Topic: Are short-term rentals to blame for the lack of housing? - page 6. (Read 797 times)

Lack of housing is not the issue, lack of funding is the issue. If you have a nation with over 200% houses of what you need, as in there is enough to go around for everyone and then some, and yet only the top buys them all, that results with some people not having a house anyway.

This is why government should always make some houses and rent them for near free levels as well, I know some will yell out socialism because of it, but if half of the world runs in a nation where hospitals, schools, firefighters, police, military and many other things are paid by the people with their taxes, why not have a single government construction company that builds cheap houses in some distant place for everyone to live if they do not have a home.

There is another solution that I forgot to mention in my previous comment, and it is related to finding a roommate or more, and thus it is possible to buy a more expensive apartment, but the share of each individual will be less than if he rented an apartment alone.
On the other hand, and according to what I understood from your words, you have a job in a vast city with an average monthly income that does not allow renting an individual apartment due to the high rental rates. At the same time, you cannot move to the suburbs for the same reasons, and your qualifications do not allow you to enjoy social housing. correct?
What are you doing in this city so far, and why haven't you looked for a job with better conditions and income? As far as I know, people like you prefer to live in small towns where life is quieter.

Certainly, I'm not fond of large cities, and I'd honestly prefer to live in a more suburban province that would be less touristy and crowded. The issue with that, however, is that I live on an island, a large one in particular, and all of it is practically touristy. Thus, I can't simply move to another area; even the nearby villages have little to no housing left because people found them to be an affordable solution already.

I'm guessing that you can probably relate too, since Croatia has seen a massive increase in tourism in the past few years, and locals, especially in touristy cities like Dubrovnik or Split, are possibly suffering from the same issues.

It sounds simple enough, even though that doesn't directly solve the housing crisis, as newly constructed blocks of flats are usually sold for personal occupation and are subject to extremely high prices. There's a block of flats being constructed here as we speak, and all the apartments have already been sold at extraordinary prices for the average citizen. So yes, the solution is pretty much to spend more or to move away.
The issue with my current house is that it's way too small to accommodate two people living in it, and larger ones are either way too old with issues or way too expensive; it's like there's no middle ground. The government has proven multiple times that it doesn't care about its citizens at all. I'd explain in more detail, but we'll derail from the discussion, and this matter would only require another thread by itself.

AirBnB is only part of it. Post COVID the demand for housing rose in just about every market across the world. There was a housing bubble that was created when people began dumping their money into real estate to avoid inflation, and some of the investment firms did the same by purchasing up entire neighborhoods in order to rent out homes for long term investments.

There isn't really anything the average consumer can do but for moving to an area with lower cost of living.

Housing and estate business is not a passive income generating business. It is a huge business that is also cash intensive. It is the business that you may not encounter loss if you go further to insure it.


Buy a home today if you can afford it. The value of houses always appreciate.


Houses could be in shortage because the government is not doing enough to support.


This is possible because if you build homes to live in business areas then people won't like to rent them. Houses that can be on short rent could in business areas or commercial areas.

As someone who went through that process in several countries and 10+ cities, I can assure you that situation is not better in the rest of EU, and  not even in the countries like Germany that are not touristy oriented like yours.


It all really depends how attached you are to your hometown (I guess its your hometown) and are you a risk taker. On a personal level, I would probably move out but only you can make that decision.

To be honest, I would like to invest in these kind of housing where I could use them as rental to have passive income. Of course I would put some money where I risk it all because what if there's no people would rent it right? For sure I would rental it with a affordable price. But how come I could buy a some houses if there's lacking right? I think here in the PH, there's a lot of newly subdivision that are open for everyone to buy. It might not be applicable for some countries but I think the main reason for lack of housing is people would buy some commercial space just for short income. Because here I have seen a lot of houses have been demolished and rebuild into some newly mall of course in the mean time as commercial space adapt more then there would be no space fo housing.

That is a tricky situation. Indeed, a tourist destination will attract many digital nomads to live there, which will drive the prices higher around that area, especially the hotspot place. If there is no obligation that you currently have to stay in some specific places, I believe moving out is a viable option.

Nevertheless, in case you have to stick in the city, I would consider finding a cheaper accommodation as you have said, but try to address the humidity and mold issues, say by buying a de/humidifier, but eventually if it is affecting your health and comfortability, there is no other option to stick in the high-priced area, with a caveat to keep routinely find a better opportunity whether it is a job or an accommodation.

I understand what you are passing through and the same too happens here where short term tourists have taken over good apartments because they are ready to pay huge sum of money and for comfortable apart making things to be hard for those that are residents of the area.

I could remember when I left one of the busiest city in my region gor something crucial. Then renting an apartment was not that too expensive although it all depends on the location. But now because of so much migration of tourists and expatriates, apartment in that same city is 2 to 3 times higher than what it was before when I was still living there. Things are expensive now like building materials and others making new apartments to be more expensive that what it was before.

If that were to happen to me, I'd probably stay in an average apartment for a while, hoping to get something better. The government will not remain silent seeing its citizens like this. But we also can't expect the government to immediately work on building housing for its citizens who need it. It may take 5-10 years before the government will make the housing but it also depends on your country's economy.

If the government only cares about tourism rather than its people, sooner or later, the government will get demonstrations from local residents asking for decent housing for them. And when that happens, the tourism sector will be hampered and things will take a turn for the worse. If the government is observant, they will try to open up new land for housing so that everyone can move to a new location and slowly, this housing problem can be overcome.

The situation in every country is different and I don't really understand what the rules are in your country. But I'm sure you can solve the problem well. You can rent a small house that is enough to accommodate your family. And later, if there is a better place and you have the funds to rent or even buy it, you can buy it.

I work and reside in an area visited by millions of tourists annually, and most of them come to see the actual events and rent apartments, and I had a partnership in a neighboring area, in which the last year’s world cup took place, as millions of people visited Qatar for the first time, it is a small country, and the number of tourists greatly exceeds the number of citizens and residents, I can understand Your problem, but mostly tourists tend to choose areas close to the airport, which are very safe and that enable them to reach tourist destinations directly without complications in transportation. From the train station or near a tourist attraction, and so on. And the 10-minute is considered as a sport, especially if you are young and live alone.

Generally housing are too difficulty to rent especially when you wanna change your apartment to a newer and a more better than the previous, and you ought to face lots of challenges in securing a comfortable apartment for yourself, I could remembered vividly sometimes earlier this year when my husband was looking for a newer and bigger apartment moving from our self-contained apartment to a one-bedroom apartment.

He started sourcing the apartment since from last year December and we lived close to a university where students always occupied most of the apartment and especially those students whom there parents are very wealthy doesn't hesitate to secure an apartment because to any amount those house owner places their price student would rent it without any waste of time or even slightly want to negotiate price with house owner, and to any amount they are willing to pay without minding or having to consider those who are living or even those that are to come because they already set a standard for rent in that region and, the worsts part of it is that they always increase their rental in every year without considering the inflation and to compared with the average salary of some worker.

Even as that most people always ends up spending their entire savings in housing and how do you think this people could meet up in life because I know too well that they must save and, apparently any worker who doesn't save do not really securing himself or her family a better life as I believe that there is always a challenges to come, although despite people do not pray to face any problems in life but we most act on a predictive aspect of life to always have a backup when the time shall comes.
Yes! This could be true or not but is something inevitably that we must face in life, especially when it comes of house renting and properties.

To be frank with you, and also I don't know your condition to be single or married but I am on the opinion that you could still remains with your previous apartment and only if you think you can inhabit there then back down and remain over there while you work and save money to secure a better place for yourself. All less you have a family where that place doesn't longer contains you people maybe you feels uncomfortable whenever you finds yourself inside same apartment, yes this could likely be true but you don't need to over stress your or having to compete with the tourist those who spent money without having to determine whether others are up to such standard.

Off course, they don't have to consider because they're not in same shoe with you so they can spend their money however and whenever they feels like spending and it could be in an expensive things, luxury, maybe cars and on whatever they feel is attractive to them without humiliation.

But for you not to be intimidated you don't have to live in same locality with them maybe you could find yourself over an area where you feels is more conducive for your standard and way of life, unlike us over here we do our best not to live a stressful life or being on a competition with those whom we think we can't compare our standard of life to theirs.

All I'm thinking while reading your post was buying a two or three bedroom house on loan. Occupy one room and lease the rest so that would help you pay off the debt and maybe have some excess for taking care of utilities. I don't know the situation of real estate in your area so maybe try to inquire and then crunch the numbers.

Hostel accommodation is not advisable for op based on what he shared. Hostel accommodation is also part of short term rentals and that is expensive to take care of. Those who stay in such kind of accommodation are those looking to seal a business deal as fast as possible and they require short term rent, those that are schooling for academic certificate in a location far from where they are living, those that are expatriate and tourist.

For country-level solutions, it's simple, build more! More housing than demand lowers the price making it more affordable.
Do nothing solution and wait, another thing that will work since the law of economics will start biting also, there is an influx of cash to the homeowners, there are people who spend more, thus prices in that region become higher, once the price becomes higher it becomes less attractive for most digital nomads who do this for cheap housing and start moving to the next city.

On a personal level, nothing that you can really do without compromises.
Earn more spend less or move away!


Because you pack 100 houses in 100 sqm?
The average house in Spain is 95 sqm, it's 43.6 in China 47 in India, and 39.2 for the Philipines?

Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to the environment they live in, but I would personally look for a quieter location outside the big cities where the prices are the highest. Of course, this raises the issue of distance from the workplace if it is located in the city, but sometimes you cannot have cheap and ideal accommodation near the workplace.

When it comes to tourism and climate change, I have read predictions that summer temperatures will be higher and that this will affect everyone involved in tourism, especially in the Mediterranean, where this summer broke all temperature records with extremely strong storms. The question is whether you can wait for it and whether you should even hope for it, because tourism is very important for your country.

I concur that Airbnbs have artificially kept house prices high, obstructing a healthy market. Some non-locals in my tourist-friendly town demanded that the city not impose any restrictions on the number of Airbnbs so they could purchase homes they couldn't afford and then convert them into Airbnbs. To put it another way, they "could" afford a $2.5 million property if the city let them to convert it into an Airbnb but they "could" not afford the typical $1,200,000 home. The disaster, which is the housing crisis is already happening. Following damaging "get rich quick" schemes, the rest of us are left to clean up the mess. There should be laws made against this.

This is a problem primarily in western countries while it's not such a big deal in asian countries. I cannot understand what you are going through op since I have never faced such a situation in my life thanks to my owned home.

My advice for you is to stay in a shared accomodation like hostel etc and save money until you are capable of shifting to a great home later on.

Most governments in Europe need the funds that tourist brings to the country. The revenue from tourism is huge and many nations will continue to formulate tourist-friendly policies to attract more of these digital nomads. We are also facing the same issues in my country because of rural-urban drift. You have few options because this will not change very soon.

You should consider moving to places that are less attractive to tourists. These areas will have available and cheaper houses. I know it will be a problem maybe considering the location of your job. But if you work online, it will be a good option. These areas might not be as comfortable as other good cities but you need more money to compete with tourists.

Another option will be to increase your income. If you have more money, you can afford any kind of accommodation you want. So if you can get another job or get a new skill, you can earn more to pay higher rent.

If I may guess, you must be looking for a house to rent in a big city that is very densely populated. Tourist attraction to big cities will continue to increase every year, moreover these cities are full of beautiful tourist destinations. It's very difficult to find decent housing in a big city, you've looked everywhere and spent a week but to no avail.

Along with increasing demand, the supply is also getting higher, for people who are in the upper class of the economy are not a problem with that price. But for people who want to find a long-term residence, they should think twice about reaching an agreement with that price, let alone the reason for seeking sustenance in the new city they want to live in.