> The battle against squatting in Spain is not only a legal skirmish but also a deeply personal and emotional one for many property owners. The stories of those who have endured the frustration and helplessness of having their properties occupied illicitly are both compelling and heart-wrenching. These narratives underscore the profound impact that squatting can have on individuals, extending far beyond the financial losses to include significant emotional distress and a sense of violation. [...]
> Property owners have shared experiences of feeling powerless as they grapple with the lengthy and often cumbersome legal process to evict squatters.
Those poor landlords! Property owners are truly the most oppressed minority in Spain. It's heart-wrenchingly sad hearing their accounts of legal procedures and having to evict people living in their properties:(
One thing I don't get -- if the law doesn't help why don't the owners of these properties release fart spray everywhere and turn the heat up to max until it is unlivable?
> why don't the owners of these properties release fart spray everywhere and turn the heat up to max until it is unlivable?
If the okupas have been there for longer than 48 hours without you trying to get rid of them, doing something like that could be considered harassment and/or endangering the occupants' health, so you'd probably face criminal charges for it. You're not allowed to alter the living conditions to force them out, but you need to (within 48 hours of the occupation) legally get them out of the property.
Yup, lots of cases where the owners stopped paying/turned-off water, gas, electricity and the court made them turned them back on (and pay all the bills).
What if your house already had fart spray releasers in the first place because you "love the smell", and your thermostat was "broken" in the first place?
When you live there you know how to "fix" them but otherwise you are not obligated to fix them.
You are living in pure fantasy. The squatters would simply fix the thermostats and disconnect the sprays.
The buildings are occupied because the owner do not live there. Squatters target housings that are left empty by owners who are just speculating on the market.
You seem to keep spreading this baseless rumor. "Occupation"/"Okupas" is considering properties beyond your primary residential property. I'm sure there are cases where okupas tried to take people's primary residential property, but the police absolutely help you to get rid of them quickly.
I personally know a handful of cases where okupas tried to take people's primary residence that they just purchased and were in the process of reforming before moving, for example. And every single case was solved quickly by local police, as it's breaking and entering, not a occupation.
They wouldn't know how to fix the thermostat if I design the thermostat with huge amounts of obscurity, to the point where the heater doesn't even turn on without a secret key being sent to it, the heater has obscure security screws, and if the screws are breached, fart spray in sugar syrup gets released followed by a huge gust of feathers coated in itching powder. Bitter melon juice would be sprayed into the occupant's mouth via a computer vision controlled system that uses a neural net to track the occupant's mouth. If they attempt to disconnect that system, a 2nd system instantly activates with jalapeno sauce. If the jalapeno sauce is disconnected, a 3rd system activates with habanero sauce.
The sprays could be made very difficult to disconnect. A new one would activate each day in a new location. If day 1 spray is disconnected, day 2 would be twice as much volume.
It has been shown on Youtube that fart spray does work for theft, it's time to deploy it as an actual product everywhere.
It's not within 48 hours of detecting them. It's within 48 hours of occupation. And they could always fabricate how long they have been there unless the area is under constant surveillance. Fabricating leases is very common.
I believe when they say the squatters have a "right to housing" it means "right to use a unit of housing that's not theirs as if they paid for it", which essentially means doing what you suggest would be illegal.
The reality of the legal dimensions is probably much more complex though, but it's helpful to have a simplistic mental picture of what's expected to happen.
I am not familiar with the specifics in Spain, but in a lot of jurisdictions that would be illegal. Until they are legally evicted they have the exact same rights as regular tenants, and harassing them would be a crime.
The reasoning behind this is that some shady landlords might try to claim that genuine tenants are squatters in order to get rid of them. There are plenty of desperate people who'd accept a verbal contract and payment in cash, after all. Not that hard of a choice when the alternative is being homeless. Oh, but you paid your rent a day late? Sorry, you're now a "squatter", so we're cooking you alive until you leave.
Making it too easy to get rid of squatters would expose the most vulnerable people in society to even more abuse, and making it trickier for absentee landlords to get rid of real squatters is considered a fair price to prevent this.
This, exactly. These kinds of slanted articles that only state the issue from the perspective of negligent absentee landlords, whether written by ChatGPT or otherwise, all have the same problem: that's not how property disputes are resolved. The first thing that a court would have to establish is that the person trying to remove another person from a given place would be whether the first person has any right to the place, and to what extent. And the next thing would be the question of whether the second person has a stake in the place, and the nature and extent of that interest. Then they have to balance interests.
I know Spain is not America and doesn't share America's uniquely bad system of estates, but we see this all the time in America where a self-described landlord wants the county sheriff to immediately taser some old lady, but they can't even sufficiently demonstrate that they own the home.
The easy fix here is to require property contracts in writing and to be filed with the government and educate everyone on that point. We already do this for property sales to avoid these very issues on ownership. The same thing for leasing would provide better protections for both parties.
Thanks for that info! So why is this such a big problem? Is it just that the government doesn't want to trust it's own records? If people are bypassing the law, I would think it reasonable to allow the consequences to transpire - eg evicted if you don't have a written contract.
I saw some of the different factors in the article but none of them seemed to really address the lack of checking a registered source of data for the leases and why they wouldn't be a good idea.
As mentioned in other comments by Spaniards weighing in, it's not really a big problem as in that's happening all the time.
It is a multi-faceted issue, and for some, a philosophical standpoint stemming from the economic crisis, gentrification and speculation, and related problems.
Take in mind that the post shared here is written by a company that provides listing services.
Housing is more of a right in Spain than in other countries, and at least in Catalonia, there is precedent that it supersedes property rights.
You'll understand the inevitable tension on policing this issue considering that a couple of years ago Spain passed a law that made access to adequate and dignified housing a constitutional right.
You are saying that as if it is never the owner's fault.
If your revenue is not enough to pay for an housing under regular contract but a shaddy owner allows you to pay a rent for the place so that he can bypass a number of regulations by pretending he has no tenants, would you choose living in the street or a car or would you accept it, hoping it is a temporary situation?
Most people would choose the later hence the way the laws are written. Landowners are usually the wealthy ones, so the less at risk of suffering.
There needs to be penalties on the landowner side too. The paper requirement should carry penalties enforced against them if they are violating it. This would be better than just a chance of pain from the eviction process. After all, if they are shady landlords they might push people out in other ways to avoid the eviction process currently anyways.
> Oh, but you paid your rent a day late? Sorry, you're now a "squatter", so we're cooking you alive until you leave.
That seems far-fetched as a risk. Why would a company offering rentals push out someone who paid rent (even if late) and lose out on revenue/maintenance costs trying to get another renter?
Because most of their revenue comes from property prices rising, not from rent. The renters are mostly a source of cost / hassle (gotta communicate with them/ fix stuff etc..)
Not sure how the situation is in Spain, but I think that in Europe in general, if you have a contract saying that you are a tenant, it's quite hard to kick you out, even if you don't pay, at all. If the tenants don't have any papers and they try to game the system, then this is probably a risk that they should take into account?
The owners can hire contractors that will go to the property in order to help 'determine the conditions' under which the squatters will leave. My understanding is that it's usually a balance of physical intimidation and financial incentive.
I have seen this happen with a building across the street from where I lived. There were 5 large men who could have easily been bouncers in Oakland outside with "FueraOkupa" shirts. The woman left later that day.
Well that does happen. It happened around me with a few houses that are empty during the winter (whatever you think of that): the squatters got refused service in the town by the bars, restaurants and super markets. People would accidentally walk into them so they would fall over. Every one drives straight at them when they walk only to correct at the last moment and shout profanities at them. People spit on them and say it’s the wind, throw hot coffee on them saying it’s an accident etc. Until they leave; you think the policia or guardia that has their familia living their all their lives and are probably family of the occupied houses is going to file anything? Didn’t take long two times it happened.
Of course in less close knit communities it would be different; a third time was the house of an english bloke who only came over for the summer; they put all his stuff outside in the rain in the winter, made a weed grow place out of it and until they had proof of the weed, they couldn’t get them out. House was completely fucked when they got it back including the furniture which was outside all winter. Squatting is one thing and you could agree with it, but this shit is insane. And trying to get them doesn’t work as they clearly don’t have money to begin with.
Because we have doors and windows closed, so in reality this isn't a huge issue. But historically, we've had huge issues with low employment, poverty and empty houses being all around you, while you cannot afford rent.
Lots of empty houses + no employment + no money for rent = lets take this house and live in since no one lives there and we don't have a house currently.
Basically, if you buy property, make sure to close it and install a security system. If okupas appear, do the "legal fasttrack" and get them out within 48 hours and it won't be an issue.
> Basically, if you buy property, make sure to close it and install a security system. If okupas appear, do the "legal fasttrack" and get them out within 48 hours and it won't be an issue.
Doesn't that make you not want to buy property in the first place? I'd rather buy it someplace where it can't be stolen.
> Doesn't that make you not want to buy property in the first place?
If it was a common problem, then yes. But it's relatively uncommon, and to be honest, I'd rather have the existing system in place where people can legally occupy unused buildings, because there is a lot of them around here. And lots of property owners just keep them empty for years until their "investment" gives them the returns they want, which to me is a bigger problem than okupas.
I think when an entire industry rises, and then continues to exist, for the sole purposes of defending against (or undoing) the problem, it can no longer be said to be uncommon.
> Basically, if you buy property, make sure to close it and install a security system. If okupas appear, do the "legal fasttrack" and get them out within 48 hours and it won't be an issue.
And also, if you’re gonna buy property please do so to actually live there yourself or to house a business that you own and actually operate.
Don’t buy houses to rent them out.
Don’t buy houses because you think that letting it sit unused for a few years will let you sell it for more in the future.
Don’t buy houses to “renovate” (read: do unnecessary “improvements” that make the value appear higher) just to turn around and sell it.
In general I wish housing was not seen as an “investment”.
There’s plenty of people still that cannot afford to buy a house. Because other people are using housing as a way to gain more money for themselves.
You've listed all the ways to make sure no new houses are built.
Update:
> And also, if you’re gonna buy property please do so to actually live there yourself or to house a business that you own and actually operate.
This means that I can't rent. But as a person who lives somewhere, or a person who operates a business, I'd rather rent than own — I don't want to have all the headache of owning the property, and I don't want to be committed to one place so much, I want to be able to move easily when my circumstances change. Even if I had enough money to buy a house, I would put that money into a bank or investment fund that buys thousands of different homes and rents it out so I'm not that exposed to risks of owning any single piece of property.
> Even if I had enough money to buy a house, I would put that money into a bank or investment fund that buys thousands of different homes and rents it out so I'm not that exposed to risks of owning any single piece of property.
Well, but imagine that houses cost a fraction of their current price. That’s the point. A home shouldn’t have to be this ginormous investment that you have to slave and save for many years to put down a small part of the total price for and be stuck paying back a mortgage to some bank for the rest of your working life.
Everyone should have the opportunity to own some kind of home, from early age and without going into debt for it.
And for the risk of the remaining low value of homes in that world, that can be covered with insurance.
And then you are still able to save up money and invest those remaining money into actually productive businesses, to diversify risk and earn a bit from your money and so on.
> Well, but imagine that houses cost a fraction of their current price. That’s the point.
That's not how your proposed measures would work in reality. You would just make market less effective and create a lot of problems who want to participate in it.
It would be much harder to find a place to rent, and it would be without any contracts or legal protections, as most landlords would look as if they're actually living in the apartments. A cottage industry of people who serve as fictive "owners" of the apartments will spring up for others who want to invest in real estate. A lot of government officials will be hired to "ensure" that you're buying a house or an apartment for yourself. They will take bribes to look the other way, and they will have a huge backlog of apartments to check.
Apartments and houses that are listed for sale officially (not on the emergent black market) may have their list prices come down, but it would be very hard to get access to them and actually buy one. Probably further government regulation will ensure that some queue system is in place so that people who "need it the most" (bribed the official in charge) would get preferential treatment, and as a result it would take years to actually buy one. Commercial investment in real estate will plummet, so the government will take over. Residential construction will soon balloon in cost and go down in quality.
Your ideas are not new. They, or variations of them, have been tried, a lot. Interventions in the free markets always have a lot of unintended consequences of second and third order, and as more regulations are patched on top in the attempts to fix them, the situation just becomes worse and worse.
Landlords are a convenient scrapegoat — but if you actually dive into how the market works, you have to acknowledge that they provide a very important financial service. Nobody on the real estate has any kind of monopolistic influence (except the government), and nobody is able to artificially inflate the prices. The world is entering a stage of ultra-urbanisation, where small and ordinary towns die down and the biggest centers grow more and more important — so real estate in them balloons, because there's more and more demand for it. If you are just looking for a place to live, there's a lot of it around the world. For example, a very nice 2-bedroom apartment in Nha Trang in a new building costs around $300 a month — it has an underground parking and all the infrastructure of a modern city around it. Especially in the age of remote work, "high costs" of real estate are not about people living on the street — it's about people not being able to live where they used to live before.
You can blame Airbnbs and hotels — but it all comes down to the fact that of other people on the market are ready to pay more than you do and have the cash for it, there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to outbid you. If somebody used to rent an apartment in the neighbourhood for 20 years but now can't afford it — it may be sad for this person, but it's not a reason why someone else who wants and can pay more for renting the same place shouldn't be able to do so. I guess you're an American? Guess what — more and more people come to your country from all around the world, and they (we) just outcompete you.
Unless you plan on essentially abandoning your investment, it really isn't a big deal in practice.
If you live in the home yourself, someone can't squat in it. If you rent it out, someone can't squat in it. If you install any kind of security system, you'll know someone is trying to squat in time to actually do something about it. Got a long-term investment you're planning to renovate? Rent it out as "anti-squat": way cheaper price, but you provide essentially zero services and can kick them out at any time, so essentially a live-in security guard.
What kind of evidence do you need? It could be summarized in 3 sentences - it's wordy and repetitive. A human could also write such a thing if paid by line but in 2024 I'd rather assume it's a human + LLM.
after dealing with LLMs for a while, you just know.
>It is essential for property owners in Spain to be proactive in protecting their assets against potential squatting. This includes ensuring that properties are properly secured, regularly monitored, and that any signs of illegal occupation are promptly addressed with legal action. For squatters, it is important to be aware of the legal risks associated with occupying a property without consent, as well as the potential social and ethical considerations of such actions.
just this paragraph alone is as blatant as misshapen fingers and distorted text in AI-generated images.
I'm 99% sure the article was originally written in Spanish and then (either by human or machine), translated to English, as Idealista is a Spanish company.
Jumping to the conclusion that a LLM has written it, when you don't even seem to understand the context, seems really rash. But then this is HN, so you're forgiven.
Touché. I put the first paragraph in GPTZero, and it says 100% AI generated. Unfortunately, AI detectors are notoriously bad, giving all kinds of false positives, which goes to my initial point that it is largely a gut feeling. But if you look at other articles posted on the site by the same author they also come up as 100% AI generated on GPTZero, and they also fail the gut test.
This was amusing. I appreciate the spirit of entrepreneurial innovation but one look at the entire group of employees and owner of this business gives a strong indication of how their mediation might go...
Oh wow I thought only France has squatting problem.
here the squatters can legally occupy your place for 48 hours, and if that's your only place and you went away on vacation tough luck buddy, they can shit on the floor and tear the walls down
I'd see as both Spain and France has a housing crisis, the squatting is a symptom of that problem.
Guess the difference is that in Spain if you detect them within 48 hours of them entering the property, you can "easily" and legally remove them with the help of the courts and police.
But once you're beyond those 48 hours, things get a lot harder.
This is obviously not accurate. The 48h delay is not 48h after squatters entered the place, but 48h after you DISCOVERED them. And after those 48h you will still get your property back, just much more slowly because it is just not considered an emergency anymore if you discover a problem and don't signal it immediately.
If you go on vacation for 3 weeks, discover squatters when you come back and can prove you are the owner you will get the squatters kicked out in less than 24 hours, plus potentially arrested.
And it makes sense, otherwise everyone would be squatting houses all the time!
Well most people aren't criminals so no I don't think "everyone would be squatting houses all the time" is accurate under any realistic scenario.
What happens if the police don't respond? You discover them at the beginning of a long holiday weekend? It's a second residence and you discover them as you open the door to let your family stay there?
The mental gymnastics people will go through to try to justify someone breaking & entering and trespassing on someone else's private property is insane. They are criminals and should be treated as such, regardless of when you find them, regardless of whether you report it immediately or take a few days to try to reason with them or not.
It is not what happens in Barcelona. For six months the "okupas" have been inside an apartment that a family left completely closed to go away for a weekend, the Mossos arrived 15 minutes after the occupation, probably alerted by "Securitas" and did absolutely nothing. Saw everything from my window, and now I’m terrified if I have to leave my house for one day.
> It is not what happens in Barcelona. For six months the "okupas" have been inside an apartment that a family left completely closed to go away for a weekend, the Mossos arrived 15 minutes after the occupation
If that was the primary residence of the family, it wouldn't be considered a "occupation" as discussed in this submission, but rather "breaking and entering" ("allanamiento de morada", or similar), and police should definitely get them out ASAP, anything else is a disgrace.
But again, has nothing to do with okupas because it wouldn't be considered an occupation in the first place.
Try go to the local news, because if the police does nothing about this, I'm 100% sure the news are interested in this story.
1) If it is where you lived they always could be (and were) kicked out quickly (and it was not that simple in other situations)
2) Now the law changed and it is much easier and faster to kick them out. It was always illegal to squat, now sanction are higher
3) Most squatters are not targeting houses. And all the time squats are mainly building not used for years (as it safer and easier for squatters, and sometimes as a way to "minimize" disturbances)
Please note that in Holland some kind of squat were legals for years (only for building not used for years and with obligation to not damage the property and to give it back quickly). Seems interesting to me
This is pure madness. So you have 48 hours after squatting started to report it and potentially get a fast eviction (why is it not an automatic criminal case for breaking into the property is beyond me). But after 48 hours it seems like it becomes a nightmare. So if you are on a business trip for 3 days or visiting parents in a different city or vacationing for a few days and somebody enters your home, you are out of luck and the squatters now have more rights than you?!
As always, there are always multiple sides to any issue. Another commentator put it better than I could:
> The reasoning behind this is that some shady landlords might try to claim that genuine tenants are squatters in order to get rid of them. There are plenty of desperate people who'd accept a verbal contract and payment in cash, after all. Not that hard of a choice when the alternative is being homeless. Oh, but you paid your rent a day late? Sorry, you're now a "squatter", so we're cooking you alive until you leave.
> Making it too easy to get rid of squatters would expose the most vulnerable people in society to even more abuse, and making it trickier for absentee landlords to get rid of real squatters is considered a fair price to prevent this.
"Making it too easy to get rid of squatters would expose the most vulnerable people in society to even more abuse, and making it trickier for absentee landlords to get rid of real squatters is considered a fair price to prevent this."
Except this is poorly thought out and not really true.
You can provide better protection for both sides by requiring written and recorded contracts for real property use/rental, just as we do for real property sales today.
"It's not a black & white issue where one side is obviously right and the other one is obviously wrong."
That's because the system is broke and allows abuses by both sides.
It's an illegal operation. Under that sort of restriction, any building occupied would either need to be occupied by the registered owner or have a registered lease. If those aren't found, the people are evicted. The point is to ensure that everyone knows that you need to have a registered document to stay somewhere so nobody takes those deals. Then on the landlord side, you need to enforce substantial fines for any that have offered unofficial leases and surveillance for property owners that have repeat offenses - both to protect the owner from repeated squating and also to catch any owner bypassing the law.
I am volunteering in an housing rights organization in France, and I am and have been tenant in a city with high price and housing shortage.
There will always be many people taking "illegal deal" as sometime you have no other other solution, or other solution are even worse. And many many landlords are doing illegal things, including public housing.
Tenant don't have the same bargaining power / freedom / agency than landlord. Fighting illegal stuff that do landlord is long (usually longer than kicking out a squatter) and difficult. And you have little incentive to do it as a tenant : being in a fight with your landlord = being sure to have problem down the line
My feeling is that your comment ignores this asymmetry.
"My feeling is that your comment ignores this asymmetry."
These are enforcement problems, not squatter problems. As you've said, the things the landlords are doing are already illegal. In the US we have Attorney General offices that will handle housing cases on behalf of tenants.
Both parties can benefit from better enforcement and written and recorded leases. Penalties for landlords leasing without recorded agreements may be more easily enforced that under the current system.
This asymmetry makes enforcement easier when it profits the landlord, and make enforcement more difficult when it benefits the tenant... Your reflection seems based on the idea that there is a symmetry on the enforcement
I appreciate your response. I feel the same as the other commenter: the asymmetry between "a steep fine" and "losing your home" is enormous. But "what happens if the fine is enormous" (say, the landlord also stands to lose their home) is an interesting thought experiment - how big does the punishment need to be to "fix" the power imbalance?
That's not really a functional asymmetry. All you need is to pass a minimal threshold to disincentivize the behavior. A fine that outweighs potential illegal rent performs that task.
It also depends on what you mean by losing one's home. That's not an issue for people who would sign the written agreements. Afain, we want a disincentive to informal agreements, including from renters and squatters. I'm not sure how you can equate loss of ownership with loss of temporary use.
In England, if no contract exists but rent is being paid a tenant has quite alot of implied rights in law. Though enforcement of these rights would normally fall to larger organisations such as charities or councils rather than individual tenants. I remember a news story where a landlord was accepting casual rent for beds in sheds in the garden of a rented property who was brought to justice because the sheds were not habitable buildings.
> You can provide better protection for both sides by requiring written and recorded contracts for real property use/rental, just as we do for real property sales today.
In england there is the "Assured shorthold tenancy agreement" which basically provides a set of rights to tenants and landlords. On the one hand its great as it sets out a clear set of expectations for tenants (24 hours notice of landlord visiting, cant be evicted without notice, deposits must be in third party)
However there is still no fault evictions, which means you can be kicked out for no reason with only 1 months notice.
For the landlord it allows them to reclaim the property at the end of the contract.
However its still the most vulnerable that get evicted.
Just to be clear, a tenant cannot be kicked out after a month. A section 21 notice requires a tenant to hand back possesion in 2 months, if a tenant does not the landlord may make an application to court for a possession order (which WILL be granted if all process followed correctly),the order is served and then if a tenant still doesn't relinquish possession a landlord may apply for an eviction warrant, this gives them the right to employ the bailiff to forcibly kick a tenant out. Depending on the courts and bailiff availability this process may take anywhere between 6 weeks and several months on top of the initial 2 months. The costs are often a loss for the landlord. 'Kicked out' was just a turn of phrase but I thought it should be clear in this context.
As for the most vulnerable, ime it is common for social tenants, that is councils and housing associations (who are compelled by law to offer affordable rents) to have assured tenancies, which do not allow no fault evictions. And if not then there is an extra notice period of 6 months plus 2 months for the section 21.
No. If someone enters your home, as in, you live there, the city has you registered into that address, and/or your ID card states that's your address, it's not squatting. That's trespassing, and the police will happily assist.
Squatting occurs almost exclusively in second residences, abandoned properties, and places reclaimed by the banks, etc.
If you can prove that the house is your primary residence, the police will oust the squatters promptly. As a result, squatters will not target a house that is clearly 'lived in'.
I live in Spain (Valencia) and see lots of okupas around the city. In reality they occupy buildings that aren't being occupied. Property taxes are incredibly low here and many people who own empty buildings are fine with letting them sit, fall apart, and eat the property tax than do anything with them. These are the buildings that are prone to Okupas. I've never seen nor heard of it happening to actively used buildings.
That said, I do think there are better solutions to allowing this to happen. It's a complicated issue here as housing is definitely viewed more as a right than in the USA, and honestly I'm really glad that the streets aren't full of homeless camps like they were when I lived in Oakland and SF.
What's madness is the state allowing property owners to leave vacant, dilapidated buildings to blight the neighborhood. Owners should be required to maintain their structures and keep them occupied, or forfeit the property.
The government should tell property owners that they are required to keep their property occupied otherwise the government should seize their property? This is an extremist view.
Who defines what “maintained” means? Beyond safety concerns about the structure (and even then, they shouldn’t be able to tell me anything as long as I post a danger unsafe structure keep out sign and lock the doors), why would the government have any right to tell me what to do with my building?
> tell property owners that they are required to keep their property occupied otherwise the government should seize their property?
I suspect it would make more sense to do so via tax policy, i.e. high property taxes (or LVT) with a deduction for each occupant.
> why would the government have any right to tell me what to do with my building?
For one thing, governments have a vested interest in not being overthrown. If a sufficiently large percentage of the population believes that their living standards are declining (including not having a place to live) then an increasing number of people will arrive at the conclusion that revolution or terrorism has a positive risk/reward ratio.
I've worked in a country where the previous government had allowed this to occur; apparently it happened gradually and then suddenly. Beyond a certain point you can only consider something "my building" if you have the means to defend it against anyone who might wish to make it their building. In that case, the possession of a piece of paper which you once used to outsource the enforcement of your property rights to the previous government isn't very useful.
(Edit: To be clear, I think allowing squatting is a poor solution to the problem of reducing homelessness and better tax and housing policies are more sustainable and equitable, I'm just explaining why the government has a substantial interest in what private landowners do with their properties.)
>> I suspect it would make more sense to do so via tax policy, i.e. high property taxes (or LVT) with a deduction for each occupant.
Vacant land use taxes do make sense to me. That is not what GP advocated for: “Owners should be required to maintain their structures and keep them occupied, or forfeit the property.” Increased taxation is not forfeiture, and being forced to sell because taxes are prohibitive is different from the government taking your building.
>> governments have a vested interest in not being overthrown
This is a tortuous chain of logic to go from unoccupied buildings to overthrown government concerns.
Right, that's why before I responded to your question ("why would the government have any right to tell me what to do with my building?") I tried to make it clear that I think there are better approaches than what the GP was advocating for i.e. directly seizing vacant properties.
> This is a tortuous chain of logic to get from building with squatters to government overthrown.
Can you be more specific about what part you disagree with?
To be clear, I'm not arguing that squatting results in overthrown governments, but that the acceptance of widespread squatting is sometimes a (shortsighted) policy response to a housing crisis. Squatting is a symptom but what can actually topple governments is sufficiently high levels of homelessness. Any government that allows a sufficiently large percentage of residents (especially young people) to become homeless will eventually be replaced by anarchy or a new government.
To reiterate, I'm just trying to answer your question of what right the government has to tell you what to do with your property -- I'm not specifically defending the GP's suggestion.
> Increased taxation is not forfeiture, and being forced to sell because taxes are prohibitive is different from the government taking your building.
That's a distinction without a difference, at least not a difference in the area we're talking about. Both mechanisms cause title to be lost if certain obligations are not met (in one case, an obligation to occupy, in the other, an obligation to pay taxes).
Well if we zoom out to the moon so that everything looks the same “in the area we are talking about” then I guess there are no distinctions between anything, are there? A person that gets robbed is the same as a person that forgets their wallet on a train, they both just failed to meet their obligations (in one case an obligation to not let someone have their wallet and in the other their obligation to remember where they put their wallet).
Maybe government won't be overthrown, but you can easily loose the election.
European cities are dense, and there is limit to their growth, as they are often surrounded by tight circles of villages. Sure, you can build a few buildings there, but those villages are often fighting against high buildings, and residents often fight against urbanisation of the area. So you can't build suburbs like in USA and this makes the already problematic situation (high prices, big funds buying whole apartment complexes to rent them, many people buying apartments as assets and being afraid of renting due to protections towards tenants) even worse. So every building is worth it's weight in gold. And whole abandoned buying is going to be a daily reminder for many people that cannot afford to buy 1 room apartment about how unfair current situation is.
I don't want to argue about what to do with situation, just adding a perspective.
Even if I am the owner of an apartment, I don't have the right to do a metal concert in my living room some Saturdays at 1 am... or don't have the right to paint my frontage the way I want... cause it creates negative consequences for other people.
Having vacant apartments and houses for long time in places where there is an housing shortage create much bigger negative consequences than few metal concerts...
You do have a right to do a metal concert in your living room on Saturday at 1AM. You don’t have a right to violate the local noise ordinance or, because your example has you as an apartment owner and not a building owner, the condo association rules.
You do have the right to paint your frontage the way you want with respect to the GOVERNMENT.
But more importantly, the GP wanted the government to TAKE VIA FORFEITURE any building that is merely vacant. Your examples are limits on use, not relinquishment of property. They are not the same.
There isn't a government on the planet which doesn't place limits on how you can paint your property. Try painting a death threat against a government official on it for example.
The notion that property rights is unlimited is an extremist view that doesn't match the legal situation in any jurisdiction on the planet with a government.
>> What's madness is the state allowing property owners to leave vacant, dilapidated buildings to blight the neighborhood. Owners should be required to maintain their structures and keep them occupied, or forfeit the property.
> The government should tell property owners that they are required to keep their property occupied otherwise the government should seize their property? This is an extremist view.
It is not an extremist view. It's a public policy failure for land to sit vacant like that. Squatters rights can be a solution to that (e.g. in the US, squatters can actually get title to the land in cases of long-term abandonment).
> Who defines what “maintained” means? Beyond safety concerns about the structure (and even then, they shouldn’t be able to tell me anything as long as I post a danger unsafe structure keep out sign and lock the doors), why would the government have any right to tell me what to do with my building?
This is actually the extremist view, private property rights do not trump all other considerations.
For a very clear example: if you're surrounded by starving people, and you own a warehouse full of food that you plan to let rot because you can't be bothered, the government absolutely does have the right to tell you what to do with that food.
>> It's a public policy failure for land to sit vacant like that.
Then the government should buy the land.
>> For a very clear example: if you're surrounded by starving people, and you own a warehouse full of food that you plan to let rot because you can't be bothered, the government absolutely does have the right to tell you what to do with that food.
Let’s not use other examples and argumentation by analogy when we already have a very clear fact pattern. You own a building and the building is not currently occupied. The building is unsightly but structurally sound. Does/should the government have the right to make you surrender that building without compensation (because that’s what forfeit means) simply due to it being unoccupied? Why?
>> It's a public policy failure for land to sit vacant like that.
> Then the government should buy the land.
No, I don't think so.
> You own a building and the building is not currently occupied. The building is unsightly but structurally sound. Does/should the government have the right to make you surrender that building without compensation (because that’s what forfeit means) simply due to it being unoccupied? Why?
Yes. The legal principle has a long, long history across many different legal systems.
And I think you're thinking about it wrong: the government didn't "make you surrender that building," you chose to surrender it by leaving it unoccupied and unused to the point someone else could occupy and use it without a timely challenge.
In the US, adverse possession is a takings by a third party, not the government. And it’s not permitted when a land is unoccupied since one of the central tenets of adverse possession is open and notorious occupation. And, as you know based on your prior replies, adverse possession has a time component. The GP’s post is about merely leaving a property unoccupied. They don’t list a timeframe but we can pretty easily assume that if one exists in their mind it is less than the >5 years required for adverse possession based on the context.
I am not a commonwealth lawyer, but my understanding is that they have a similar modern rule in the UK and other commonwealth countries. I am not a continental lawyer, but my understanding is that civil law is similar with respect to government takings.
I will give you credit here because you may have interpreted the GP’s statement of “or forfeit the property” to mean generally lose possession of the property (including to a third party) rather than in the context of the prior sentence that references “the state allowing.” So, some backwards ancient legal principles that have been rejected or severely limited in modern times MIGHT support the contention that a third party can take someone’s land due to it being unoccupied and no modern legal principles support the contention that the government can make someone forfeit their land to the state merely for it being unoccupied.
The answer to my question (Does/should the government have the right to make you surrender that building without compensation (because that’s what forfeit means) simply due to it being unoccupied? Why?) is then “Maybe to someone that is occupying the unoccupied building (however that works) but not to the government.” Got it.
And it’s clear we both know that I have been talking about GOVERNMENT takings (“The government should tell property owners that they are required to keep their property occupied otherwise the government should seize their property?”).
> Does/should the government have the right to make you surrender that building without compensation (because that’s what forfeit means) simply due to it being unoccupied? Why?
Because homelessness caused by artificial scarcity is violation of a basic human right, and a public order nightmare. Putting private property above other human rights is the root cause of so much problems in today's societies.
(Disclaimer: I don't own a house, and I'm not even earning minimum wage with my freelance work.)
Question. If I owned a house, and went on a long vacation outside the country (e.g. because maybe I like travelling or something), how long would I be able to stay on vacation before the government yoinked my house due to it being empty?
If it's your main place of residence [1], I don't have issues with making it protected against the kind of mechanism we're talking about.
Because you know the problem doesn't come from people going for long vacations, but from landlords hoarding houses and holding in order to never let the price go down.
«Owning a house» can mean two very different things. It's either:
- I'm living in a place and I don't depend on anyone for hosting me.
- I hold some piece of paper that says that this particular place in the country belongs to me and if the people living there don't pay me I can call the police to get them evicted.
The first one is basic human right and should be protected as such, the second one is just something enforced by the power of the state in favor of the upper class against the working class.
[1] which, in many countries you need to declare to the government already, so that they know where to get you should they send the police to arrest you.
Even if you're not in it, the house is full of your possessions. I'm not seeing how this is comparable to properties that have been actually empty for decades.
If a property is fully decorated (photos of my family, toothbrush I've used, etc), is that still considered empty?
If the answer is "yes", then based on your post, the answer to my question of how long can I take a vacation for, is "decades".
But if that is indeed considered empty, then what if in addition to that, every month I email someone my travel expenses and tell them to print them and to put them in some drawer in that property (maybe locked with a key or something), and also mail some cheap souvenirs and tell them to put them as decoration somewhere, is that still considered empty? (Since it has my stuff, and is continuously storing more stuff I'm purchasing.)
If that is allowed, then the next question is what if my vacation is in the same country.
So yeah, what kind of activity, and with what frequency, does that property have to have in order for it to not be considered empty, without leaving some kind of loophole?
It's funny because most of your argument assumes setting some kind of threshold would be a problem, as if it was not exactly how fiscal rules worked already.
For instance, you are paying income taxes in your “country of residence” and not in your country of vacations (unless you are an American citizen living abroad, in which case you pay it to both your country of residence and to the US), and there is a threshold that makes one country qualify as “country of residence” versus your countries of vacations.
Yeah I'm dumb when it comes to legal stuff, but my guess is that defining a threshold with a good balance while also not inconveniencing the common citizen wouldn't be as easy as it might first appear, at least without causing some unintended consequences that people might not think about when proposing "'just' do X".
But like I said, I'm dumb when it comes to this topic.
> It's funny because most of your argument assumes setting some kind of threshold would be a problem, as if it was not exactly how fiscal rules worked already.
But it is the crux of the problem.
When establishing things like "country of residence" (or, here in the US, to which state(s) you owe taxes), the second order effects aren't the same. It's the difference between "you owe a few extra percent of your income for one year" versus "you lose your home permanently".
As public policy, it is important not to expropriate someone's home simply because they had to be away for extenuating life circumstances like caring for an ailing relative for a few months. Because otherwise, you will disincentivize that behavior (and create a greater burden for the state).
It's easy for you to come back with "Oh, well the competent bureaucrats in my government will simply write an exception for those who leave for a few months of eldercare because that is clearly a legitimate reason to leave your house vacant for a few months." But that is just a bandaid on an artery which creates an explosion of exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions.
What happens if I need to care for my grandmother, and then something else comes up? Do I get to have two exemptions to expropriation? Can they be consecutive? What sort of documentation do I need? What if the exemption allows n days, but I need n+3? What if I had planned an m-1 days vacation (for the m vacation days exception) right before I need n days to care for my grandmother?
Very quickly you will have 10,000 pages of rules that nobody understands. And you will get perverse outcomes when someone hits an edge case that wasn't quite accounted for.
Or maybe you will say "put the case in front of a judge and let them exercise discretion". But now we have the problem that it is no longer really rule of law, and people with connections will always get exceptions while people without don't. So that increases the class divide because people with connections are usually rich, and middle-class people usually don't have connections.
First of all, there's no need for a complete expropriation all at once. Having a significant property tax that scales with time would do the trick too. Start with 5%, next year the tax is 10% of its original price, then 15%, etc. After 4 years you lost half of your property, so I'm happy with that, and since it's all about percentage like other taxes you should be happy too.
And then, all this argument is basically a straw man, because there no need for the state to guess anything or to set threshold, at all: all you need to do is mandate people to declare their primary residence, and in fact it is the case in many fiscal system already! If it is your primary residence, then fine, you can leave it empty for as long you want, as long as you are not lying on the fact that this is in fact your primary residence (and if you're lying, then the state must gather the evidence and win against you in court, which is what the rule of law is).
> The government should tell property owners that they are required to keep their property occupied otherwise the government should seize their property?
No, but they have to keep it in good condition, which includes keeping it secure.
Land is a scarce resource, and society agrees to enforce artificial restrictions on access and use because in many instances it is beneficial, but that does not mean society should automatically be required to extend unlimited support for property claims when an owner behaves in ways detrimental to society as a whole. No jurisdiction on earth grants property rights without limitations.
The government literally tells you what to eat and wear. And thank god... since without those laws we would eat the worst and toxic foods and wear toxic and low quality clothes.
uhm...that might be a bad example. winks towards shein, temu, fast fashion in general
and thinking for a bit longer - corn syrup/sugar in general is not toxic but it certainly is not that healthy either, and it's got big lobbies and large amounts of money behind it to influence the government.
In germany, if you see such a abandoned property, you cannot even ask the authority who owns it, if you have the plans to buy it (you would have to rely on local people knowing and telling you).
There are quite some neglected properties around here and the owners are away, do not care anymore and the authorities do not care as long as the low property taxes are paid. There was a case close by, where a buisness wanted to get rid of the old rotting building next to them, but could not. It went on for years. Only after the building burned down (no idea if someone helped with that), the space could be finally cleared.
So yeah, exproptiation should only ever be the last resort, but in some cases it really makes sense.
The solution is actually simpler, set a property tax that would hurt if the buildings became vacant. For example if you pay 1% of the buildings value as property tax each year, it would make enough incentive to rent it out or sell if you don't need it. The proceeds can be used for building public housing projects or helping the homeless. Property tax was invented for this very reason.
Something like this yes. But the devil will be in the details.
"pay 1% of the buildings value as property tax each year"
A old rotten building might be worth just 10000€. And 100 € a year ain't that much. One would have to tax the property - and who will set up the rates in a fair way in a process that is not vulnerable to corruption?
And old rotten building sitting anywhere in a city is worth way more than 10.000€. Even if the building is not in good shape, the land is still valuable.
Right, and then the 80yo people living in a centenary house in a gentrified neighborhood suddenly get a 10x tax increase because the next door building got sold to be remodeled as a luxury condo, and drove property values through the roof.
That's good, because if they can't pay, their house is up for remodelling too. /sarcasm
It seems to me that we could start with a conservative approach and adjust from there. For example, define a property as vacant if it isn't occupied for 1 continuous month or a total of three months out of the year.
Yes, we are discussing a hypothetical, from a few parents up: "set a property tax that would hurt if the buildings became vacant"
The definition of vacant is something that would have to be figured out, but it's not impossible. For example, you could do a generous 6-12 months of the year occupation without taxation, and then a sliding scale from there. (So you pay 0% of the new tax at 12 months yearly occupation, 0% at 6 months, 50% at 3 months, and 100% at 0 months.)
I'm open to being wrong but I believe the data shows, old people in the UK are living in houses that are too large and receiving pensions that rise with inflation whilst "young people" are paying huge rents, can't afford to buy and are stuck with huge student debt. Why shouldn't the old couple move to let 10x apartments be built? Or does the data show differently?
"Why shouldn't the old couple move to let 10x apartments be built?"
Imagine you worked all your life and now you just want to enjoy your peace in your home for your last years. You really would not want to move and I am very against driving old people out of their homes, even though I am one of those young people with a small apartment also seeing empty and unused space everywhere.
If the property tax goes up by 10x, then that 80 year old couple has seen a 10x return on their real estate investment. They can easily take out a reverse mortgage to pay the property tax for the rest of their lives.
"They can easily take out a reverse mortgage to pay the property tax for the rest of their lives."
Not everyone can do that easily. I would not know how that works and where are the downsides. I can learn it, sure, but for an 80 year old this would be real stress, having to figure unknown contracts out - and not getting cheated. Old people are a prime target for frauds for a reason.
The reality is that the same thing, in effect, happens if you stop paying property taxes. The tax builds up and then when the house is sold after passing the government collects the tax before the descendants receive the sale proceeds.
This is why complaining about rising property taxes is almost never about the elderly people who actually live in the house. It's about their children that want to inherit the house without paying off their parents' property taxes.
Not really. By definition if your property value rises by 10x you have enough money to pay the property taxes by leveraging your home. Sure, it means you'll have to sell when you die and won't be able to pass on the house to your heirs. But the meme, "elderly homeowner becomes homeless because his home became super value" is just a fiction. It's not that the homeowner can't pay the property taxes - he's got plenty of value in his home. It's really the children that want to inherit a valuable home but don't want to cover the tax back payment.
That is the very problem we are facing in Turkey :). The municipality determines the value of housing in a neighborhood each year. That is taken as a basis for property taxes and transaction taxes. The municipality assessed value is somewhere near 1/20th of the value of an average flat. So, almost no tax gets collected :(.
Its probsbly hard to reliably enforce it since hard to figure out if bulding is occupied or not. You can have someone registered at the residency but still not live there.
You could maybe try to figure out based on water usage but then someone could just leave water tap slightly leaking since water cost is not that expensive
Probsbly squatters are those cheap solution that can enforce it in the most efficient way
You don't need to know if people live there, just raise tax enough so that the owner feels like renting or selling the building is better than paying the taxes out of pocket.
This also forcess poorer people (including retired people) to sell off the house they are actually living in. This is especially true if the tax is based on the current estimated value which may be much higher than what the house was bought for.
There are ways around this. For example set a property tax from second home on. Do not tax the primary residence. Or set income brackets. If poorer people live in their own homes they don't pay property tax.
Having a building vacant is already incredibly expensive; costs and interest add up and the building can get severely damaged (a building has to be heated in winter, ventilated properly and issues like broken pipes have to be found quickly by tenants etc.). Common reasons for vacancies are probate disputes, owners that are house rich but cash poor and can't handle maintenance, issues with building code and permits and similar. Apart from some truly dysfunct situations a scheme that involves vacancy doesn't make much sense. Why not take even a modest rent for a bit?
In general, everything you could propose that puts pressure on landlords leads to transfer of ownership from your (maybe friendly) landlord with 2-3 units, to larger, more professional companies who can handle the paperwork and regulations, with a tendency to tear down and rebuild something that is more expensive to rent or buy.
In countries with high inflation purchasing real-estate and keeping it vacant is an inflation hedge. Plus, you also benefit from low interest rates and get free money if your government allows it.
I live in Turkey. We had 80% p.a. inflation, where the government decided to lower the interest rates even further. Our president said Interest rates are the cause of inflation and if we lowered interest rates inflation would go down. State banks gave out house loans with 12% p.a. interest where the inflation rate was above 80% p.a.
A lot of Turkish people got their free money from the bank and invested in real estate. In Turkey, everyone evades tax and property taxes are not really collected. This in turn fueled inflation even more, sky-rocketed inequality and caused the worst housing crisis.
That is why I am convinced that property taxes are a must.
I live somewhere with ~3% property taxes on properties, including the one you reside in. Not so long ago mortgages were cheaper than that, and mortgages at least end someday. At the same time, short term rentals like airbnb are illegal. Combined, this leads to most landlords either being companies large enough to keep extremely high occupancy rates, or families that flout the law to rent a second property owned due to marriage or inheritance and become vulnerable the whims of neighbors.
I think allowing short term rentals, and giving owners strong eviction rights for damage, illegal activity or non-payment (which we have) need to be paired with property taxes to prevent all landlords becoming large inhuman entities.
It should also be noted that if you tax everything at the value it could make, you distort the usage of valuable locations to exclude housing.
Yes it is. You can request information, but I was told "wanting to buy" is explicitely excluded as a valid reason. (The usual solution is knowing someone inside the office, or paying someone who knows)
This is not true. You can query the Grondbuch and it will give you all the necessary information of the owner.
Edit: sorry, havent been living in Germany for long. Thought it was the same as the Dutch kadaster. Turns out, it's not and my dealings with it have been unusually easy until now.
The reason why expropriation isn't used a lot is because it costs a lot of resources.
Surely, before considering expropriation, we should tell people who owns a property so that they can offer to buy it. If that's too much a privacy concern, the government could simply relay the offer.
Oh for sure. In the specific case I meant, the owner was known, but lived somewhere else around the globe and did not care, but it was his property. (where stones were falling off from the roof to the street)
Those are cases where I think expropriation would be warranted.
And if it would be easier to buy obviously unused land, less properties would end up in that rotten final state, so less need to even discuss forcing something.
Heck, some streets in industrial areas in Silicon Valley and the street my local Costco in Mountain View down Rengstorff across 101 from Google HQ are lined with people living in cars and vans and RVs.
Ah, so the real problem here is for people who are "squatting" on an a large number of empty investment properties and don't want the hassle of dealing with any actual tenants.
In reality most cases of squatting are financial assets that property owners have no plan to rent to anyone. In an area where housing space that people can afford are very few and far between, nbuying properties for the sole purpose of speculation can be seen on a similar level of unethicality as occupying a space you don't own.
Many countries especially in continental Europe have strong pro-tenant rights. Often the rent contract cannot be terminated by the landlord, only by the tenant, which can make it more profitable to leave property empty vs renting it out. (When a tenant-occupied property is sold, the new owner in some countries cannot terminate an existing rent contract, which makes the property less valuable on the market vs empty properties.)
Yes, I understand that selling a rented property can be less profitable than selling a property without a rent contract. But holding on to a property that generates no income is even less profitable.
On an abandoned property, the land may appreciate faster than the improvements depreciate. As long as that pace exceeds the mortgage interest (if any) and property tax (ibid), it's profitable. There are other possible complications too which might swing it, like income tax deductions.
Sometimes seemingly abandoned buildings are used for one-off occasions which generate income: downtown LA is full of "historic" buildings which the owners allow to dilapidate outside of a few areas they can rent out once or twice a year to a film crew.
edit: another thing -- rich people procrastinate too, in fact many of them can afford to procrastinate on matters like this, and they may rather take a loss than confront the anxiety and work of selling or renting out the property
Sorry, but I fail to see how owning an abandoned building is MORE profitable than having people living there and collecting rent on it, even if that means that you have to spend part of that income on maintenance costs.
To be able to sell it in the future a higher price without worrying about people living there, or having to pay money to mantain a building that is not in condition to be rented.
You're just making the bet that real estate value increases faster than the building deteriorates with minimal maintenance. That's often a really good bet.
I don't think that this is the bet. The bet is that the market will not discount the extra repair/maintenance costs that the buyer will have to incur, which is a ridiculous proposition. Speculators gain nothing from letting the property they own rot away.
Real estate is baby boomers and older millennials (as they inherited from their parents) "cryptocurrency" (as speculative asset). They HODL it to manufacture scarcity.
Just for reference, in a small city (40K people, 8 sq. km.) you can find 2K empty properties out of the market because it's more profitable to wait prices to raise.
This problem will only grow because there's an increasingly large number of people in Spain unable to rent.
At this very moment the profile of squatters is diverse, but with such large pockets of spaniards staying just above of the poverty line, many people will be forced between squatting or just become homeless.
Just for reference, I live in a flat in a building from the 50s. Very poor insulation, 5º with no elevator, etc. I pay 475€ for it (small sized city), I've been living here for +5 years.
The guys in the 3rd floor came in recently. They pay 1100€ for basically the same flat.
The modal income in this city is 16k. I work on IT and I'm barely above 20k (well, was, as I'm now unemployed).
I go for the listings and there's almost nothing listed and everything is > 800€/month. If I increase the range to 1h from any potential job location it goes down to ~500 for shitty places. Also, not precisely a lot to choose from, so probably wouldn't be able to rent neither.
Can anyone tell me how is exactly this going to work out? Not to mention all the "expats" and "digital nomads" that are willing to pay whatever the landlord says because they really really want to live here without thinking about the consequences, but that's another story.
Of course buying is totally out of the question with the current prices, and that's me that I got lucky, with the new prices no one will be able to save anymore.
> Can anyone tell me how is exactly this going to work out? Not to mention all the "expats" and "digital nomads" that are willing to pay whatever the landlord says because they really really want to live here without thinking about the consequences, but that's another story.
Slowly, more regulation is added to get the problem somewhat under control. Rents capped by index, annual rent increases cap, introduction of "tense housing markets", new upkeep for vacant properties, bonuses for renting out to younger people and more are being introduced, at least here in Catalunya. Unsure exactly what of those things are on the national level but guessing something similar is being introduced elsewhere in the country if it isn't already.
I don't think that helps honestly. What would help IMO is a lot of new housing close to jobs where foreigners can't apply. Because no matter how much you build, if someone from overseas is going to say "I pay double of whatever you've been offered" I can't compete.
And I know that's happening because my Gf has to work with this sort of people, sadly.
> I don't think that helps honestly. What would help IMO is a lot of new housing close to jobs where foreigners can't apply. Because no matter how much you build, if someone from overseas is going to say "I pay double of whatever you've been offered" I can't compete.
But if the law blocks "I pay double of whatever you've been offered" from happening (which is true today, they cannot increase the rent to whatever they want), then you'd have a chance to compete because the competition is no longer about who can pay the most.
No, because the landlord would either get the rest under the table or the competition would move onto risk profiles, where someone earning 4/5k month would beat any spaniard with our unstable and poorly paid jobs.
In the end, we either do it like in Vienna or Singapore, or we're not going to solve it.
Singapore, I know about: A huge amount of decent public housing. Is Vienna similar? Is there no political pressure in Spain to build more decent public housing?
You're correct, the competition wouldn't be on rent prices anymore. But since the shortage of houses is not solved, competition would just move to some other area.
E.g: which candidate does the landlord like the best, or who was on some waiting list for the most years, etc.
Really that won't help. These kind of regulations have been tried in so many countries before and the result is always the same: cap the rents => landlords will take houses from the markets and sell them instead => there will be a shortage of properties for rent so finding them will be very hard, and the few landlords left will be extremely selective when choosing from the many candidates.
What does help: increase the supply. Make it easier to build or let houses by reducing bureaucracy, invest in housing projects etc.
Increasing supply won't work with places where the demand is virtually infinite. You have to cut the demand somehow, and in the case of Spain it means preventing foreigners to access such stock. That means public housing, or some law that creates a lot of friction.
Cheaper housing in Spain will lead to induced demand, because there's just too many people willing to move here.
> Really that won't help. These kind of regulations have been tried in so many countries before and the result is always the same: cap the rents => landlords will take houses from the markets and sell them instead
Good. Too many people are forced into renting due to insane property prices as is.
You are in IT earning only 20K EUR per year? That is unbelievable! Why is the housing crisis happening? What changed? Did you have a population boom?
> Not to mention all the "expats" and "digital nomads" that are willing to pay whatever the landlord says because they really really want to live here without thinking about the consequences, but that's another story.
Hmmm. Do you have any stats on this matter? It seems easy to lash out against this group because they are outsiders. The "expats" will pay tax, and plenty of it, because they are higher income. "Digital nomads" are another issue -- I am not a big fan because they usually pay no income, nor residence, tax.
Do you realize most people working in IT are paid minimum wage or close to that? Most sysadmins and developers i've met here in France are under 2000€/month and it's only on places like HN that i read about huge salaries in IT.
(sorry i don't have stats this is just anecdata)
Where would you move, and how? Wages are not better in surrounding countries, unless you work in specific companies it's not easy to get in. You also need the opportunity. Most people living paycheck-to-paycheck have little time and mental space to radically change their situation...
The Spanish population in general ain't that good when it comes to English and the quality of living in Spain is, in general, quite good. Weather and food are hard to replace.
Which begs the question: "Well why don't they work remotely from Spain then?" and the answer to that is that the Spanish IT sector does a whole lot of that to begin with, so a business in the market for it can just hire one of the many consulting business there.
It is a pretty normal salary here in Spain. The housing crisis is happening because of several factors, but mostly because there's a huge increase in demand due to immigration (millions of people coming) from all profiles (richer and poorer) so we're getting squeezed hard.
The regulations around housing are so bad that almost nothing is getting built. What's getting built is for wealthy people, and no public housing in sight.
And yes, of course rich foreigners play a role here. You maybe don't like to hear it because you're likely richer than the average spaniard, but they are plenty, and we can see what they do once they arrive here.
This is no second-hand information. Because the housing situation is so bad they go on sprees trying to convince landlords to rent to them by offering more money.
Also, getting out of cities is problematic because we can't save money nor have disposable income, so owning and maintaining a car is quite an effort, and that in a city where I don't need a "B" stick to enter the city, in other cities it's worse because you're only allowed a subset of cars which are more expensive. There aren't cheap cars anymore, even shitty Dacias are +20k and anything under 10k second hand is close to junk.
We're fucked honestly. I'm willing to move, but I don't know where...
I can suggest Romania. Depending on your IT skills, 2000 euro in IT is considered minimum and country is still very cheap to live in. There is a great shortage in IT there..
Climate also similar to Spain in sommer , you will get used to winters as well. Seaside and mountains are available.
Anecdote but I visited Barcelona just pre-Covid, one of my California friends met another California friend who had bought a condo for the bargain price of 500,000 for a vacation home (and they spent time and money to renovate it) right next to the most popular touristy section of town and only lived there about a month a year, and airbnb'ed it the rest of the time. There were already things on the news that I could follow about hostility to short term rentals to tourists in the city.
These sound like numbers from Seville or somewhere deep South. Just for reference I mention that in Munich you could also rent something for 475€ and your salary would probably triple overnight. https://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/radius/wohnung-mieten...
tenants with a signed lease, a record of rent payments, correspondence with the shady landlord, etc. can simply show them in court and prove otherwise?
From a legal standpoint, assaulting people is illegal. Assaulting them in their residence (trespassing) could be even more illegal. They definitely could take you to court.
From a moral standpoint, do you realize you're advocating for the mafia here? That's exactly what private mafia companies have been doing for years. Rightful owners enjoying their property are already well protected by the law and the police (too much actually), at least in western Europe, as explained by other commenters.
The okupas are the ones running the extortion racket. If anyone is acting like the Mafia, it's the people illegally occupying the house and demanding money to leave.
What happens in the US is that the land owner hires people to squat in the house. They don't lay a finger on the real squatters. They just take up all the rooms and generally make it annoying to live there until they leave. Then they get paid by the landowner and move out.
This has resulted in lots of funny videos where squatters get angry at other squatters for squatting. The hypocrisy is astounding.
> If anyone is acting like the Mafia, it's the people illegally occupying the house and demanding money to leave.
People demand housing, not money. It's not a racket that people are homeless and need a place to live. It's funny how you go into conspirational thinking that quick. It's more concerning that you think it's better to pay the anti-squat mafia tons of cash, rather than give the same amount to the squatters to leave the place so they can find another home.
> This has resulted in lots of funny videos where squatters get angry at other squatters for squatting.
Just because you live in a squat doesn't mean anyone can come and live there. It's your residence, not a public space. There's enough empty dwellings to house everyone decently. That doesn't make it a moral obligation if you are struggling and squat a home to house every single homeless person that comes by. I mean, you don't have a greater moral obligation for that than someone who rents or owns their home.
It's not hypocrisy to get angry at assholes trying to ruin your life when you're already low on cash and living in precarious housing. It's cruel that you would find human misery "funny".
> Just because you live in a squat doesn't mean anyone can come and live there. It's your residence, not a public space
Do you really not see the hypocrisy of this statement?
"It doesn't mean anyone can come and live there. It's your residence, not a public space."
Then how on earth do you defend squatters moving into another person's residence illegally? This is the kind of laughable hypocrisy typically displayed when squatters come back to house they've illegally occupied and meet some new housemates. It's amazing how they can rationalize that it's acceptable for them to move into people's homes without permission, but not acceptable for other people to do the same.
It is not their residence. They broke in and just moved in.
Kicking out people who are trespassing is how you have a safe and lawful society. Allowing private citizens to do whatever they feel like to innocent people is mafia like behavior.
It is their residence. That's the semantic difference between residence and ownership. You may reside somewhere without owning it, and vice-versa.
Now, breaking into people's residence is a different matter, and is already highly criminalized. Laws about squatting and tenants rights don't exist in the void without a reason: they are supposed to be a balance between ownership rights and housing rights. Allowing the real estate mafia to make its own law is not exactly a balance...
Madness is the story I just saw of a woman who bought land in Hawaii and someone else built a house on it. Then squatters arrived. Then the developer sued her. What a mess.
This is bullshit. I'm dev from Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain) and the squatting topic is periodically being pumped up by the same dumb bastards (always the same companies and media). Squatting exists at the city but it is not an issue in the daily lifes of Barcelona and Spain citizens, only for the fucking big owners with more than 10 flats each. Squatting happens because this bastards (big owners) are inflating the flat prices and getting the people of Barcelona out of their neighborhoods and giving the homes for temporal tourists.
Demand of people is the only way of inflating the prices. The people who would like to live in Spain, both Spanish people and non-Spanish, are the people who make your country as rich as it is.
Am I hearing you saying "What rich? we have poor economy". Yeah, prevent people from investing in real estate and you'll be even poorer.
We are getting poorer because people invest in real state to their benefit without adding any social value to our lives. Only to higher our rent and making touristic flats. Which crowds our streets with noise and filth while the benefits are for foreign companies that are prostituting our cities like a thematic park.
It is not what happened a few meters from my home in a completely closed apartment. The "squatters" broke the first-floor window to enter, the Mossos took 15 minutes to arrive and did absolutely nothing. They have been there for six months, they already changed the front door, and the owner cannot get them out.
In theory I bet it's an efficient option. But I'm curious about the risks and costs involved in dealing with such "services", and how easy it is to find reputable thugs.
I used to know a guy who had an impressive physique and foreign accent and was hired for similar "communication jobs" (debt collection). It was all above board so he didn't carry any weapons and didn't do anything but the mere implication in his presence was often enough to motivate debtors to find ways to pay shortly after his visits. He was actually a nice guy and not much of a fighter.
Sure. Although I guess the occupiers can also hire thugs to beat the owner up with baseball bats. There are reasons why this form of dispute resolution has gone out of fashion in the kind of countries you might want to live in.
This is not like USA were you shoot anyone who enters in your property.
If you harm this people you surely will have to face penal consequences.
Why? Because then, people will do the same with a small family which can not pay rent this month, after you increased the price to the double because you want to rent to tourists.
The solution is simple: use your properties. Would you let your car with the keys inside? No. Don't let your houses unused. It's is an offense to people who want to work and live. Properties shouldn't be a business nor a speculative means.
In that case, was the dwelling abandoned? Of course the squatters are gonna say they didn't break in because that's the only way they'll keep their homes, but is it morally wrong to break into a speculator-owned dwelling that has been empty for 5 years? I've personally done it multiple times in my youth...
In a lot of cases the analogy should be "you wouldn't even notice if someone stole cash out of your 3rd wallet which you leave on a table in a random place and didn't use for a long time because your first two wallets are enough."
> I bet you'd see something wrong if I went into your wallet and took some cash, after all you're not using it right now
Sure, but that doesn't demonstrate inconsistency, that only demonstrates that different things are different and we can feel differently about them. The interesting response would not be the implied accusation of hypocrisy in the way you posed your question but rather simply "Why do you feel differently about this scenario?".
> They can only enter if you leave a window or door open for them to enter.
How is this not victim blaming? Next you'll tell me that a victim of sexual assault shouldn't have left their window open by wearing such a short dress, and they were asking for it anyway.
The point is, if you break anything to enter you used force and it's much worse.
But if it's your residence, your house, and at least you used once a year is "morada", and then they are intruders and they are breaking the law.
It doesn't matter if they change the lock or anything like this. If mossos doesn't do anything, which would amaze me, then call the other forces, like civil, local o nacional.
If you let a house unused all year long or during years, it's your problem. I don't know what's the purpose of owning a house and not using it, in this case, I would appreciate that someone breaks in to live there with pacifically, this people exist.
> This is fueled by a complex blend of socio-economic factors. There are a bunch of poor people, scarce affordable housing, and also a bunch of empty houses owned by banks.
If investing in housing is made less profitable, there will be less investing and consequently less supply in the long run, thus making the housing problem worse.
Except in this case, what is less profitable is investing in land/infrastructure that could serve as housing but leaving it vacant.
That is not investment in housing, simply speculation on land and buildings.
Investment in housing (ie actively rented places) are unaffected, so there is no reason there woukd be less investing on that front
These aren't examples of houses kept vacant intentionally by speculators. The first articles literally says in the headline that the houses are empty because "no-one wants to buy them". The second one states that the reason the flats are empty is "unlikely to be property speculation".
A common misconception that people don't seem to get (and that most news outlets conveniently forget to report), it's that if someone enters your primary or even second residence, that isn't considered Okupacion, it's considered "Allanamiento de morada" (breaking and entering). Even if you were on vacation for a month.
If that happens you call the police and they'll kick them out in 24 hours max.
Yes it does. It would be the renters primary residence, so it's "Allanamiento de Morada". (Breaking and entering).
Now if the current renter can't afford to keep paying rent and decides to occupy the property, that's considered Okupación. And that process does take longer.
Secondary residence here doesn't mean your 2nd house as opposed to the 3rd, it means a vacation home (ie a place you own for your own use, even if it's not you main residence. As opposed to a rental property)
What is it with people and their strawmen. Squatting has, historically, predominantly targeted empty buildings like luxury rentals, offices, factories, churches, etc. Please show me a single example of somebodies primary home being squatted and they becoming homeless as a result.
Sticking to Spain, there were about 17,000 squatting incidents (reported to the police) in 2021 [1]. I don't know about big cities in Spain, but e.g. in Berlin there are tens of thousands of squaremeters in unhoused space in form of offices and high-rent appartments. Do you really think people go to the homes people live in first?
I lived in Amsterdam for a long time, and the Dutch government initially took a very liberal stance on squatting exactly for the reasons you mentioned. And initially it seemed to work, the squatters were a mix of idealists, artists and others, otoh property owners tried to find creative ways to make sure their properties didn't stay inhabited for too long, e.g. by renting it out temporarily.
However after some years, the situation slowly changed: more and more squatters were drug addicts, who ofc couldn't afford to pay rent; also the word spread outside of NL that it was possible to go to Amsterdam and live there for free, so loads of immigrants came with no intention to rent at all.
Apart from that, squatting exposed another problem: the squatters typically didn't care too much about their home or neighbourhood, after all it was not theirs and sooner or later they'd have to move out again.
So they typically caused a lot of irritation with their neighbours because of garbage of noise.
In the end, squatters in NL lost most of the goodwill they had with the Dutch government, and stricter anti squatting laws are now in place.
Not exactly related to the article itself, but it seems to me to be heavily AI-edited, with a lot of unnecessary fluff, the kind that ChatGPT adds. Honestly it seems like the article could be shortened in half at least. And probably all those bold highlighted phrases were added by ChatGPT too. I have nothing against LLMs, I use them often, but this isn't a good example of using them.
Interesting point. I looked at the article again and noticed more signs of LLM composition: well-organized paragraphs of about equal length; a lack of specific examples, data, and quotations; and no errors or infelicities that would suggest human-written text.
I got something very similar by prompting ChatGPT-4o with “Write a five-paragraph news article in English about the rise of 'okupación' in Spain. Focus on the legal issues.”
One of those paragraphs: “The legal landscape surrounding ‘okupación’ is complex. Spanish law differentiates between two main types of property occupation: usurpation and trespassing. Usurpation, involving the illegal occupation of a property without violence, is often met with fines rather than immediate eviction, frustrating many property owners. Trespassing, on the other hand, which involves force or threats, is treated more severely but is harder to prove.”
There is no such "okupas problem" in Spain. If someone enter your dwelling (don't really know if is the correct term in English. In Spanish the house where you actually live is called "morada"), you can call the police and they will evict whoever is in the house in less than 24 hours.
Other topic is holiday residences; those are not dwelling ("morada") so, in Spain, the right to have a dwelling is on the top of private property so yes, it's quite difficult to evict people who entered the house in this scenario. The ones who really have the problem are the people who buy houses for the summer.
This is completely true, so if you work as a real estate investor, you need to check your knowledge and start studying or stop lying.
If you try to squat (okupar) the house where someone lives, you'll be evicted just when the police arrives to your house. And you'll get a criminal sanction (allanamiento de morada). The problem comes when your third house is occupied by someone, since this is not where you live, then you'll have a real problem since they can say they are living there right now, and that's when the time dilatation comes.
This "problem" is just for people with a lot of houses, rentist, that are part of the problem. Or the banks and vulture funds, who had most of the houses and flats in spain.
And the squatting problem in spain is ridiculous small. THe percentage over the poblation is ridiculous. This that, in this article, don't mention at all.
> This "problem" is just for people with a lot of houses, rentist, that are part of the problem. Or the banks and vulture funds, who had most of the houses and flats in spain.
And the squatting problem in spain is ridiculous small. THe percentage over the poblation is ridiculous. This that, in this article, don't mention at all.
This is a problem that *anyone* with more than 1 property might suffer. FTFY
It's unbelievable the way some people stretch it to defend squatters.
If it's not yours, you should not take it. Full pause.
> This is a problem that anyone with more than 1 property might suffer. FTFY
Yes, "lots" = more than one
Spain is still struggling with higher demand than supply, so people end up homeless. At the same time, Spain struggles with properties in high-demand areas being empty because the owner doesn't want to rent or sell it, so no one uses it at all.
Finally, we're getting "upkeep taxes" added to those places, so they can either be utilized, or the owner "penalized" of sorts.
But up until now, there wasn't anything like that, so the alternative for many is to hole up in a empty building no one cares about, or live on the street. And obviously, many take the first choice. It's hard for me to blame them when the other choice is living on the streets.
there's a slight difference between one, a couple, a few, several and "lots". It's one of the first things you learn in English.
If I ran out of money it shouldn't be okay for me to rob someone's else money. The same way if I can't afford a house house I shouldn't squat a house.
If one can't afford a house, he or she should:
- complain about the government house development policies
- search for social housing if available
- get a better job
- not squat someone's else house
- not have children and use them to justify squatting, which is very common
- etc
You're saying that the "problem" is only for a cert class of people. People who bought their property lawfully and lawfully expect to make use of it when, if and how they desire. You seem to imply that they should not enjoy that right.
You are interpreting that, I never said that they should not enjoy what they earned. I just said that rentist are the only one suffering this "problem" and vulture funds and banks.
Ofcourse someone whos earned a couple of houses has a right to enjoy them and live their lives as they please. But you cannot convince me to empathize with banks, vulture funds or people who has 50 houses (like, for example, well known families in politics).
If you own a second property and decide to rent it out and your tenant decides to stop paying rent you're fucked. Until they get an eviction notice from a court, which can take more than a year, you have to keep paying utilities for them. Nor can you change the locks. If the okupa has children you're even more fucked.
Considering how many desokupa services exist I'd say it's a real problem.
> Considering how many desokupa services exist I'd say it's a real problem.
How many does exists? I've only heard of one (literally called "Desokupa"), but you're saying there are many companies offering this, not just local chapters of the major one?
Tried searching but could only find that one, and I couldn't find any sources on the number of companies existing offering this service either.
As they operate in a gray zone, they are generally not advertised. But even cops will give you numbers or info on how to join WhatsApp groups where you can hire someone.
Despite all the publicity, I've never heard of anyone using the company you referenced. At least not in Andalucía.
>Considering how many desokupa services exist I'd say it's a real problem.
None of what you said sounds like a problem. What is the problem? It sounds like a policy to ensure dwellings, which are obviously a scarce resource in those areas have actual people living in them. That is kind of their point. Of course it would be beneficial to have a better legal framework to ensure housing security and building maintenance.
The underlying problem is that it violates the owner's property rights. Whether they rent or or leave unoccupied their property, even if it's scarce, is their business. And not letting the owner manage their property as they see fit causes all sorts of wider problems.
I'm assuming from reading your other comments you're not going to be sympathetic to this argument so let me give you two anecdotal incidents.
The first is about a woman who is 70 years old. She lives off a state pension which is supplemented by a small rental income from a three bedroom apartment she owns. The apartment is quite old, and needs refurbishment, so she can only generally rent it to students or non-professionals who pay a modest rent. After maintenance costs, property tax, and building management fees she doesn't get much but enough so she doesn't have to rely on her children.
One day, one of the tenants stopped paying rent. Rather than asking him to leave immediately she gave him some extra time to get the rent. Rather than do this, he decided he would do an occupation. So first he terrorized the other tenants so they left and then proceeded to occupy the entire apartment, including turning one bedroom into a gym. Police were called quite a few times but they said they couldn't do anything until they received a court order. So for a year and a half, this guy lived there rent free with water and electricity being paid for as well (you can cut off internet as it's not deemed essential).
When the court order finally came through the police didn't even bother showing up and it was the locksmith who chased the guy out. He hasn't faced any consequences and could continue to do this again and again. As for the owner, she had to take out loans (some with 20% interest) cover the costs this guy incurred. She, who is Spanish, will never rent out to Spanish people again.
The second is about a taxi driver in his late 40s. After a long period of saving he managed to save enough for a deposit to get a mortgage on a costal apartment that his family would use in the summers and rent the rest of the time. While he could have just listed it on Airbnb, he decided to rent it out to a woman with children on a long-term basis (non-summer months).
So she moves in and when he comes a few days later to collect the first month's rent he's informed that she won't be paying rent and because of the children it's going to be impossible to kick her out. He tries to negotiate with her over a few months, including talking to the town hall to get some some rent stipend, all to no avail. Eventually, he had to use desokupa services to get her out but not before this woman had caused significant property damage.
He also went into debt and his marriage almost failed because of the stress and financial strain. Once he finishes repairing all the damage (which he has to do himself as he can't afford to pay someone else) he will rent it out again but only through Airbnb to foreigners.
So this policy has ensured that honest people, renters and landlords, get punished by dishonest people who won't see any consequences either.
> Until they get an eviction notice from a court, which can take more than a year, you have to keep paying utilities for them
After the eviction takes place, how badly does an eviction on record hurt the renter's ability to rent in the future? Just trying to understand the asymmetry of costs for the landlord and renter in this situation where the renter "decides" to stop paying rent
Many non-professional landlords don't ask for references nor do background checks, they just give you a contract. So I imagine it's pretty easy to continue to do the same trick over and over unless they somehow manage to get their face in a local paper.
The effect of this is more reluctance to rent out for fear this will happen. Or only rent to rich foreigners who won't pull this scam. Lest the landlord find themselves in debt.
Also, the okupa is very much deciding to do this knowing they can get away with it.
It's an investment. Every investment has a risk. It's your responsibility to find ways to mitigate this risk, like renting to someone you know or having a modest price to someone who can pay afford it vastly, no to anyone that looks the cheapest rent.
That's why people sing contracts of X years, and asks for employment contracts and a minimum quantity of money in the bank. In this situations you can still get it wrong, but that's investing, it's always risky.
"The rise of okupation"... but they make no references to data. Here is the data (in Spanish) [1].
The difference between trespassing (that somebody enters in the house you live) and usurpation (the house is yours but is not where you live) is very important. Both problems are way less prevalent than what appears on the media (see [1]), but trespassing is waaay lower (and as the owner you have better mechanisms to recover your house).
However, there is a huge propaganda campaign here in Spain, where TV shows talk constantly about trespassing, and one can only imagine what they get from that (swaying votes to conservative political groups, selling alarms, less rights to people that live on rented apartments...)
Not everyone who gets this problem sues the okupas, since as it says this is a many-year complex legal process. I personally know multiple people who have had this problem, which suggest that it is probably MORE widespread than the data shows.
In the end there are two other big ways of dealing with it: paying the okupas to leave, or paying desokupados to get them out, where both of those ways would not be registered in those statistics.
I agree that it may not be 100% accurate, but probably correlated with the truth and directionally accurate. If you discard it, what do you have? Anecdotes? The media narratives?
If data is not representative it's just a metric. Its worse than anecdotes because an anecdote has a lot of information and nuance that can be obtained from it.
But you'd need other data to prove (or at least strongly suggest) that the data isn't representative.
You can't just say "the data COULD be unrepresentative", then just use some random guys anecdotes on the internet as more valid than national statistics.
The cases I know of are usurpation, not trespassing.
Oh sure, I'm not saying the number of lawsuits are wrong, I'm saying something different:
• The lawsuits, by their nature, represent a lower bound of the number of okupations, since one would assume that there's many cases where there's an okupa but the owner doesn't go the legal way. One can hardly assume the opposite since that's a lost lawsuit for sure. So the number of lawsuits is the lower bound for the number of okupas, and NOT a representation. I do not know nor claim to know where the upper bound or actual number of okupas is, but equating lawsuits with occurences is a weak correlation at best.
• There's clearly a big one-sided abuse of the system, which affects both homeowners AND honest renters.
• I'd also agree to add punitive measures to banks or companies that hoard a large number of houses for especulation. This is slightly difficult to arrange legally without also punishing someone who buys a second house, but I'm sure possible and I believe both sides of the aisle would benefit from some regulation like this.
If you make it financially risky to own a rental property you're also making it more risky and thus less profitable to buy and rent out apartments. This hurts both renters and the potential landlords. It would be much better to just increase property taxes.. Speaking as a Dane, this kind kind of economically illiterate leftist lawlessness is an important reason why Spain is poorer both poorer and has a worse welfare state than Denmark.
Ok, but first: is it financially risky right now to own properties? No, based on the data we have.
Second: can renters be hurt even more? Are landlords the most vulnerable people right now? The situation is pretty awful right now, while at the same time there are people whose sole contribution to society is "owning flats".
And I agree on increasing property taxes (any progressive taxes over capital would do).
BTW, I'd love to recommend a book that explains all this much better than I would do. Unfortunately, I think it's only in Spanish: "La España de las piscinas" (The Spain of Swimming Pools).
I think these are understandable and well intended questions! But they also makes it seem like you're not very familiar with standard economic analysis. I would encourage you to read The Rent is Too Damn High by Yglesias which is by an american (leftist) who I think has a much better set of ideas for improving the lives of renters than "occupation friendly" housing regulations and other "zero sum" ideas. And yes, buying and administering rental properties is societally valueable just like running a bakery, restaurant or software consultancy is.
Can you give any information on what he advocates?
I wonder if the difference could be that the policies that he advocate would require bought and paid for politicians to act while squatting is something that an individual can do?
The difference is that those occupation friendly laws work and force real estate owners to actually rent out their properties rather than let them sit empty to appreciate value. Whereas the ideas of a person that only exist in a book are just ideas that exist in a book.
Allowing occupation of vacant properties by squatters because there isn't enough housing supply is like allowing stealing food from farms because there isn’t enough food supply. It’s demoralizing to the producers and maintainers of the resource and does not encourage further investment in the activity.
> Allowing occupation of vacant properties by squatters because there isn't enough housing supply is like allowing stealing food from farms because there isn’t enough food supply
Love these religious-sounding sermons. Im telling what is happening here, a lot of 'free market' types are preaching to me that what is happening here is not happening and something else should be happening per the magic of 'free market' or capitalism or whatever. Hearing these, one understands who the US ended up with housing being unaffordable for 99% of Americans...
Certainly, owners sometimes leave properties vacant, and sometimes do so for long periods, for various reasons. The housing market, however, should be big enough and robust enough to allow for some of that occurring.
Personally, I'd like there to be so much more housing that landlords have to compete with each other for who can provide the best apartment for the lowest price rather than potential tenants competing with each other for who can pay the most for the only apartment that is available.
> The housing market, however, should be big enough and robust enough to allow for some of that occurring.
All of these are just wishful thinking based on non-scientific economic hullabaloo that was developed in the past 200 years. They never worked anywhere. They never will.
In the end, it comes down to the concept "Housing should be for living in, not for profit". Its a fundamental necessity/infrastructure. And privatizing it makes as much sense as privatizing the military or the police. The moment you allow it, those with bigger pockets will f*ck everything up.
> Are landlords the most vulnerable people right now?
Increasing risk will eliminate a lot of the "mom and pop" landlords (widows, former small-business owners, retirees, etc.). If it is too risky to own only a few extra condo units or a single small apartment building, then those properties will go to large corporate landlords.
> there are people whose sole contribution to society is "owning flats".
Landlords make sure the utilities (water, electricity, heat, etc.) work, that the roof doesn't leak, fix plumbing issues when they arise, take care of pest infestations, etc. Even landlords who don't personally fix things are employing managers and tradespeople. And with big corporate owners, the shareholders are usually pension funds which effectively are the retirement savings of people who have already "contributed to society".
Is it worth the major part of a full time worker's income to have somebody take care of those things in the rare occasion they happen? Most normal people can easily fix their plumbing issues, a leaky roof, termites and such in a couple of days with a few hundreds of dollars in budget.
Landlords generally spend much less than 5% of their yearly rent income on maintenance. If they actually do something to improve an apartment, that is just an investment in their own real estate, that they own 100% even after having other people pay for it several times over during decades.
Edit: Or look at it this way: Would you hire and pay somebody a good salary for working maybe 5 or 10 days per year for you?
You might be surprised to learn that many small rental properties are heavily mortgaged. Along with insurance and property taxes, the biggest cost is usually mortgage interest. Some owners even lose money for a few years until the rents rise to meet the costs so that they can break even. (These owners are playing the long game, believing that rent and property values will go up over time and eventually their investment will be a good one compared to their other investment options.)
I'm very aware of that, which just makes it worse. You now have multiple levels of strangers that are living on your back. Landlord, banker, insurance seller.
> the biggest cost is usually mortgage interest.
The tenant is paying for that.
The situation is absurd. The tenant is paying the entire mortgage and interest for the property and can be kicked out at any time, while the landlord does basically nothing, pays nothing, and the bank can not kick him out just because they please.
> you're also making it more risky and thus less profitable to buy and rent out apartments
You would be surprised about the sheer number of spaniards that would welcome this second-order effect.
In the last ~10 years, renting has skyrocketed, due to the discovery of the spanish renting market by international money, and renting laws relaxation (demand side). Meanwhile, this has not increased the supply of homes, as it is felt that there is oversupply, the demand is very concentrated on selected cities, and the turnaround of building to rent or sell is long. This double-whammy has made renting quite onerous, and buying directly out of reach, for a lot of people.
Some extra tidbits:
- Buying: Upwards of 40% of home purchase is without mortgage (not a pattern of someone buying for the first time)
I think you misunderstood what the above commenter meant when they wrote that risk of squatters makes it "less profitable to buy and rent out apartments".
Because of the additional risks of squatters, landowner will either have to take additional security measures (and make up the costs with higher rent) or accept the risk of squatters (and make up that risk with higher rent). In either case, the rent getsor expensive.
No, I got it. I just think that would mainly mean investors exit the market.
If it is less profitable, they either further raise the prices or they get out of the market; the ratio of those two options depends on price elasticity. And prices don't have a lot of room to grow further in my opinion... unless of course the wages grow quickly (and minimum wage indeed has done it in the last 5 years). But then the country needs to be more productive or people get poor (fired!), which is also not good for the renting business, etc.
At the end of the day you're betting on the spanish market either squeezing people further, or gaining productivity real quick. And real estate is not very liquid, yet is typically long-term, and those investors are risk averse. So... there will be some that will exit the market.
And what happens when people leave the rental market? Fewer apartments for rent. And what happens to rental prices when there's a scarcity of apartments to rent? Prices go up.
Well, no one can pack the apartment and leave the country. At worst they are left unoccupied, but that's a lot of money to have it parked, and can be discouraged with taxes; so alternatively people sell them... so buy and rent eventually go down.
And what will the buyers do with the apartments? Rent them? Well, then they'll either have to spend money on security or price the risk of okupas into the rent. In either case rent goes up.
This is as nonsensical as the proposals in San Francisco to prohibit the construction of apartments to try and reduce rent. Dissuading people from renting out apartments reduces the supply apartments. There is zero possibility this results in better rental prices.
Again, the comment you responded to explains how this makes it more risky and less profitable to rent out apartments. It's dissuading people from renting:
> you're also making it more risky and thus less profitable to buy and rent out apartments
When something becomes riskier, fewer people do it unless there's some other incentive.
A vacancy tax could incentivize renting, buy enabling squatters does nothing but making rentals more risky. The only thing that can solve a shortage is increased supply or reduced demand. The latter is not feasible since people need housing. The former requires that land owners take the risk on renting out apartments, and anything that increases the risk means less people will do it.
> Find a good tenant
That's easier said than done. The better way to convince prospective renters to rent out their property is to make it easier to kick out bad tenants. If evictions are backlogged, then a landlord risks being stuck with a non paying tenant for a long time.
When a renter buys an apartment or house to live in, that means the place they rented becomes vacant. It is the most basic math, addition and subtraction. Lower real estate prices means less renters and thus lower rents. Unless you conjure people into the country by immigration.
Making renting riskier doesn't inherently make property less expensive. If a shortage of rental properties makes more people want to buy condos and houses, then there's more demand for condos and houses. Making renting riskier also means that apartment buildings are less profitable and less likely to be built.
A more likely outcome is that condos and houses get more expensive because of the shortage of apartments. And fewer apartments get built because investors know that they will not be able to kick out squatters.
If letting becomes a bad return on money, leaving the house empty is an even worse return of money. So you sell, and thereby get money for better investments, while at the same time the house gets an owner tenant. Real estate is fixed and cannot be physically transferred.
As for apartments, they will still be financed by people who intend to live in them. Removing the landlord removes a huge margin, because you're nourishing a stranger.
> Making renting riskier doesn't inherently make property less expensive
It did that here.
> A more likely outcome
You are literally making up stuff and preaching a false reality as you go. No wonder how the US housing market got shafted - seeing what kind of mentality you people subscribe to.
This kind of thing baffles me. Im telling what is happening here. A guy on the internet refers to another on the internet who 'explains' to me that what is happening where I am in the actual reality is not real.
That's literally crazy. It feels like you people are preaching. Against the reality.
> Because of the additional risks of squatters, landowner will either have to take additional security measures (and make up the costs with higher rent) or accept the risk of squatters (and make up that risk with higher rent). In either case, the rent getsor expensive.
When renting becomes less profitable, real estate prices fall as landlords want to get rid off their bad investments. That means people can buy instead of rent, which means more rentals become vacant as renters become owners, which means that rents go down.
> and make up the costs with higher rent
This is not how it works. Landlords will always extract maximum rent possible from tenants.
> Landlords will always extract maximum rent possible from tenants
Landlords are competing in a market. The maximum possible rent has to do with how much the rest of the market is charging. That in turn is capped from above by how much a would be landlord would pay to buy a unit and start renting it out. If that price goes up, then landlords can charge more.
There is also a maximum amount that people can pay, but they have little choice but to pay whatever the market is charging, or else live on the street.
Renters are already paying the maximum they can. No landlord would let that juicy money go unmolested.
If landlords prefer to let their investments sit empty instead of selling, because their profits from renting aren't enough, then that is a foolish decision. But you shouldn't annihilate a whole nation because of such folly.
Even worse, now the digital nomad phenomenon is increasing rents - ~19% of the demand in the rent market in Madrid in 2023 is from foreigners. As a result, the locals learned the phrase 'digital nomad' and they are now fighting back.
People dont like to be the gentrifier. In digital nomad forums or 'investment' forums the reaction to any news about gentrification is the same - downvoting, denial, blaming someone else. Most blame the locals for letting it happen. Some more educated try to blame 'the corrupt politicians' (whatever the f that means, they plug it everywhere as if its applicable), others blame the 'real estate sellers'. They want to blame anybody but the ones who are doing the actual gentrifying, themselves. This is especially prominent among those from Angloamerican countries where being rich amongst the poverty is something admirable and respectable and you should definitely not hate them and the poor should keep their voice down. Or some variant of that mentality. They are dumbfounded when they find locals openly cursing them and calling them derogatory names and publicly doing politics against them. There's so much cultural difference.
I read through your other comments and don't exactly agree with many of your points, which appear to be pro-squatting? But you certainly seem to have a good handle on the problems. Is there a way we can connect outside of HN? Not really sure how to PM somebody here or if it's even possible.
As the constitutional right to housing is being basically circumvented through just not protecting that right, yeah, squatting seems to be the best way to protect that right.
I have a good handle of problems regarding this, and a lot of other things, however I unfortunately don't have the time to take action on any of them. So, sorry, I wouldn't be able to get in contact or do anything else.
Currently there is a hard limit on how many properties per year can be built due to lack of construction workers + training positions for new workers + being sure of work in the next decade(s) due to economic cycles.
Since the factor limiting supply is not cost or demand, prices keep ever-increasing with no gains for society; just filling the coffers of the haves.
You should really watch out with insults of economic illiteracy :)
I stand by my characterization, this comment is symptomatic of the same problem. That a country with high unemployment has the nr of workers in the construction sector as the major limitation in construction of new housing seems very implausible. What about zoning laws? To the extent a country with high unemployment can’t find enough construction workers it’s likely to be some kind of government/regulatory failure. Read Matthew Yglesias, he’s great
> That a country with high unemployment has the nr of workers in the construction sector as the major limitation in construction of new housing seems very implausible
The rest of the world is not the US, and people don't have to work for dimes in jobs that can go away the next day just because they would starve or cant afford healthcare if they don't. As a result, people prefer stable jobs. If that sounds implausible to you, it is a sign of how perverted the mentality of your society has become that you expect people to be like disposable lemmings that will pour out to whatever pays them some money.
> What about zoning laws? To the extent a country with high unemployment can’t find enough construction workers it’s likely to be some kind of government/regulatory failure. Read Matthew Yglesias, he’s great
You don't know anything about the country that you speak about. You are referring to an American who has his ideas existing only in various books. Dont make holistic statements without knowing enough about what you are talking about. In this case, an entirely different country and society.
Boomers retiring will create a permanent labor shortage for the foreseeable future. People just don’t want to be construction workers, and who can blame them? Especially with how construction workers got screwed over after 2008. That nuked the construction sector so hard that employement in construction has just barely recovered to 2008 levels.
It would be beautiful if housing was the pure demand-supply curve that many claim it is- but currently it isn’t. Letting the market solve the housing problem doesn’t create additional future housing as that is blocked by house construction output, all it does is allow maximizing profit on existing real estate.
With the extreme anger and complete societal gridlock that the first world housing crisis is fomenting, if the fix was “just unregulate lol” politicians would have done that by now.
> Speaking as a Dane, this kind kind of economically illiterate leftist lawlessness is an important reason why Spain is poorer both poorer and has a worse welfare state than Denmark.
If only Spain could profit from helping murder brown people in 3rd world countries overseas and by speculating on banking, then forcing the bailout of those sunken PRIVATE banks on other countries and then forcing them to privatize their national assets to buy those assets dirt cheap - like how Northern Europe did to Southern Europe, including Spain. Forcing the Spanish taxpayer to bail out sunken private Northern European banks and then forcing austerity on them to have them privatize their society. The biggest bank scam of the century in every way.
And yet, all of you Northern Europeans seem to want to move south to that 'economically illiterate' society and its 'failing' welfare state for some reason. To the extent that you literally filled out some cities and zones. What you say and what you do contradict.
> illiterate
You don't know even the topic that you are talking about, yet you are talking about economic illiteracy. And the one thing that you have that you refer to, is an American author and its book. As if a random American author is the all-determining authority for anything.
> you're also making it more risky and thus less profitable to buy and rent out apartments
Okupas force the property owners to rent their properties to avoid losing them. It increases property available for rent - does not decrease it. Again, you don't know what you are talking about, and no, Matthew Yglesias, the glorious American author that you slapped everywhere in this thread as if he was a prophet, is not a reference that changes this particular phenomenon either.
This is what happens where 'economically illiterate leftist lawlessness' doesn't exist.
If only. Spain declared all Native Americans Spanish subjects with equal rights in 1519. Then they proceeded to hang in public any governor who violated those rights. That's why there are 7 million 'pure blooded' (whatever that means) Native Americans in South America today and there are races like Mexican.
What's more, Spain treated the 'colonies' as parts of Spain and it spent all its money developing them. From the first university in the Americas to all kinds of hospitals, schools, infrastructure was built by the Spanish state with Spanish money. Thats why Spain lost the imperial race: Building up the locals instead of exploiting them - leaving aside not murdering them all to replace them like the Anglosaxons did.
Part of it was, most of it wasn't. And its really not relevant: Tons of gold and economic value that was extracted from the local Spaniards, local French, local English, local Germanics weren't given to their feudal lords voluntarily either. It was the political setup of its time. As a result, proposing something like this based on the standards of today sounds at best hypocrisy, at worst, dumb.
The native Americans became Spanish subjects in 1519. With all the good things and the bad things that being the subject of an average European feudal kingdom brought along with it.
Nobody declared them 'non-human' and started eradicating them like the English did. That's what you should be being cynical and sarcastic about.
100%. We have the stupidest housing laws. "economically illiterate leftist lawlessness" is the exact way to put this, and I myself usually tend towards the left.
> However, there is a huge propaganda campaign here in Spain, where TV shows talk constantly about trespassing, and one can only imagine what they get from that (swaying votes to conservative political groups, selling alarms, less rights to people that live on rented apartments...)
Same in the US, it's all fascist discourse shaping in preparation for things getting much worse.
> However, there is a huge propaganda campaign here in Spain, where TV shows talk constantly about trespassing
Yes, the right-wing channels have been screaming about it for 1-2 years now. Interestingly, their tirade started about the time the US investment funds started entering the Spanish 'real estate market' and buying up entire neighborhoods.
> usurpation (the house is yours but is not where you live)
I wonder if you can register that house as the address of a non-profit corporation, and since the corporation always lives there, the okupas become trespassers.
I have seen some apartment being severely reduced because they are under occupation (makes sense since the buyer buys an apartment they cant even go into without a multi-year legal process). I wonder if it ever happens that people occupy an apartment only to get the owner to sell for cheap and then they (or their friend) buys the apartment for cheap?
I've never heard of something like this. It's not exactly like squatters are millionaires trying to save on rent to buy more champagne... I'm not saying this has never existed, there's probably an outlier somewhere.
What does exist for sure and is publicly advertised is companies like the original article trying to make owners desperate about squatters so they will sell their property for cheap. For example here in France, "Squat Solutions" has been doing this for years, buying property for ~10% of market price because of squatters, after convincing the owners they had already lost everything.
Yea I didnt mean real squatters being the buyers. More like A who is a company/or rich person pays person B to go and squat in person Cs house. Then A goes to C and say "Ill buy your house for 10% of market value" and then the sale is done B leaves and C sells it at marketprice for a huge profit. And A and B just start the cycle again
> if a property is not adequately secured and is left unattended, it becomes vulnerable to occupation.
> Spanish law provides for an immediate eviction procedure that can be enacted within 48 hours of illegal occupation
So if I understand properly, if you go away for the weekend and forget to close a window, you might find squatters in your house when you come back, and you can't quickly get them out in a legal way?
This is not true. Your first and second house are protected by the law. If someone enters in your first or second house when you are outside, they will get expelled in the same moment the police arrives, and they will face criminal consecuences.
The problem comes when you have 200 houses and somebody squats one of those where you don't live and you don't use. A problem for the banks, vulture funds and big renters. And to be honest, I cannot care less..
Do not forget to mention that every news tv program is sponsored by Alarms companies. That the banks, the phone companies, are sponsored and sell alarms.
Which potentially, might have something to do, which so much does this situation appears on news in comparison to other problems the country has.
Thank you for acknowledging it. It's crazy to see how there's at least 1 alarm ad whenever there is a news piece about Okupation.
Most of the occupied apartments belong to banks and big renters who would rather see the building fall apart than offering the apartments for a reasonable price/rent.
The problem for citizens isn't that they're losing their apartments/houses to Okupas, since that's a really small minority. The real problem is that some Okupas do it "professionally" for profit and can be quite violent.
It's pretty easy. Where you are registered in your city. There is an obligation to register yourself where do you live and where do you reside. If you live and work in madrid but you have a house in cadiz, then your house in cadiz is not where you live...
It's the same in France so I wouldn't even be surprised.
You can't even cut electricity/heat as it is seen inhumane and in theory you have to renovate/fix the house every time something dangerous needs to be fixed because it's illegal to provide unsafe housing.
Sometimes it takes years for people to get their house back and they often are completely trashed
France, like Spain, has strong residence protection for anyone, including homeowners. So if someone takes your house while you are away it is not legally squatting, but rather homebreaking and they will be evicted without even a trial.
If a house you own gets squatted you may stop paying for electricity/gaz/water. But to be honest apart from big corps abandoned buildings, i've never seen a squat where the electricity/water was already on.
It is illegal to rent dangerous housing. It may not be illegal to give it away in good faith, and it's certainly not your responsibility as an owner if it gets squatted. To my knowledge, and despite hearing about this constantly on homeowners forums, there has never been a case of owners being legally responsible for injuries to squatters.
> So if someone takes your house while you are away it is not legally squatting, but rather homebreaking and they will be evicted without even a trial.
At least in the US there have been cases where the squatter forged a lease and showed that to police that came to evict them. With the scant evidence the police would deem it a civil matter and you have to go to court. I'm not sure what the process is in Spain though.
Forging a lease for an empty dwelling is easy. But forging a lease for the owner's residence is much harder. You'd have to get rid of the owner's stuff, make sure the neighbors don't testify that this is the owner's residence, come up with fake papers to prove the owner lives elsewhere.
All in all, i'd be curious if you have an example because that sounds like opinion manipulation from the owners as that case is very unlikely. At least similar cases i've heard about in France have been 100% debunked. It's much more likely the owners live(d) elsewhere and had an empty dwelling squatted.
You can still get them out relatively quickly if it's your main residence. But otherwise, yeah, that's correct, which is why, instead of contacting the police, many people kick them out the old fashioned way or hire people experienced in doing so tiptoeing the line of legality.
You are right but im certain that the amount of incidents like that is really small. A little more common is the situation where someone renting runs out of money and squats to avoid going homeless.
Both types of squatters above are overrepresented and the most common one by far is the anti-capitalist squatter.
People who are fed up with high rents. Not without motives.
Corps buy entire building blocks, sometimes for renting but a lot of times just for storing capital and playing with the market.
This combined with airbnb raising the prices more for tourists while salaries i. spain stay the same ends up in rents being totally disproportionate.
Most squatters I know don't want trouble, they get inside abandoned buildings and stay unnoticed for a big lenght of time. Getting inside a building in active use is just asking for trouble, as annoying it may be for the owners it's not the best option for the okupas either.
That's precisely what fascist news organizations will have you believe, but the reality could not be further. Here in France BFMTV or CNews regularly have segments about poor people displaced from their homes by squatters (like the Maryvonne case or the Roland case) however when you check for information, you realize they were not protected by the police because they had abandoned the house for years so it was not considered their residence.
People going away for vacations, even months-long vacations are definitely protected by the law. It is illegal to break into people's home. It may not be illegal, depending on your jurisdiction, to enter an abandoned housing unit and claim it as your residence. It may still be illegal to break into it.
(when i say fascist news organizations i do mean they are run by actual fascists like Bollore, it's not a figure of speech)
First, I think okupas are a very small problem, mainly used for propaganda.
But how are real state companies feeding the problem? The problem is that there's no houses available, because politicians create artificial scarcity. In any local government, the stronger department is "Urbanism", decides if you get rich by allowing you to develop on your property, or you stay poor because you don't get the permits.
Come on, this is very public knowledge in Spain, they barely try to hide. Everybody knows how it works, and how close the biggest (and even not so big) developers are to the politicians. Then they politicians blame Idealista or AirBnb like they don't have any power to allow the country to duplicate the available housing starting today.
There is also the problem with the insecurity for the landlord in Spain: right now, is you rent to a family with kids, and the family doesn't pay, you can't do nothing! How is it a mistery that landlords are retiring their properties from the rent market to sell them? That's causing a massive shortage, that causes prices do go up.
Yes, seriously, blaming a real-estate listing website for listing real-estate is absolutely insane. We all need to build more housing, that's it. That's the solution.
I think you're confusing things slightly – I don't think idealista owns any property. They are however owned by a private equity group that invests among other things directly in real estate, which is tbf extremely common in PE.
> There is also the problem with the insecurity for the landlord in Spain: right now, is you rent to a family with kids, and the family doesn't pay, you can't do nothing! How is it a mistery that landlords are retiring their properties from the rent market to sell them? That's causing a massive shortage, that causes prices do go up.
There's an easy way to fix that: create a tax for unoccupied housing. If real estate sits unused for extensive durations instead of having tenants in them (i.e. having a rent low enough someone can afford it) it will burn a hole in your pocket. If you want to sell instead of letting someone rent, you will be incentivized to sell it ASAP even if you have to lower your price or make a loss.
Preferring to sell rather than renting out doesn't create a shortage. Preferring to keep housing unoccupied (in order to sell it) rather than renting it out or selling it at a price someone can afford does. If the market can't connect buyers/renters and sellers/landlords because the former can't afford the prices set by the latter and there's no economic pressure on the latter to lower their prices, you can just create that pressure.
Of course this would disincentivize private housing construction for people who don't also plan to live in that housing themselves but there's no reason there can't be a publicly funded organization for housing development able to take losses on sales/rent because it is backed by public money. This isn't uncharted territory either.
There's no reason housing has to function as an unregulated commodity. There's especially no reason to believe we can approximate that without further feeding into the housing crisis. There's a reason we have the term "rent-seeking" and why it has negative connotations: landlords only exist because most people can't afford or aren't eligible for the kind of loan that would allow them to build or buy a house. Unlike loan payments which end once you've paid off the loan (plus interest), rent goes on forever and only ever goes up. The entire point of being a landlord is that the rent accumulates to a sum greater than what you paid for the property (plus interest if you had to get a loan). Landlords literally don't add value. They're more like scalpers.
>landlords only exist because most people can't afford or aren't eligible for the kind of loan that would allow them to build or buy a house
I rent. Not because I can't afford to buy, but because I'm not convinced that I will stay where I am forever. Maybe in a few years I move to Tarifa to work remotely, maybe I move to China. Today I live in a flat, I don't know it I want to live in this flat forever or buy a house. Today I have good health, maybe tomorrow I don't so I need to change my housing requirements.
I need landlords to invest their money in houses I can rent. The same I need people buying planes so I don't have to buy one to fly. What is adding value for you? To me a landlord that made the investment so I can rent has value enough that I pay for it. If you don't like it, it's fine, but leave the rest of us live and rent in peace.
If being a landlord was so profitable and risk free, we would be drowning in properties for rent. The fact that it doesn't happen, but we have a massive house shortage speaks by itself.
> I need landlords to invest their money in houses I can rent.
No, you need affordable housing. There's no reason that has to double as a way for someone to make a considerable ROI. Having to rent means that even if you stay in one place long enough to pay for the cost of building/buying the house twice over, you still get to pay an ever increasing rent every month just for the service of not kicking you out of your home.
> If you don't like it, it's fine, but leave the rest of us live and rent in peace.
But that's the problem, isn't it? Everyone needs housing. It's not something you can simply opt out of. You can try being homeless but that precludes you from most ways to make an income. If you're wealthy enough, you can buy a house so you never have to rent again but again that's not a choice most people get to make even if they could afford it (because it hinges on their ability to get a loan, which is up to the bank).
I'm not saying you should have to pay a million bucks to have a place to live. Nothing I said contradicts the idea that you may want to live in different places over time. I'm saying commodity housing (i.e. having housing subject to a housing market) necessarily leads to a housing shortage and there are better options than trusting the benevolence of every single landlord not to charge as much rent as they can get away with.
> If being a landlord was so profitable and risk free, we would be drowning in properties for rent.
This (drowning in properties for rent) doesn't logically follow from that (being a landlord is very profitable) and that isn't what I said. There are other factors involved like how profitable being a landlord is relative to other things you can do (like selling) and how high the initial investment required to run a profitable landlord operation (with multiple properties) is.
> The fact that it doesn't happen, but we have a massive house shortage speaks by itself.
If it's a housing shortage, that's a supply problem. But according to other comments from people claiming to know the situation in Spain, there is no lack of housing supply (i.e. there are plenty of houses for sale and many empty houses for rent) so it seems to be a problem of pricing.
It's more profitable to sell (or rent out) a highly priced property even if it means you'll sit on it for a longer time, as long as you can afford the initial investment and maintenance. In fact, overpricing a property can be beneficial if you own other properties in the same area because it can raise the average and thus justify increasing the prices for other properties in the area. Not to mention that due to population growth over time demand goes up and new development usually happens in the outskirts, meaning supply in the area won't increase.
You can be okay with the status quo. That doesn't mean there aren't good arguments why the status quo is bad in certain ways. And changing the status quo doesn't mean removing one thing and being done with it. As much as some may feel it when rent is due, I don't think the solution is to kill all landlords (or more figuratively: abolish the profit model of being a landlord). De-commodification doesn't mean simply banning the sale of something. It's about replacing one model with another and there can be intermediate steps (e.g. the Red Vienna model of public housing).
If something is profitable, someone would do it in a free market. Even if selling houses is more profitable than renting, according to you renting is still more profitable than, for example, agriculture. How come there is not a flood of land owners selling their low profit land in Badajoz to buy houses in Madrid and Barcelona and double their income? How there are not hundreds of companies buying to rent, a safe and very profitable business, but there are hundreds of companies going bankrupt every year. For example, why start a car workshop when I could just buy three or four houses, rent them and live without working?
I'll tell you why: because renting is not a risk free and safe business, but a tight one. You can have renters that doesn't pay for a couple of years. Your tenants can cause damages to your property. Your property lose value if you don't invest in it. Lots of things can go south that wipe your ROI, and you can't do nothing to fix it. Sure, if you get a long term tenant that pays every 1st day of the month and takes good care of the house, it's a wonderful business, but that is not the norm.
> Everyone needs housing. It's not something you can simply opt out of.
Same thing I need food or clothing. And I have plenty of both, cheaply, on a wide variety and quality, because politicians don't meddle with them causing artificial shortages.
> there are better options than trusting the benevolence of every single landlord not to charge as much rent as they can get away with.
That's a free market. Every single one of us charges as much as we can get away with it. And pay as less as we can get away with it. If I don't have a higher wage is just because I'm selling my work to the best paying company. In turn, they are paying my salary because they couldn't find anyone that charges less than me for the same work.
> If it's a housing shortage, that's a supply problem. But according to other comments from people claiming to know the situation in Spain, there is no lack of housing supply (i.e. there are plenty of houses for sale and many empty houses for rent) so it seems to be a problem of pricing.
That makes no economical sense. There are cities (Madrid or Barcelona, surely others) where you can put a house for rent at any price, and it will get rented in hours. That's a supply problem! A problem of pricing would be hundreds of properties for rent at such prices that nobody rent them for months or years. There is a lack or supply _for rent_, and I don't care what other "informed" comments say unless they come with data.
> It's more profitable to sell (or rent out) a highly priced property even if it means you'll sit on it for a longer time, as long as you can afford the initial investment and maintenance
What? No, it's not. Each year without renting a house that you bought for, say, 300,000€ to rent for 1,000€/month is a loss of 12,000€ (4%). If you put that same 300,000€ in stocks or some kind of safe investment like public or private bonds, you would get at least 2% interest/dividend _and your invested money_ back. Instead you have inmovilized money that is producing zero (pre tax, depretiation and amortization). You should familiarize with this concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
You basically are saying that I can buy stocks without dividend, because I'm just going to sell it at a higher prize in the future _guaranteed_. That might happen or not.
It partially boils down to Spain having very little new construction. In a little eastern european country with 10 million people like Hungary there are roughly just as many new developments on the market as in a big country like Spain, with 40M population.
This problem is now so big local governments are now building new houses.
The rental issues are interesting because for example in Germany, the rental protections are very similar, maybe even more protecting than Spain. (Interestingly the prices are also lower in Germany, in Madrid prices start from 650+utilities, in Munich, 500+utilities)
Companies and individuals who buy property to rent have direct negative effect on home prices. It's basic supply and demand, but a as soon a as you start talking to a landlord logic is out and mental gymnastics are in.
I was wondering what kind of website this is given how obviously it is siding with landlords.
Squatting is only a problem that can happen if housing remains unoccupied. And it's more likely to happen if there is no strong communal network in the area (because most people don't want squatters moving in next to them because of the implications). The easiest way to have housing remain unoccupied for long periods of time and to have neighbors be apathetic about squatters moving into it is to destroy the local community through rent hikes and gentrification and to not live in the area yourself (e.g. because you're a real estate company and not a private landlord or because you're an external speculative investor).
As I understand it, Spain has also had massive problems with investors buying properties to put on AirBnB for tourists, often in defiance of zoning laws.
I understand the concern about property damage from squatting but unoccupied housing is wasting public resources (i.e. habitable land) and can often easily be solved by lowering rent - which from the tenant's POV is literally just giving you free money to use something you already built/bought (i.e. a sunk cost), unlike maintenace & utilities which actively contribute to its upkeep. If you want to think of real estate as an investment you need to understand that investment comes with risks and you shouldn't have a right to make a positive ROI (certainly not a moral one).
In a sense, I would argue (and I think some of the resident Georgists would agree) that keeping housing deliberately unoccupied because of inflated rents and real estate speculation is ethically indistinguishable from squatting - if not worse - because you're deliberately preventing society from making use of that land purely in the hopes of a speculative postive ROI. Housing is only valuable to society when it is occupied.
I was talking about the website the article is on, not HN. I'm well aware that HN is run by Y Combinator. It's in the URL.
That said, squatting unused housing is literally "disrupting the housing market" by eliminating the waste of critical resources. It's upsetting the market and breaking established rules, sure, but so are AirBnB, Uber, generative AI and cryptocurrencies.
If you think about the founding mythology of "Hacker culture", squatting fits right in there alongside the stories of defrauding telephone companies with "phreaking" and other "adventures". Except of course for the obvious class difference between hacking your Ivy League university's computer lab and having to squat an empty building because the alternative is being homeless.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 381 ms ] thread> Property owners have shared experiences of feeling powerless as they grapple with the lengthy and often cumbersome legal process to evict squatters.
Those poor landlords! Property owners are truly the most oppressed minority in Spain. It's heart-wrenchingly sad hearing their accounts of legal procedures and having to evict people living in their properties:(
If the okupas have been there for longer than 48 hours without you trying to get rid of them, doing something like that could be considered harassment and/or endangering the occupants' health, so you'd probably face criminal charges for it. You're not allowed to alter the living conditions to force them out, but you need to (within 48 hours of the occupation) legally get them out of the property.
When you live there you know how to "fix" them but otherwise you are not obligated to fix them.
The buildings are occupied because the owner do not live there. Squatters target housings that are left empty by owners who are just speculating on the market.
I personally know a handful of cases where okupas tried to take people's primary residence that they just purchased and were in the process of reforming before moving, for example. And every single case was solved quickly by local police, as it's breaking and entering, not a occupation.
The sprays could be made very difficult to disconnect. A new one would activate each day in a new location. If day 1 spray is disconnected, day 2 would be twice as much volume.
It has been shown on Youtube that fart spray does work for theft, it's time to deploy it as an actual product everywhere.
The reality of the legal dimensions is probably much more complex though, but it's helpful to have a simplistic mental picture of what's expected to happen.
The reasoning behind this is that some shady landlords might try to claim that genuine tenants are squatters in order to get rid of them. There are plenty of desperate people who'd accept a verbal contract and payment in cash, after all. Not that hard of a choice when the alternative is being homeless. Oh, but you paid your rent a day late? Sorry, you're now a "squatter", so we're cooking you alive until you leave.
Making it too easy to get rid of squatters would expose the most vulnerable people in society to even more abuse, and making it trickier for absentee landlords to get rid of real squatters is considered a fair price to prevent this.
This, exactly. These kinds of slanted articles that only state the issue from the perspective of negligent absentee landlords, whether written by ChatGPT or otherwise, all have the same problem: that's not how property disputes are resolved. The first thing that a court would have to establish is that the person trying to remove another person from a given place would be whether the first person has any right to the place, and to what extent. And the next thing would be the question of whether the second person has a stake in the place, and the nature and extent of that interest. Then they have to balance interests.
I know Spain is not America and doesn't share America's uniquely bad system of estates, but we see this all the time in America where a self-described landlord wants the county sheriff to immediately taser some old lady, but they can't even sufficiently demonstrate that they own the home.
That doesn't stop people from circumventing this requirement, on either side of the contract.
Take in mind that the post shared here is written by a company that provides listing services.
Housing is more of a right in Spain than in other countries, and at least in Catalonia, there is precedent that it supersedes property rights.
If your revenue is not enough to pay for an housing under regular contract but a shaddy owner allows you to pay a rent for the place so that he can bypass a number of regulations by pretending he has no tenants, would you choose living in the street or a car or would you accept it, hoping it is a temporary situation?
Most people would choose the later hence the way the laws are written. Landowners are usually the wealthy ones, so the less at risk of suffering.
That seems far-fetched as a risk. Why would a company offering rentals push out someone who paid rent (even if late) and lose out on revenue/maintenance costs trying to get another renter?
Of course in less close knit communities it would be different; a third time was the house of an english bloke who only came over for the summer; they put all his stuff outside in the rain in the winter, made a weed grow place out of it and until they had proof of the weed, they couldn’t get them out. House was completely fucked when they got it back including the furniture which was outside all winter. Squatting is one thing and you could agree with it, but this shit is insane. And trying to get them doesn’t work as they clearly don’t have money to begin with.
Lots of empty houses + no employment + no money for rent = lets take this house and live in since no one lives there and we don't have a house currently.
Basically, if you buy property, make sure to close it and install a security system. If okupas appear, do the "legal fasttrack" and get them out within 48 hours and it won't be an issue.
Doesn't that make you not want to buy property in the first place? I'd rather buy it someplace where it can't be stolen.
If it was a common problem, then yes. But it's relatively uncommon, and to be honest, I'd rather have the existing system in place where people can legally occupy unused buildings, because there is a lot of them around here. And lots of property owners just keep them empty for years until their "investment" gives them the returns they want, which to me is a bigger problem than okupas.
I think when an entire industry rises, and then continues to exist, for the sole purposes of defending against (or undoing) the problem, it can no longer be said to be uncommon.
You mean that one legally gray company/organization that gets rid of squatters? Could hardly count as an "entire industry".
And yes, it is still uncommon. Or what would you call it? "Common"? Most places are legally rented.
And also, if you’re gonna buy property please do so to actually live there yourself or to house a business that you own and actually operate.
Don’t buy houses to rent them out.
Don’t buy houses because you think that letting it sit unused for a few years will let you sell it for more in the future.
Don’t buy houses to “renovate” (read: do unnecessary “improvements” that make the value appear higher) just to turn around and sell it.
In general I wish housing was not seen as an “investment”.
There’s plenty of people still that cannot afford to buy a house. Because other people are using housing as a way to gain more money for themselves.
Update:
> And also, if you’re gonna buy property please do so to actually live there yourself or to house a business that you own and actually operate.
This means that I can't rent. But as a person who lives somewhere, or a person who operates a business, I'd rather rent than own — I don't want to have all the headache of owning the property, and I don't want to be committed to one place so much, I want to be able to move easily when my circumstances change. Even if I had enough money to buy a house, I would put that money into a bank or investment fund that buys thousands of different homes and rents it out so I'm not that exposed to risks of owning any single piece of property.
Well, but imagine that houses cost a fraction of their current price. That’s the point. A home shouldn’t have to be this ginormous investment that you have to slave and save for many years to put down a small part of the total price for and be stuck paying back a mortgage to some bank for the rest of your working life.
Everyone should have the opportunity to own some kind of home, from early age and without going into debt for it.
And for the risk of the remaining low value of homes in that world, that can be covered with insurance.
And then you are still able to save up money and invest those remaining money into actually productive businesses, to diversify risk and earn a bit from your money and so on.
That's not how your proposed measures would work in reality. You would just make market less effective and create a lot of problems who want to participate in it.
It would be much harder to find a place to rent, and it would be without any contracts or legal protections, as most landlords would look as if they're actually living in the apartments. A cottage industry of people who serve as fictive "owners" of the apartments will spring up for others who want to invest in real estate. A lot of government officials will be hired to "ensure" that you're buying a house or an apartment for yourself. They will take bribes to look the other way, and they will have a huge backlog of apartments to check.
Apartments and houses that are listed for sale officially (not on the emergent black market) may have their list prices come down, but it would be very hard to get access to them and actually buy one. Probably further government regulation will ensure that some queue system is in place so that people who "need it the most" (bribed the official in charge) would get preferential treatment, and as a result it would take years to actually buy one. Commercial investment in real estate will plummet, so the government will take over. Residential construction will soon balloon in cost and go down in quality.
Your ideas are not new. They, or variations of them, have been tried, a lot. Interventions in the free markets always have a lot of unintended consequences of second and third order, and as more regulations are patched on top in the attempts to fix them, the situation just becomes worse and worse.
Landlords are a convenient scrapegoat — but if you actually dive into how the market works, you have to acknowledge that they provide a very important financial service. Nobody on the real estate has any kind of monopolistic influence (except the government), and nobody is able to artificially inflate the prices. The world is entering a stage of ultra-urbanisation, where small and ordinary towns die down and the biggest centers grow more and more important — so real estate in them balloons, because there's more and more demand for it. If you are just looking for a place to live, there's a lot of it around the world. For example, a very nice 2-bedroom apartment in Nha Trang in a new building costs around $300 a month — it has an underground parking and all the infrastructure of a modern city around it. Especially in the age of remote work, "high costs" of real estate are not about people living on the street — it's about people not being able to live where they used to live before.
You can blame Airbnbs and hotels — but it all comes down to the fact that of other people on the market are ready to pay more than you do and have the cash for it, there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to outbid you. If somebody used to rent an apartment in the neighbourhood for 20 years but now can't afford it — it may be sad for this person, but it's not a reason why someone else who wants and can pay more for renting the same place shouldn't be able to do so. I guess you're an American? Guess what — more and more people come to your country from all around the world, and they (we) just outcompete you.
If you live in the home yourself, someone can't squat in it. If you rent it out, someone can't squat in it. If you install any kind of security system, you'll know someone is trying to squat in time to actually do something about it. Got a long-term investment you're planning to renovate? Rent it out as "anti-squat": way cheaper price, but you provide essentially zero services and can kick them out at any time, so essentially a live-in security guard.
>It is essential for property owners in Spain to be proactive in protecting their assets against potential squatting. This includes ensuring that properties are properly secured, regularly monitored, and that any signs of illegal occupation are promptly addressed with legal action. For squatters, it is important to be aware of the legal risks associated with occupying a property without consent, as well as the potential social and ethical considerations of such actions.
just this paragraph alone is as blatant as misshapen fingers and distorted text in AI-generated images.
Jumping to the conclusion that a LLM has written it, when you don't even seem to understand the context, seems really rash. But then this is HN, so you're forgiven.
Good luck getting your money/property back
Guess the difference is that in Spain if you detect them within 48 hours of them entering the property, you can "easily" and legally remove them with the help of the courts and police.
But once you're beyond those 48 hours, things get a lot harder.
What happens if the police don't respond? You discover them at the beginning of a long holiday weekend? It's a second residence and you discover them as you open the door to let your family stay there?
The mental gymnastics people will go through to try to justify someone breaking & entering and trespassing on someone else's private property is insane. They are criminals and should be treated as such, regardless of when you find them, regardless of whether you report it immediately or take a few days to try to reason with them or not.
They are definitely delinquents, but calling that a crime is a stretch, no lives are at risks.
Of course not since it's a city in a different country with different laws.
If that was the primary residence of the family, it wouldn't be considered a "occupation" as discussed in this submission, but rather "breaking and entering" ("allanamiento de morada", or similar), and police should definitely get them out ASAP, anything else is a disgrace.
But again, has nothing to do with okupas because it wouldn't be considered an occupation in the first place.
Try go to the local news, because if the police does nothing about this, I'm 100% sure the news are interested in this story.
2) Now the law changed and it is much easier and faster to kick them out. It was always illegal to squat, now sanction are higher
3) Most squatters are not targeting houses. And all the time squats are mainly building not used for years (as it safer and easier for squatters, and sometimes as a way to "minimize" disturbances)
Please note that in Holland some kind of squat were legals for years (only for building not used for years and with obligation to not damage the property and to give it back quickly). Seems interesting to me
> The reasoning behind this is that some shady landlords might try to claim that genuine tenants are squatters in order to get rid of them. There are plenty of desperate people who'd accept a verbal contract and payment in cash, after all. Not that hard of a choice when the alternative is being homeless. Oh, but you paid your rent a day late? Sorry, you're now a "squatter", so we're cooking you alive until you leave.
> Making it too easy to get rid of squatters would expose the most vulnerable people in society to even more abuse, and making it trickier for absentee landlords to get rid of real squatters is considered a fair price to prevent this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40586929
It's not a black & white issue where one side is obviously right and the other one is obviously wrong.
Except this is poorly thought out and not really true.
You can provide better protection for both sides by requiring written and recorded contracts for real property use/rental, just as we do for real property sales today.
"It's not a black & white issue where one side is obviously right and the other one is obviously wrong."
That's because the system is broke and allows abuses by both sides.
There will always be many people taking "illegal deal" as sometime you have no other other solution, or other solution are even worse. And many many landlords are doing illegal things, including public housing.
Tenant don't have the same bargaining power / freedom / agency than landlord. Fighting illegal stuff that do landlord is long (usually longer than kicking out a squatter) and difficult. And you have little incentive to do it as a tenant : being in a fight with your landlord = being sure to have problem down the line
My feeling is that your comment ignores this asymmetry.
These are enforcement problems, not squatter problems. As you've said, the things the landlords are doing are already illegal. In the US we have Attorney General offices that will handle housing cases on behalf of tenants.
Both parties can benefit from better enforcement and written and recorded leases. Penalties for landlords leasing without recorded agreements may be more easily enforced that under the current system.
It also depends on what you mean by losing one's home. That's not an issue for people who would sign the written agreements. Afain, we want a disincentive to informal agreements, including from renters and squatters. I'm not sure how you can equate loss of ownership with loss of temporary use.
In england there is the "Assured shorthold tenancy agreement" which basically provides a set of rights to tenants and landlords. On the one hand its great as it sets out a clear set of expectations for tenants (24 hours notice of landlord visiting, cant be evicted without notice, deposits must be in third party)
However there is still no fault evictions, which means you can be kicked out for no reason with only 1 months notice.
For the landlord it allows them to reclaim the property at the end of the contract.
However its still the most vulnerable that get evicted.
As for the most vulnerable, ime it is common for social tenants, that is councils and housing associations (who are compelled by law to offer affordable rents) to have assured tenancies, which do not allow no fault evictions. And if not then there is an extra notice period of 6 months plus 2 months for the section 21.
https://england.shelter.org.uk/professional_resources/legal/...
There is of course a crisis of availability of all rental properties so the most vulnerable overlap social and private sectors.
Squatting occurs almost exclusively in second residences, abandoned properties, and places reclaimed by the banks, etc.
If you can prove that the house is your primary residence, the police will oust the squatters promptly. As a result, squatters will not target a house that is clearly 'lived in'.
That said, I do think there are better solutions to allowing this to happen. It's a complicated issue here as housing is definitely viewed more as a right than in the USA, and honestly I'm really glad that the streets aren't full of homeless camps like they were when I lived in Oakland and SF.
Who defines what “maintained” means? Beyond safety concerns about the structure (and even then, they shouldn’t be able to tell me anything as long as I post a danger unsafe structure keep out sign and lock the doors), why would the government have any right to tell me what to do with my building?
I suspect it would make more sense to do so via tax policy, i.e. high property taxes (or LVT) with a deduction for each occupant.
> why would the government have any right to tell me what to do with my building?
For one thing, governments have a vested interest in not being overthrown. If a sufficiently large percentage of the population believes that their living standards are declining (including not having a place to live) then an increasing number of people will arrive at the conclusion that revolution or terrorism has a positive risk/reward ratio.
I've worked in a country where the previous government had allowed this to occur; apparently it happened gradually and then suddenly. Beyond a certain point you can only consider something "my building" if you have the means to defend it against anyone who might wish to make it their building. In that case, the possession of a piece of paper which you once used to outsource the enforcement of your property rights to the previous government isn't very useful.
(Edit: To be clear, I think allowing squatting is a poor solution to the problem of reducing homelessness and better tax and housing policies are more sustainable and equitable, I'm just explaining why the government has a substantial interest in what private landowners do with their properties.)
Vacant land use taxes do make sense to me. That is not what GP advocated for: “Owners should be required to maintain their structures and keep them occupied, or forfeit the property.” Increased taxation is not forfeiture, and being forced to sell because taxes are prohibitive is different from the government taking your building.
>> governments have a vested interest in not being overthrown
This is a tortuous chain of logic to go from unoccupied buildings to overthrown government concerns.
Right, that's why before I responded to your question ("why would the government have any right to tell me what to do with my building?") I tried to make it clear that I think there are better approaches than what the GP was advocating for i.e. directly seizing vacant properties.
> This is a tortuous chain of logic to get from building with squatters to government overthrown.
Can you be more specific about what part you disagree with?
To be clear, I'm not arguing that squatting results in overthrown governments, but that the acceptance of widespread squatting is sometimes a (shortsighted) policy response to a housing crisis. Squatting is a symptom but what can actually topple governments is sufficiently high levels of homelessness. Any government that allows a sufficiently large percentage of residents (especially young people) to become homeless will eventually be replaced by anarchy or a new government.
To reiterate, I'm just trying to answer your question of what right the government has to tell you what to do with your property -- I'm not specifically defending the GP's suggestion.
That's a distinction without a difference, at least not a difference in the area we're talking about. Both mechanisms cause title to be lost if certain obligations are not met (in one case, an obligation to occupy, in the other, an obligation to pay taxes).
European cities are dense, and there is limit to their growth, as they are often surrounded by tight circles of villages. Sure, you can build a few buildings there, but those villages are often fighting against high buildings, and residents often fight against urbanisation of the area. So you can't build suburbs like in USA and this makes the already problematic situation (high prices, big funds buying whole apartment complexes to rent them, many people buying apartments as assets and being afraid of renting due to protections towards tenants) even worse. So every building is worth it's weight in gold. And whole abandoned buying is going to be a daily reminder for many people that cannot afford to buy 1 room apartment about how unfair current situation is.
I don't want to argue about what to do with situation, just adding a perspective.
Having vacant apartments and houses for long time in places where there is an housing shortage create much bigger negative consequences than few metal concerts...
You do have the right to paint your frontage the way you want with respect to the GOVERNMENT.
But more importantly, the GP wanted the government to TAKE VIA FORFEITURE any building that is merely vacant. Your examples are limits on use, not relinquishment of property. They are not the same.
The notion that property rights is unlimited is an extremist view that doesn't match the legal situation in any jurisdiction on the planet with a government.
> The government should tell property owners that they are required to keep their property occupied otherwise the government should seize their property? This is an extremist view.
It is not an extremist view. It's a public policy failure for land to sit vacant like that. Squatters rights can be a solution to that (e.g. in the US, squatters can actually get title to the land in cases of long-term abandonment).
> Who defines what “maintained” means? Beyond safety concerns about the structure (and even then, they shouldn’t be able to tell me anything as long as I post a danger unsafe structure keep out sign and lock the doors), why would the government have any right to tell me what to do with my building?
This is actually the extremist view, private property rights do not trump all other considerations.
For a very clear example: if you're surrounded by starving people, and you own a warehouse full of food that you plan to let rot because you can't be bothered, the government absolutely does have the right to tell you what to do with that food.
Then the government should buy the land.
>> For a very clear example: if you're surrounded by starving people, and you own a warehouse full of food that you plan to let rot because you can't be bothered, the government absolutely does have the right to tell you what to do with that food.
Let’s not use other examples and argumentation by analogy when we already have a very clear fact pattern. You own a building and the building is not currently occupied. The building is unsightly but structurally sound. Does/should the government have the right to make you surrender that building without compensation (because that’s what forfeit means) simply due to it being unoccupied? Why?
> Then the government should buy the land.
No, I don't think so.
> You own a building and the building is not currently occupied. The building is unsightly but structurally sound. Does/should the government have the right to make you surrender that building without compensation (because that’s what forfeit means) simply due to it being unoccupied? Why?
Yes. The legal principle has a long, long history across many different legal systems.
And I think you're thinking about it wrong: the government didn't "make you surrender that building," you chose to surrender it by leaving it unoccupied and unused to the point someone else could occupy and use it without a timely challenge.
Cite them.
Usucapio
I am not a commonwealth lawyer, but my understanding is that they have a similar modern rule in the UK and other commonwealth countries. I am not a continental lawyer, but my understanding is that civil law is similar with respect to government takings.
I will give you credit here because you may have interpreted the GP’s statement of “or forfeit the property” to mean generally lose possession of the property (including to a third party) rather than in the context of the prior sentence that references “the state allowing.” So, some backwards ancient legal principles that have been rejected or severely limited in modern times MIGHT support the contention that a third party can take someone’s land due to it being unoccupied and no modern legal principles support the contention that the government can make someone forfeit their land to the state merely for it being unoccupied.
The answer to my question (Does/should the government have the right to make you surrender that building without compensation (because that’s what forfeit means) simply due to it being unoccupied? Why?) is then “Maybe to someone that is occupying the unoccupied building (however that works) but not to the government.” Got it.
And it’s clear we both know that I have been talking about GOVERNMENT takings (“The government should tell property owners that they are required to keep their property occupied otherwise the government should seize their property?”).
Because homelessness caused by artificial scarcity is violation of a basic human right, and a public order nightmare. Putting private property above other human rights is the root cause of so much problems in today's societies.
Question. If I owned a house, and went on a long vacation outside the country (e.g. because maybe I like travelling or something), how long would I be able to stay on vacation before the government yoinked my house due to it being empty?
Because you know the problem doesn't come from people going for long vacations, but from landlords hoarding houses and holding in order to never let the price go down.
«Owning a house» can mean two very different things. It's either:
- I'm living in a place and I don't depend on anyone for hosting me.
- I hold some piece of paper that says that this particular place in the country belongs to me and if the people living there don't pay me I can call the police to get them evicted.
The first one is basic human right and should be protected as such, the second one is just something enforced by the power of the state in favor of the upper class against the working class.
[1] which, in many countries you need to declare to the government already, so that they know where to get you should they send the police to arrest you.
If the answer is "yes", then based on your post, the answer to my question of how long can I take a vacation for, is "decades".
But if that is indeed considered empty, then what if in addition to that, every month I email someone my travel expenses and tell them to print them and to put them in some drawer in that property (maybe locked with a key or something), and also mail some cheap souvenirs and tell them to put them as decoration somewhere, is that still considered empty? (Since it has my stuff, and is continuously storing more stuff I'm purchasing.)
If that is allowed, then the next question is what if my vacation is in the same country.
So yeah, what kind of activity, and with what frequency, does that property have to have in order for it to not be considered empty, without leaving some kind of loophole?
For instance, you are paying income taxes in your “country of residence” and not in your country of vacations (unless you are an American citizen living abroad, in which case you pay it to both your country of residence and to the US), and there is a threshold that makes one country qualify as “country of residence” versus your countries of vacations.
But like I said, I'm dumb when it comes to this topic.
But it is the crux of the problem.
When establishing things like "country of residence" (or, here in the US, to which state(s) you owe taxes), the second order effects aren't the same. It's the difference between "you owe a few extra percent of your income for one year" versus "you lose your home permanently".
As public policy, it is important not to expropriate someone's home simply because they had to be away for extenuating life circumstances like caring for an ailing relative for a few months. Because otherwise, you will disincentivize that behavior (and create a greater burden for the state).
It's easy for you to come back with "Oh, well the competent bureaucrats in my government will simply write an exception for those who leave for a few months of eldercare because that is clearly a legitimate reason to leave your house vacant for a few months." But that is just a bandaid on an artery which creates an explosion of exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions.
What happens if I need to care for my grandmother, and then something else comes up? Do I get to have two exemptions to expropriation? Can they be consecutive? What sort of documentation do I need? What if the exemption allows n days, but I need n+3? What if I had planned an m-1 days vacation (for the m vacation days exception) right before I need n days to care for my grandmother?
Very quickly you will have 10,000 pages of rules that nobody understands. And you will get perverse outcomes when someone hits an edge case that wasn't quite accounted for.
Or maybe you will say "put the case in front of a judge and let them exercise discretion". But now we have the problem that it is no longer really rule of law, and people with connections will always get exceptions while people without don't. So that increases the class divide because people with connections are usually rich, and middle-class people usually don't have connections.
And then, all this argument is basically a straw man, because there no need for the state to guess anything or to set threshold, at all: all you need to do is mandate people to declare their primary residence, and in fact it is the case in many fiscal system already! If it is your primary residence, then fine, you can leave it empty for as long you want, as long as you are not lying on the fact that this is in fact your primary residence (and if you're lying, then the state must gather the evidence and win against you in court, which is what the rule of law is).
Tada! Imaginary problems solved.
No, but they have to keep it in good condition, which includes keeping it secure.
0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Drug_Administration
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indecent_exposure_in_the_Uni...
uhm...that might be a bad example. winks towards shein, temu, fast fashion in general
and thinking for a bit longer - corn syrup/sugar in general is not toxic but it certainly is not that healthy either, and it's got big lobbies and large amounts of money behind it to influence the government.
There are quite some neglected properties around here and the owners are away, do not care anymore and the authorities do not care as long as the low property taxes are paid. There was a case close by, where a buisness wanted to get rid of the old rotting building next to them, but could not. It went on for years. Only after the building burned down (no idea if someone helped with that), the space could be finally cleared.
So yeah, exproptiation should only ever be the last resort, but in some cases it really makes sense.
"pay 1% of the buildings value as property tax each year"
A old rotten building might be worth just 10000€. And 100 € a year ain't that much. One would have to tax the property - and who will set up the rates in a fair way in a process that is not vulnerable to corruption?
I think Japan is one of the outliers where pretty much all property value is locked with the land itself, as buildings depreciate not appreciate.
That's good, because if they can't pay, their house is up for remodelling too. /sarcasm
Also, you need to figure out how you define vacant, and how to track it.
If I relocated for work, and use the house 3 months a year and every other month for a weekend, is it vacant? How do you tell?
The definition of vacant is something that would have to be figured out, but it's not impossible. For example, you could do a generous 6-12 months of the year occupation without taxation, and then a sliding scale from there. (So you pay 0% of the new tax at 12 months yearly occupation, 0% at 6 months, 50% at 3 months, and 100% at 0 months.)
Imagine you worked all your life and now you just want to enjoy your peace in your home for your last years. You really would not want to move and I am very against driving old people out of their homes, even though I am one of those young people with a small apartment also seeing empty and unused space everywhere.
Not everyone can do that easily. I would not know how that works and where are the downsides. I can learn it, sure, but for an 80 year old this would be real stress, having to figure unknown contracts out - and not getting cheated. Old people are a prime target for frauds for a reason.
This is why complaining about rising property taxes is almost never about the elderly people who actually live in the house. It's about their children that want to inherit the house without paying off their parents' property taxes.
People in different countries experience different realities.
> The reality is that the same thing, in effect, happens if you stop paying property taxes. The tax builds up, etc.
and in many places worse things will happen to you if you stop paying property taxes.
That was my point, not binding the value just to the building itself.
You could maybe try to figure out based on water usage but then someone could just leave water tap slightly leaking since water cost is not that expensive
Probsbly squatters are those cheap solution that can enforce it in the most efficient way
In general, everything you could propose that puts pressure on landlords leads to transfer of ownership from your (maybe friendly) landlord with 2-3 units, to larger, more professional companies who can handle the paperwork and regulations, with a tendency to tear down and rebuild something that is more expensive to rent or buy.
I live in Turkey. We had 80% p.a. inflation, where the government decided to lower the interest rates even further. Our president said Interest rates are the cause of inflation and if we lowered interest rates inflation would go down. State banks gave out house loans with 12% p.a. interest where the inflation rate was above 80% p.a.
A lot of Turkish people got their free money from the bank and invested in real estate. In Turkey, everyone evades tax and property taxes are not really collected. This in turn fueled inflation even more, sky-rocketed inequality and caused the worst housing crisis.
That is why I am convinced that property taxes are a must.
I think allowing short term rentals, and giving owners strong eviction rights for damage, illegal activity or non-payment (which we have) need to be paired with property taxes to prevent all landlords becoming large inhuman entities.
It should also be noted that if you tax everything at the value it could make, you distort the usage of valuable locations to exclude housing.
-- snip --
okay, I looked it up. you have, but it's not fully public like ours. Yeez that's messed up!
Yes it is. You can request information, but I was told "wanting to buy" is explicitely excluded as a valid reason. (The usual solution is knowing someone inside the office, or paying someone who knows)
Edit: sorry, havent been living in Germany for long. Thought it was the same as the Dutch kadaster. Turns out, it's not and my dealings with it have been unusually easy until now.
The reason why expropriation isn't used a lot is because it costs a lot of resources.
Those are cases where I think expropriation would be warranted.
And if it would be easier to buy obviously unused land, less properties would end up in that rotten final state, so less need to even discuss forcing something.
Sometimes seemingly abandoned buildings are used for one-off occasions which generate income: downtown LA is full of "historic" buildings which the owners allow to dilapidate outside of a few areas they can rent out once or twice a year to a film crew.
edit: another thing -- rich people procrastinate too, in fact many of them can afford to procrastinate on matters like this, and they may rather take a loss than confront the anxiety and work of selling or renting out the property
Just for reference, in a small city (40K people, 8 sq. km.) you can find 2K empty properties out of the market because it's more profitable to wait prices to raise.
At this very moment the profile of squatters is diverse, but with such large pockets of spaniards staying just above of the poverty line, many people will be forced between squatting or just become homeless.
Just for reference, I live in a flat in a building from the 50s. Very poor insulation, 5º with no elevator, etc. I pay 475€ for it (small sized city), I've been living here for +5 years.
The guys in the 3rd floor came in recently. They pay 1100€ for basically the same flat.
The modal income in this city is 16k. I work on IT and I'm barely above 20k (well, was, as I'm now unemployed).
I go for the listings and there's almost nothing listed and everything is > 800€/month. If I increase the range to 1h from any potential job location it goes down to ~500 for shitty places. Also, not precisely a lot to choose from, so probably wouldn't be able to rent neither.
Can anyone tell me how is exactly this going to work out? Not to mention all the "expats" and "digital nomads" that are willing to pay whatever the landlord says because they really really want to live here without thinking about the consequences, but that's another story.
Of course buying is totally out of the question with the current prices, and that's me that I got lucky, with the new prices no one will be able to save anymore.
Slowly, more regulation is added to get the problem somewhat under control. Rents capped by index, annual rent increases cap, introduction of "tense housing markets", new upkeep for vacant properties, bonuses for renting out to younger people and more are being introduced, at least here in Catalunya. Unsure exactly what of those things are on the national level but guessing something similar is being introduced elsewhere in the country if it isn't already.
And I know that's happening because my Gf has to work with this sort of people, sadly.
But if the law blocks "I pay double of whatever you've been offered" from happening (which is true today, they cannot increase the rent to whatever they want), then you'd have a chance to compete because the competition is no longer about who can pay the most.
In the end, we either do it like in Vienna or Singapore, or we're not going to solve it.
Everyone says they're going to make public housing here in Spain, nobody does anything.
E.g: which candidate does the landlord like the best, or who was on some waiting list for the most years, etc.
What does help: increase the supply. Make it easier to build or let houses by reducing bureaucracy, invest in housing projects etc.
Cheaper housing in Spain will lead to induced demand, because there's just too many people willing to move here.
Good. Too many people are forced into renting due to insane property prices as is.
Won't step 2 increase the supply of houses for sale, thus lowering the prices, thus decreasing the demand for rentals?
Do you realize most people working in IT are paid minimum wage or close to that? Most sysadmins and developers i've met here in France are under 2000€/month and it's only on places like HN that i read about huge salaries in IT. (sorry i don't have stats this is just anecdata)
And, why do people enter IT in Spain, if the wages are so terrible?
Which begs the question: "Well why don't they work remotely from Spain then?" and the answer to that is that the Spanish IT sector does a whole lot of that to begin with, so a business in the market for it can just hire one of the many consulting business there.
The regulations around housing are so bad that almost nothing is getting built. What's getting built is for wealthy people, and no public housing in sight.
And yes, of course rich foreigners play a role here. You maybe don't like to hear it because you're likely richer than the average spaniard, but they are plenty, and we can see what they do once they arrive here.
This is no second-hand information. Because the housing situation is so bad they go on sprees trying to convince landlords to rent to them by offering more money.
Also, getting out of cities is problematic because we can't save money nor have disposable income, so owning and maintaining a car is quite an effort, and that in a city where I don't need a "B" stick to enter the city, in other cities it's worse because you're only allowed a subset of cars which are more expensive. There aren't cheap cars anymore, even shitty Dacias are +20k and anything under 10k second hand is close to junk.
We're fucked honestly. I'm willing to move, but I don't know where...
Climate also similar to Spain in sommer , you will get used to winters as well. Seaside and mountains are available.
Unchecked (or even encouraged) mass migration, yes.
A shady landlord will just claim the tenants are squatters.
You have keys to the place. There's no written contract, no money changing hands.
Show up with some muscle, chuck the losers out on the street and change the locks.
What are they going to do, take you to court?
From a moral standpoint, do you realize you're advocating for the mafia here? That's exactly what private mafia companies have been doing for years. Rightful owners enjoying their property are already well protected by the law and the police (too much actually), at least in western Europe, as explained by other commenters.
What happens in the US is that the land owner hires people to squat in the house. They don't lay a finger on the real squatters. They just take up all the rooms and generally make it annoying to live there until they leave. Then they get paid by the landowner and move out.
This has resulted in lots of funny videos where squatters get angry at other squatters for squatting. The hypocrisy is astounding.
People demand housing, not money. It's not a racket that people are homeless and need a place to live. It's funny how you go into conspirational thinking that quick. It's more concerning that you think it's better to pay the anti-squat mafia tons of cash, rather than give the same amount to the squatters to leave the place so they can find another home.
> This has resulted in lots of funny videos where squatters get angry at other squatters for squatting.
Just because you live in a squat doesn't mean anyone can come and live there. It's your residence, not a public space. There's enough empty dwellings to house everyone decently. That doesn't make it a moral obligation if you are struggling and squat a home to house every single homeless person that comes by. I mean, you don't have a greater moral obligation for that than someone who rents or owns their home.
It's not hypocrisy to get angry at assholes trying to ruin your life when you're already low on cash and living in precarious housing. It's cruel that you would find human misery "funny".
Wrong. Okupas often demand money in exchange for leaving the house.
> But there is now a darker phenomenon too - squatters who demand a "ransom" before they will leave a property
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-58310532
> Just because you live in a squat doesn't mean anyone can come and live there. It's your residence, not a public space
Do you really not see the hypocrisy of this statement?
"It doesn't mean anyone can come and live there. It's your residence, not a public space."
Then how on earth do you defend squatters moving into another person's residence illegally? This is the kind of laughable hypocrisy typically displayed when squatters come back to house they've illegally occupied and meet some new housemates. It's amazing how they can rationalize that it's acceptable for them to move into people's homes without permission, but not acceptable for other people to do the same.
Kicking out people who are trespassing is how you have a safe and lawful society. Allowing private citizens to do whatever they feel like to innocent people is mafia like behavior.
Now, breaking into people's residence is a different matter, and is already highly criminalized. Laws about squatting and tenants rights don't exist in the void without a reason: they are supposed to be a balance between ownership rights and housing rights. Allowing the real estate mafia to make its own law is not exactly a balance...
Am I hearing you saying "What rich? we have poor economy". Yeah, prevent people from investing in real estate and you'll be even poorer.
I've seen war trenches which seemed more liveable than the average racoon hole rented at Idealista.
They can only enter if you leave a window or door open for them to enter.
If they break-in that is a criminal offence and the police will treat it as a buglary and arrest those in the property.
I used to squat here on Airstrip One in my twenties when I was homeless.
We did not squat in homes where people lived, We squatted in empty properties.
The utilities companies would reconnect the gas and electricy for us but only if we paid a substantial deposit.
I dont see anything wrong with squatting in empty homes.
It is the fault of society that creates homelessness and squatting is sometimes the only way to get a roof over your head.
This is not like USA were you shoot anyone who enters in your property.
If you harm this people you surely will have to face penal consequences.
Why? Because then, people will do the same with a small family which can not pay rent this month, after you increased the price to the double because you want to rent to tourists.
The solution is simple: use your properties. Would you let your car with the keys inside? No. Don't let your houses unused. It's is an offense to people who want to work and live. Properties shouldn't be a business nor a speculative means.
>They can only enter if you leave a window or door open for them to enter.
This is not the effective defense of squatting that you think it is.
Sure, but that doesn't demonstrate inconsistency, that only demonstrates that different things are different and we can feel differently about them. The interesting response would not be the implied accusation of hypocrisy in the way you posed your question but rather simply "Why do you feel differently about this scenario?".
This happens all the time, it's called taxes
Do you care if the owner cares about you squatting in his property?
How is this not victim blaming? Next you'll tell me that a victim of sexual assault shouldn't have left their window open by wearing such a short dress, and they were asking for it anyway.
The point is, if you break anything to enter you used force and it's much worse.
But if it's your residence, your house, and at least you used once a year is "morada", and then they are intruders and they are breaking the law.
It doesn't matter if they change the lock or anything like this. If mossos doesn't do anything, which would amaze me, then call the other forces, like civil, local o nacional.
If you let a house unused all year long or during years, it's your problem. I don't know what's the purpose of owning a house and not using it, in this case, I would appreciate that someone breaks in to live there with pacifically, this people exist.
They cannot enter into your house uninvited. No, wait, that's vampires...
That doesn't seem very complex.
But from a societal standpoint, the laws being this way have a bunch of positive externalities
1. It provides shelter to the homeless, with all the advantages we know that has
2. It provides an incentive to not leave property vacant. Very important in a country with high vacancy rates 1nd a hiusing crisis.
Note also that this is done at the expense of investors. Whose role in a capitalist society is to take on risk.
So while it is an injustice, i can definitely understand why it is this way.
Investment in housing (ie actively rented places) are unaffected, so there is no reason there woukd be less investing on that front
See for example:
https://m.murciatoday.com/almost_half_a_million_vacant_new_b...
https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/posts/the-empty-house-a...
It isn't a particularly Spanish problem either: following article about the American version of it
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/empty-office-buildings-doom-loo...
Are those the evil investors who should be punished? Now they are homeless instead
If that happens you call the police and they'll kick them out in 24 hours max.
Now if the current renter can't afford to keep paying rent and decides to occupy the property, that's considered Okupación. And that process does take longer.
Morada is any property that you live, use to live or use to do private activities in it.
If you used at least once a year or so, then is morada. Like if it was your primary house.
If you have a semi demolished house, or unused house during years, then clearly is it not a morada. That's the difference.
Sticking to Spain, there were about 17,000 squatting incidents (reported to the police) in 2021 [1]. I don't know about big cities in Spain, but e.g. in Berlin there are tens of thousands of squaremeters in unhoused space in form of offices and high-rent appartments. Do you really think people go to the homes people live in first?
[1]: https://maldita.es/malditateexplica/20221026/datos-okupacion...
However after some years, the situation slowly changed: more and more squatters were drug addicts, who ofc couldn't afford to pay rent; also the word spread outside of NL that it was possible to go to Amsterdam and live there for free, so loads of immigrants came with no intention to rent at all.
Apart from that, squatting exposed another problem: the squatters typically didn't care too much about their home or neighbourhood, after all it was not theirs and sooner or later they'd have to move out again. So they typically caused a lot of irritation with their neighbours because of garbage of noise. In the end, squatters in NL lost most of the goodwill they had with the Dutch government, and stricter anti squatting laws are now in place.
I got something very similar by prompting ChatGPT-4o with “Write a five-paragraph news article in English about the rise of 'okupación' in Spain. Focus on the legal issues.”
One of those paragraphs: “The legal landscape surrounding ‘okupación’ is complex. Spanish law differentiates between two main types of property occupation: usurpation and trespassing. Usurpation, involving the illegal occupation of a property without violence, is often met with fines rather than immediate eviction, frustrating many property owners. Trespassing, on the other hand, which involves force or threats, is treated more severely but is harder to prove.”
https://maldita.es/malditateexplica/20221026/datos-okupacion...
Other topic is holiday residences; those are not dwelling ("morada") so, in Spain, the right to have a dwelling is on the top of private property so yes, it's quite difficult to evict people who entered the house in this scenario. The ones who really have the problem are the people who buy houses for the summer.
I would have thought there is a clear distinction between owner occupied housing and empty property?
If you try to squat (okupar) the house where someone lives, you'll be evicted just when the police arrives to your house. And you'll get a criminal sanction (allanamiento de morada). The problem comes when your third house is occupied by someone, since this is not where you live, then you'll have a real problem since they can say they are living there right now, and that's when the time dilatation comes.
This "problem" is just for people with a lot of houses, rentist, that are part of the problem. Or the banks and vulture funds, who had most of the houses and flats in spain.
And the squatting problem in spain is ridiculous small. THe percentage over the poblation is ridiculous. This that, in this article, don't mention at all.
And the squatting problem in spain is ridiculous small. THe percentage over the poblation is ridiculous. This that, in this article, don't mention at all.
This is a problem that *anyone* with more than 1 property might suffer. FTFY
It's unbelievable the way some people stretch it to defend squatters.
If it's not yours, you should not take it. Full pause.
Yes, "lots" = more than one
Spain is still struggling with higher demand than supply, so people end up homeless. At the same time, Spain struggles with properties in high-demand areas being empty because the owner doesn't want to rent or sell it, so no one uses it at all.
Finally, we're getting "upkeep taxes" added to those places, so they can either be utilized, or the owner "penalized" of sorts.
But up until now, there wasn't anything like that, so the alternative for many is to hole up in a empty building no one cares about, or live on the street. And obviously, many take the first choice. It's hard for me to blame them when the other choice is living on the streets.
If I ran out of money it shouldn't be okay for me to rob someone's else money. The same way if I can't afford a house house I shouldn't squat a house.
If one can't afford a house, he or she should: - complain about the government house development policies - search for social housing if available - get a better job - not squat someone's else house - not have children and use them to justify squatting, which is very common - etc
1) Is it illegal to have more than one house in Spain? 2) Do you pay proportionally more tax if you own more than one house in Spain?
Ofcourse someone whos earned a couple of houses has a right to enjoy them and live their lives as they please. But you cannot convince me to empathize with banks, vulture funds or people who has 50 houses (like, for example, well known families in politics).
What part are you saying is not true and if so what area?
So, there is an 'okupas problem'. You could have saved the whole first paragraph.
Considering how many desokupa services exist I'd say it's a real problem.
How many does exists? I've only heard of one (literally called "Desokupa"), but you're saying there are many companies offering this, not just local chapters of the major one?
Tried searching but could only find that one, and I couldn't find any sources on the number of companies existing offering this service either.
Despite all the publicity, I've never heard of anyone using the company you referenced. At least not in Andalucía.
None of what you said sounds like a problem. What is the problem? It sounds like a policy to ensure dwellings, which are obviously a scarce resource in those areas have actual people living in them. That is kind of their point. Of course it would be beneficial to have a better legal framework to ensure housing security and building maintenance.
I'm assuming from reading your other comments you're not going to be sympathetic to this argument so let me give you two anecdotal incidents.
The first is about a woman who is 70 years old. She lives off a state pension which is supplemented by a small rental income from a three bedroom apartment she owns. The apartment is quite old, and needs refurbishment, so she can only generally rent it to students or non-professionals who pay a modest rent. After maintenance costs, property tax, and building management fees she doesn't get much but enough so she doesn't have to rely on her children.
One day, one of the tenants stopped paying rent. Rather than asking him to leave immediately she gave him some extra time to get the rent. Rather than do this, he decided he would do an occupation. So first he terrorized the other tenants so they left and then proceeded to occupy the entire apartment, including turning one bedroom into a gym. Police were called quite a few times but they said they couldn't do anything until they received a court order. So for a year and a half, this guy lived there rent free with water and electricity being paid for as well (you can cut off internet as it's not deemed essential).
When the court order finally came through the police didn't even bother showing up and it was the locksmith who chased the guy out. He hasn't faced any consequences and could continue to do this again and again. As for the owner, she had to take out loans (some with 20% interest) cover the costs this guy incurred. She, who is Spanish, will never rent out to Spanish people again.
The second is about a taxi driver in his late 40s. After a long period of saving he managed to save enough for a deposit to get a mortgage on a costal apartment that his family would use in the summers and rent the rest of the time. While he could have just listed it on Airbnb, he decided to rent it out to a woman with children on a long-term basis (non-summer months).
So she moves in and when he comes a few days later to collect the first month's rent he's informed that she won't be paying rent and because of the children it's going to be impossible to kick her out. He tries to negotiate with her over a few months, including talking to the town hall to get some some rent stipend, all to no avail. Eventually, he had to use desokupa services to get her out but not before this woman had caused significant property damage.
He also went into debt and his marriage almost failed because of the stress and financial strain. Once he finishes repairing all the damage (which he has to do himself as he can't afford to pay someone else) he will rent it out again but only through Airbnb to foreigners.
So this policy has ensured that honest people, renters and landlords, get punished by dishonest people who won't see any consequences either.
I also think the right to have a home should prevail over the right to make money renting houses.
I also think goving credits to everybody in 2000 fucked up Spain. Everybody +40 in my family owns 2 or 3 houses. Nobody less than 40 owns one.
After the eviction takes place, how badly does an eviction on record hurt the renter's ability to rent in the future? Just trying to understand the asymmetry of costs for the landlord and renter in this situation where the renter "decides" to stop paying rent
The effect of this is more reluctance to rent out for fear this will happen. Or only rent to rich foreigners who won't pull this scam. Lest the landlord find themselves in debt.
Also, the okupa is very much deciding to do this knowing they can get away with it.
That's why people sing contracts of X years, and asks for employment contracts and a minimum quantity of money in the bank. In this situations you can still get it wrong, but that's investing, it's always risky.
The difference between trespassing (that somebody enters in the house you live) and usurpation (the house is yours but is not where you live) is very important. Both problems are way less prevalent than what appears on the media (see [1]), but trespassing is waaay lower (and as the owner you have better mechanisms to recover your house).
However, there is a huge propaganda campaign here in Spain, where TV shows talk constantly about trespassing, and one can only imagine what they get from that (swaying votes to conservative political groups, selling alarms, less rights to people that live on rented apartments...)
[1] https://maldita.es/malditateexplica/20221026/datos-okupacion...
In the end there are two other big ways of dealing with it: paying the okupas to leave, or paying desokupados to get them out, where both of those ways would not be registered in those statistics.
You can't just say "the data COULD be unrepresentative", then just use some random guys anecdotes on the internet as more valid than national statistics.
Oh sure, I'm not saying the number of lawsuits are wrong, I'm saying something different:
• The lawsuits, by their nature, represent a lower bound of the number of okupations, since one would assume that there's many cases where there's an okupa but the owner doesn't go the legal way. One can hardly assume the opposite since that's a lost lawsuit for sure. So the number of lawsuits is the lower bound for the number of okupas, and NOT a representation. I do not know nor claim to know where the upper bound or actual number of okupas is, but equating lawsuits with occurences is a weak correlation at best.
• There's clearly a big one-sided abuse of the system, which affects both homeowners AND honest renters.
• I'd also agree to add punitive measures to banks or companies that hoard a large number of houses for especulation. This is slightly difficult to arrange legally without also punishing someone who buys a second house, but I'm sure possible and I believe both sides of the aisle would benefit from some regulation like this.
Second: can renters be hurt even more? Are landlords the most vulnerable people right now? The situation is pretty awful right now, while at the same time there are people whose sole contribution to society is "owning flats".
And I agree on increasing property taxes (any progressive taxes over capital would do).
https://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B...
I wonder if the difference could be that the policies that he advocate would require bought and paid for politicians to act while squatting is something that an individual can do?
Love these religious-sounding sermons. Im telling what is happening here, a lot of 'free market' types are preaching to me that what is happening here is not happening and something else should be happening per the magic of 'free market' or capitalism or whatever. Hearing these, one understands who the US ended up with housing being unaffordable for 99% of Americans...
Personally, I'd like there to be so much more housing that landlords have to compete with each other for who can provide the best apartment for the lowest price rather than potential tenants competing with each other for who can pay the most for the only apartment that is available.
All of these are just wishful thinking based on non-scientific economic hullabaloo that was developed in the past 200 years. They never worked anywhere. They never will.
In the end, it comes down to the concept "Housing should be for living in, not for profit". Its a fundamental necessity/infrastructure. And privatizing it makes as much sense as privatizing the military or the police. The moment you allow it, those with bigger pockets will f*ck everything up.
Increasing risk will eliminate a lot of the "mom and pop" landlords (widows, former small-business owners, retirees, etc.). If it is too risky to own only a few extra condo units or a single small apartment building, then those properties will go to large corporate landlords.
> there are people whose sole contribution to society is "owning flats".
Landlords make sure the utilities (water, electricity, heat, etc.) work, that the roof doesn't leak, fix plumbing issues when they arise, take care of pest infestations, etc. Even landlords who don't personally fix things are employing managers and tradespeople. And with big corporate owners, the shareholders are usually pension funds which effectively are the retirement savings of people who have already "contributed to society".
Landlords generally spend much less than 5% of their yearly rent income on maintenance. If they actually do something to improve an apartment, that is just an investment in their own real estate, that they own 100% even after having other people pay for it several times over during decades.
Edit: Or look at it this way: Would you hire and pay somebody a good salary for working maybe 5 or 10 days per year for you?
You might be surprised to learn that many small rental properties are heavily mortgaged. Along with insurance and property taxes, the biggest cost is usually mortgage interest. Some owners even lose money for a few years until the rents rise to meet the costs so that they can break even. (These owners are playing the long game, believing that rent and property values will go up over time and eventually their investment will be a good one compared to their other investment options.)
> the biggest cost is usually mortgage interest.
The tenant is paying for that.
The situation is absurd. The tenant is paying the entire mortgage and interest for the property and can be kicked out at any time, while the landlord does basically nothing, pays nothing, and the bank can not kick him out just because they please.
You would be surprised about the sheer number of spaniards that would welcome this second-order effect.
In the last ~10 years, renting has skyrocketed, due to the discovery of the spanish renting market by international money, and renting laws relaxation (demand side). Meanwhile, this has not increased the supply of homes, as it is felt that there is oversupply, the demand is very concentrated on selected cities, and the turnaround of building to rent or sell is long. This double-whammy has made renting quite onerous, and buying directly out of reach, for a lot of people.
Some extra tidbits:
- Buying: Upwards of 40% of home purchase is without mortgage (not a pattern of someone buying for the first time)
- Renting: In Madrid, on average 62% of salary before taxes goes to renting; 58% in Barcelona (https://www.fotocasa.es/fotocasa-life/alquiler/los-espanoles...) (how is that even feasible? well, young people end up just renting a room)
Because of the additional risks of squatters, landowner will either have to take additional security measures (and make up the costs with higher rent) or accept the risk of squatters (and make up that risk with higher rent). In either case, the rent getsor expensive.
If it is less profitable, they either further raise the prices or they get out of the market; the ratio of those two options depends on price elasticity. And prices don't have a lot of room to grow further in my opinion... unless of course the wages grow quickly (and minimum wage indeed has done it in the last 5 years). But then the country needs to be more productive or people get poor (fired!), which is also not good for the renting business, etc.
At the end of the day you're betting on the spanish market either squeezing people further, or gaining productivity real quick. And real estate is not very liquid, yet is typically long-term, and those investors are risk averse. So... there will be some that will exit the market.
Edit: ah, sorry I had mixed you up with the previous commenter.
This is as nonsensical as the proposals in San Francisco to prohibit the construction of apartments to try and reduce rent. Dissuading people from renting out apartments reduces the supply apartments. There is zero possibility this results in better rental prices.
Yes.
> This is as nonsensical as the proposals
Its not nonsensical. Its what is happening. Use it or lose it. Works. Find a good tenant, rent it for decades - like how it is supposed to be.
> you're also making it more risky and thus less profitable to buy and rent out apartments
When something becomes riskier, fewer people do it unless there's some other incentive.
A vacancy tax could incentivize renting, buy enabling squatters does nothing but making rentals more risky. The only thing that can solve a shortage is increased supply or reduced demand. The latter is not feasible since people need housing. The former requires that land owners take the risk on renting out apartments, and anything that increases the risk means less people will do it.
> Find a good tenant
That's easier said than done. The better way to convince prospective renters to rent out their property is to make it easier to kick out bad tenants. If evictions are backlogged, then a landlord risks being stuck with a non paying tenant for a long time.
A more likely outcome is that condos and houses get more expensive because of the shortage of apartments. And fewer apartments get built because investors know that they will not be able to kick out squatters.
As for apartments, they will still be financed by people who intend to live in them. Removing the landlord removes a huge margin, because you're nourishing a stranger.
It did that here.
> A more likely outcome
You are literally making up stuff and preaching a false reality as you go. No wonder how the US housing market got shafted - seeing what kind of mentality you people subscribe to.
More likely it's other factors like remote works becoming less common once covid subsided.
> You would be surprised about the sheer number of spaniards that would welcome this second-order effect.
Lots of spaniards would clap at this, even if they're mistaken (what your arguing for). So peter335's argument would not be listened to.
This kind of thing baffles me. Im telling what is happening here. A guy on the internet refers to another on the internet who 'explains' to me that what is happening where I am in the actual reality is not real.
That's literally crazy. It feels like you people are preaching. Against the reality.
Great. They should get the hell out asap.
When renting becomes less profitable, real estate prices fall as landlords want to get rid off their bad investments. That means people can buy instead of rent, which means more rentals become vacant as renters become owners, which means that rents go down.
> and make up the costs with higher rent
This is not how it works. Landlords will always extract maximum rent possible from tenants.
Landlords are competing in a market. The maximum possible rent has to do with how much the rest of the market is charging. That in turn is capped from above by how much a would be landlord would pay to buy a unit and start renting it out. If that price goes up, then landlords can charge more.
There is also a maximum amount that people can pay, but they have little choice but to pay whatever the market is charging, or else live on the street.
If landlords prefer to let their investments sit empty instead of selling, because their profits from renting aren't enough, then that is a foolish decision. But you shouldn't annihilate a whole nation because of such folly.
Pass a law either limiting or banning outside real estate speculation.
https://madridnofrills.com/gentrification/
As the constitutional right to housing is being basically circumvented through just not protecting that right, yeah, squatting seems to be the best way to protect that right.
I have a good handle of problems regarding this, and a lot of other things, however I unfortunately don't have the time to take action on any of them. So, sorry, I wouldn't be able to get in contact or do anything else.
Since the factor limiting supply is not cost or demand, prices keep ever-increasing with no gains for society; just filling the coffers of the haves.
You should really watch out with insults of economic illiteracy :)
The rest of the world is not the US, and people don't have to work for dimes in jobs that can go away the next day just because they would starve or cant afford healthcare if they don't. As a result, people prefer stable jobs. If that sounds implausible to you, it is a sign of how perverted the mentality of your society has become that you expect people to be like disposable lemmings that will pour out to whatever pays them some money.
> What about zoning laws? To the extent a country with high unemployment can’t find enough construction workers it’s likely to be some kind of government/regulatory failure. Read Matthew Yglesias, he’s great
You don't know anything about the country that you speak about. You are referring to an American who has his ideas existing only in various books. Dont make holistic statements without knowing enough about what you are talking about. In this case, an entirely different country and society.
Boomers retiring will create a permanent labor shortage for the foreseeable future. People just don’t want to be construction workers, and who can blame them? Especially with how construction workers got screwed over after 2008. That nuked the construction sector so hard that employement in construction has just barely recovered to 2008 levels.
It would be beautiful if housing was the pure demand-supply curve that many claim it is- but currently it isn’t. Letting the market solve the housing problem doesn’t create additional future housing as that is blocked by house construction output, all it does is allow maximizing profit on existing real estate.
With the extreme anger and complete societal gridlock that the first world housing crisis is fomenting, if the fix was “just unregulate lol” politicians would have done that by now.
If only Spain could profit from helping murder brown people in 3rd world countries overseas and by speculating on banking, then forcing the bailout of those sunken PRIVATE banks on other countries and then forcing them to privatize their national assets to buy those assets dirt cheap - like how Northern Europe did to Southern Europe, including Spain. Forcing the Spanish taxpayer to bail out sunken private Northern European banks and then forcing austerity on them to have them privatize their society. The biggest bank scam of the century in every way.
And yet, all of you Northern Europeans seem to want to move south to that 'economically illiterate' society and its 'failing' welfare state for some reason. To the extent that you literally filled out some cities and zones. What you say and what you do contradict.
> illiterate
You don't know even the topic that you are talking about, yet you are talking about economic illiteracy. And the one thing that you have that you refer to, is an American author and its book. As if a random American author is the all-determining authority for anything.
> you're also making it more risky and thus less profitable to buy and rent out apartments
Okupas force the property owners to rent their properties to avoid losing them. It increases property available for rent - does not decrease it. Again, you don't know what you are talking about, and no, Matthew Yglesias, the glorious American author that you slapped everywhere in this thread as if he was a prophet, is not a reference that changes this particular phenomenon either.
This is what happens where 'economically illiterate leftist lawlessness' doesn't exist.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homes-for-sale-affordable-housi...
You mean like when Spain colonized Americas?
What's more, Spain treated the 'colonies' as parts of Spain and it spent all its money developing them. From the first university in the Americas to all kinds of hospitals, schools, infrastructure was built by the Spanish state with Spanish money. Thats why Spain lost the imperial race: Building up the locals instead of exploiting them - leaving aside not murdering them all to replace them like the Anglosaxons did.
The native Americans became Spanish subjects in 1519. With all the good things and the bad things that being the subject of an average European feudal kingdom brought along with it.
Nobody declared them 'non-human' and started eradicating them like the English did. That's what you should be being cynical and sarcastic about.
Same in the US, it's all fascist discourse shaping in preparation for things getting much worse.
Yes, the right-wing channels have been screaming about it for 1-2 years now. Interestingly, their tirade started about the time the US investment funds started entering the Spanish 'real estate market' and buying up entire neighborhoods.
https://www.iberian.property/news/residential/blackrock-busc....
I wonder if you can register that house as the address of a non-profit corporation, and since the corporation always lives there, the okupas become trespassers.
What does exist for sure and is publicly advertised is companies like the original article trying to make owners desperate about squatters so they will sell their property for cheap. For example here in France, "Squat Solutions" has been doing this for years, buying property for ~10% of market price because of squatters, after convincing the owners they had already lost everything.
> Spanish law provides for an immediate eviction procedure that can be enacted within 48 hours of illegal occupation
So if I understand properly, if you go away for the weekend and forget to close a window, you might find squatters in your house when you come back, and you can't quickly get them out in a legal way?
The problem comes when you have 200 houses and somebody squats one of those where you don't live and you don't use. A problem for the banks, vulture funds and big renters. And to be honest, I cannot care less..
Which potentially, might have something to do, which so much does this situation appears on news in comparison to other problems the country has.
Most of the occupied apartments belong to banks and big renters who would rather see the building fall apart than offering the apartments for a reasonable price/rent.
The problem for citizens isn't that they're losing their apartments/houses to Okupas, since that's a really small minority. The real problem is that some Okupas do it "professionally" for profit and can be quite violent.
You can't even cut electricity/heat as it is seen inhumane and in theory you have to renovate/fix the house every time something dangerous needs to be fixed because it's illegal to provide unsafe housing.
Sometimes it takes years for people to get their house back and they often are completely trashed
France, like Spain, has strong residence protection for anyone, including homeowners. So if someone takes your house while you are away it is not legally squatting, but rather homebreaking and they will be evicted without even a trial.
If a house you own gets squatted you may stop paying for electricity/gaz/water. But to be honest apart from big corps abandoned buildings, i've never seen a squat where the electricity/water was already on.
It is illegal to rent dangerous housing. It may not be illegal to give it away in good faith, and it's certainly not your responsibility as an owner if it gets squatted. To my knowledge, and despite hearing about this constantly on homeowners forums, there has never been a case of owners being legally responsible for injuries to squatters.
At least in the US there have been cases where the squatter forged a lease and showed that to police that came to evict them. With the scant evidence the police would deem it a civil matter and you have to go to court. I'm not sure what the process is in Spain though.
All in all, i'd be curious if you have an example because that sounds like opinion manipulation from the owners as that case is very unlikely. At least similar cases i've heard about in France have been 100% debunked. It's much more likely the owners live(d) elsewhere and had an empty dwelling squatted.
Both types of squatters above are overrepresented and the most common one by far is the anti-capitalist squatter.
People who are fed up with high rents. Not without motives.
Corps buy entire building blocks, sometimes for renting but a lot of times just for storing capital and playing with the market. This combined with airbnb raising the prices more for tourists while salaries i. spain stay the same ends up in rents being totally disproportionate.
Most squatters I know don't want trouble, they get inside abandoned buildings and stay unnoticed for a big lenght of time. Getting inside a building in active use is just asking for trouble, as annoying it may be for the owners it's not the best option for the okupas either.
People going away for vacations, even months-long vacations are definitely protected by the law. It is illegal to break into people's home. It may not be illegal, depending on your jurisdiction, to enter an abandoned housing unit and claim it as your residence. It may still be illegal to break into it.
(when i say fascist news organizations i do mean they are run by actual fascists like Bollore, it's not a figure of speech)
They’re the reason people can’t afford a house and we have to talk about okupas in the first place.
But how are real state companies feeding the problem? The problem is that there's no houses available, because politicians create artificial scarcity. In any local government, the stronger department is "Urbanism", decides if you get rich by allowing you to develop on your property, or you stay poor because you don't get the permits.
Come on, this is very public knowledge in Spain, they barely try to hide. Everybody knows how it works, and how close the biggest (and even not so big) developers are to the politicians. Then they politicians blame Idealista or AirBnb like they don't have any power to allow the country to duplicate the available housing starting today.
There is also the problem with the insecurity for the landlord in Spain: right now, is you rent to a family with kids, and the family doesn't pay, you can't do nothing! How is it a mistery that landlords are retiring their properties from the rent market to sell them? That's causing a massive shortage, that causes prices do go up.
Idealista is the lead real state listing site in spain, and has other kind of problems, but I don't think they have a say on this.
There's an easy way to fix that: create a tax for unoccupied housing. If real estate sits unused for extensive durations instead of having tenants in them (i.e. having a rent low enough someone can afford it) it will burn a hole in your pocket. If you want to sell instead of letting someone rent, you will be incentivized to sell it ASAP even if you have to lower your price or make a loss.
Preferring to sell rather than renting out doesn't create a shortage. Preferring to keep housing unoccupied (in order to sell it) rather than renting it out or selling it at a price someone can afford does. If the market can't connect buyers/renters and sellers/landlords because the former can't afford the prices set by the latter and there's no economic pressure on the latter to lower their prices, you can just create that pressure.
Of course this would disincentivize private housing construction for people who don't also plan to live in that housing themselves but there's no reason there can't be a publicly funded organization for housing development able to take losses on sales/rent because it is backed by public money. This isn't uncharted territory either.
There's no reason housing has to function as an unregulated commodity. There's especially no reason to believe we can approximate that without further feeding into the housing crisis. There's a reason we have the term "rent-seeking" and why it has negative connotations: landlords only exist because most people can't afford or aren't eligible for the kind of loan that would allow them to build or buy a house. Unlike loan payments which end once you've paid off the loan (plus interest), rent goes on forever and only ever goes up. The entire point of being a landlord is that the rent accumulates to a sum greater than what you paid for the property (plus interest if you had to get a loan). Landlords literally don't add value. They're more like scalpers.
I rent. Not because I can't afford to buy, but because I'm not convinced that I will stay where I am forever. Maybe in a few years I move to Tarifa to work remotely, maybe I move to China. Today I live in a flat, I don't know it I want to live in this flat forever or buy a house. Today I have good health, maybe tomorrow I don't so I need to change my housing requirements.
I need landlords to invest their money in houses I can rent. The same I need people buying planes so I don't have to buy one to fly. What is adding value for you? To me a landlord that made the investment so I can rent has value enough that I pay for it. If you don't like it, it's fine, but leave the rest of us live and rent in peace.
If being a landlord was so profitable and risk free, we would be drowning in properties for rent. The fact that it doesn't happen, but we have a massive house shortage speaks by itself.
No, you need affordable housing. There's no reason that has to double as a way for someone to make a considerable ROI. Having to rent means that even if you stay in one place long enough to pay for the cost of building/buying the house twice over, you still get to pay an ever increasing rent every month just for the service of not kicking you out of your home.
> If you don't like it, it's fine, but leave the rest of us live and rent in peace.
But that's the problem, isn't it? Everyone needs housing. It's not something you can simply opt out of. You can try being homeless but that precludes you from most ways to make an income. If you're wealthy enough, you can buy a house so you never have to rent again but again that's not a choice most people get to make even if they could afford it (because it hinges on their ability to get a loan, which is up to the bank).
I'm not saying you should have to pay a million bucks to have a place to live. Nothing I said contradicts the idea that you may want to live in different places over time. I'm saying commodity housing (i.e. having housing subject to a housing market) necessarily leads to a housing shortage and there are better options than trusting the benevolence of every single landlord not to charge as much rent as they can get away with.
> If being a landlord was so profitable and risk free, we would be drowning in properties for rent.
This (drowning in properties for rent) doesn't logically follow from that (being a landlord is very profitable) and that isn't what I said. There are other factors involved like how profitable being a landlord is relative to other things you can do (like selling) and how high the initial investment required to run a profitable landlord operation (with multiple properties) is.
> The fact that it doesn't happen, but we have a massive house shortage speaks by itself.
If it's a housing shortage, that's a supply problem. But according to other comments from people claiming to know the situation in Spain, there is no lack of housing supply (i.e. there are plenty of houses for sale and many empty houses for rent) so it seems to be a problem of pricing.
It's more profitable to sell (or rent out) a highly priced property even if it means you'll sit on it for a longer time, as long as you can afford the initial investment and maintenance. In fact, overpricing a property can be beneficial if you own other properties in the same area because it can raise the average and thus justify increasing the prices for other properties in the area. Not to mention that due to population growth over time demand goes up and new development usually happens in the outskirts, meaning supply in the area won't increase.
You can be okay with the status quo. That doesn't mean there aren't good arguments why the status quo is bad in certain ways. And changing the status quo doesn't mean removing one thing and being done with it. As much as some may feel it when rent is due, I don't think the solution is to kill all landlords (or more figuratively: abolish the profit model of being a landlord). De-commodification doesn't mean simply banning the sale of something. It's about replacing one model with another and there can be intermediate steps (e.g. the Red Vienna model of public housing).
I'll tell you why: because renting is not a risk free and safe business, but a tight one. You can have renters that doesn't pay for a couple of years. Your tenants can cause damages to your property. Your property lose value if you don't invest in it. Lots of things can go south that wipe your ROI, and you can't do nothing to fix it. Sure, if you get a long term tenant that pays every 1st day of the month and takes good care of the house, it's a wonderful business, but that is not the norm.
> Everyone needs housing. It's not something you can simply opt out of.
Same thing I need food or clothing. And I have plenty of both, cheaply, on a wide variety and quality, because politicians don't meddle with them causing artificial shortages.
> there are better options than trusting the benevolence of every single landlord not to charge as much rent as they can get away with.
That's a free market. Every single one of us charges as much as we can get away with it. And pay as less as we can get away with it. If I don't have a higher wage is just because I'm selling my work to the best paying company. In turn, they are paying my salary because they couldn't find anyone that charges less than me for the same work.
> If it's a housing shortage, that's a supply problem. But according to other comments from people claiming to know the situation in Spain, there is no lack of housing supply (i.e. there are plenty of houses for sale and many empty houses for rent) so it seems to be a problem of pricing.
That makes no economical sense. There are cities (Madrid or Barcelona, surely others) where you can put a house for rent at any price, and it will get rented in hours. That's a supply problem! A problem of pricing would be hundreds of properties for rent at such prices that nobody rent them for months or years. There is a lack or supply _for rent_, and I don't care what other "informed" comments say unless they come with data.
> It's more profitable to sell (or rent out) a highly priced property even if it means you'll sit on it for a longer time, as long as you can afford the initial investment and maintenance
What? No, it's not. Each year without renting a house that you bought for, say, 300,000€ to rent for 1,000€/month is a loss of 12,000€ (4%). If you put that same 300,000€ in stocks or some kind of safe investment like public or private bonds, you would get at least 2% interest/dividend _and your invested money_ back. Instead you have inmovilized money that is producing zero (pre tax, depretiation and amortization). You should familiarize with this concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
You basically are saying that I can buy stocks without dividend, because I'm just going to sell it at a higher prize in the future _guaranteed_. That might happen or not.
Hungary: more than 2k new houses, and there are more than 5k new apartments to buy. https://ingatlan.com/lista/elado+haz+uj-epitesu
In Madrid province, there are around 700 new houses+apartments to buy https://www.idealista.com/en/venta-obranueva/madrid-provinci...
This problem is now so big local governments are now building new houses.
The rental issues are interesting because for example in Germany, the rental protections are very similar, maybe even more protecting than Spain. (Interestingly the prices are also lower in Germany, in Madrid prices start from 650+utilities, in Munich, 500+utilities)
There are many more. That link shows 700 developments, most of them with multiple units on offer.
It's not like politicians and real estate developers are a separate group anyway.
Squatting is only a problem that can happen if housing remains unoccupied. And it's more likely to happen if there is no strong communal network in the area (because most people don't want squatters moving in next to them because of the implications). The easiest way to have housing remain unoccupied for long periods of time and to have neighbors be apathetic about squatters moving into it is to destroy the local community through rent hikes and gentrification and to not live in the area yourself (e.g. because you're a real estate company and not a private landlord or because you're an external speculative investor).
As I understand it, Spain has also had massive problems with investors buying properties to put on AirBnB for tourists, often in defiance of zoning laws.
I understand the concern about property damage from squatting but unoccupied housing is wasting public resources (i.e. habitable land) and can often easily be solved by lowering rent - which from the tenant's POV is literally just giving you free money to use something you already built/bought (i.e. a sunk cost), unlike maintenace & utilities which actively contribute to its upkeep. If you want to think of real estate as an investment you need to understand that investment comes with risks and you shouldn't have a right to make a positive ROI (certainly not a moral one).
In a sense, I would argue (and I think some of the resident Georgists would agree) that keeping housing deliberately unoccupied because of inflated rents and real estate speculation is ethically indistinguishable from squatting - if not worse - because you're deliberately preventing society from making use of that land purely in the hopes of a speculative postive ROI. Housing is only valuable to society when it is occupied.
You do know that it's run by a VC company? Not particularly surprising that most most people generally support the protection of property rights
That said, squatting unused housing is literally "disrupting the housing market" by eliminating the waste of critical resources. It's upsetting the market and breaking established rules, sure, but so are AirBnB, Uber, generative AI and cryptocurrencies.
If you think about the founding mythology of "Hacker culture", squatting fits right in there alongside the stories of defrauding telephone companies with "phreaking" and other "adventures". Except of course for the obvious class difference between hacking your Ivy League university's computer lab and having to squat an empty building because the alternative is being homeless.
It's website of the biggest(?) real estate classifieds website in Spain
It's website of the biggest(?) real estate classifieds website in Spain so it's not particularly shocking.