25/us-housi... -- this isn't a proper study, but does substantiate some of the claims I made above. It's even missing some things (it overestimates principal paydown as a cost rather than a cashflow, and it doesn't account for quality differences).

[pessimizer]

Housing prices rose with inflation for 400 years, and after 2000 suddenly started hockey-stick growth. Unless you think the quality and size of housing that people demanded only radically changed within the past 20 years, your theory is lacking for me.

I sometimes put a footnote in when I mention that house prices haven't changed in "400 years" because the records are from the Netherlands, but in your case that makes them more relevant.

[ttymck]

> it doesn't mean housing was laughably affordable and now isn't.

I appreciate your approach, and I hadn't considered this perspective, but it still rings hollow to me:

Can I purchase 1/2.6 of a house? Just because the unit cost of housing has gotten cheaper doesn't mean _owning a home_ is more affordable.

Sure, I'll accept larger homes are being built at cheaper unit-cost. But those homes are still being snatched up, continuously "above market". Why aren't more smaller homes being built at similar unit-costs?

[Panzer04]

You can - it's called buying a smaller house?

The problem is land has gotten expensive, not so much construction. Also, regulations and the like generally raise the bar for what is considered an acceptable house, which also contributes to rising prices (eg. things like mandatory minimum parking, housing amenities, etc.

Some places want to ban apartments smaller than a particular size because they are "expensive dog-boxes", which rather misses the point. I imagine the logic is that larger apartments will be available for the same price if such comes to pass... People are capable of impressive mental gymnastics.

[ttymck]

Not to be glib, but did you read the rest of my reply?

Your third paragraph starts to align with what I said. But "buy a smaller house" is not a helpful response to "there are no small houses for sale".

[mellavora]

> You can - it's called buying a smaller house?

Not if no one is building (or selling) the smaller houses, possibly because of the reasons you give in your second paragraph.

[buscoquadnary]

The problem in the US is pretty obvious. We are the time period where the largest generation of Americans (the boomers) are at the retirement, or about to retire point, at the same time the Zoomers, which are a decent sized generation, are entering the housing market.

Over the next several decades as the boomers die off or move to retirement homes the housing supply will increase substantially, and the value of properties in most of the US will plummet.

[pessimizer]

I see the same cause, but to me Boomers aren't limiting supply as much as many are relying on passive income to maintain luxury lifestyles. When they downsize, they're going to move to retirement homes that have $4-6K/mo rents at the midrange.

As they die, and pass on their property, their kids will just retire young and rents will still rise, along with the prices of luxury goods.

I'll believe that house prices are high because of constrained supply when I see the prices of luxury goods drop.

[kyleee]

Are you of the opinion that housing supply in desirable areas of the US is not constrained?

[throwayyy479087]

In NYC in the 70s housing was literally free - Harlem brownstones sold for a dollar. It hasn't always been this way.

[bowsamic]

Do you have any sources to back that up?

[dorchadas]

Definitely the same sentiment in Dublin and Galway from my experiences over here in Ireland too. Though mostly AirBnB rather than golden visas.