Bernardos to young people: stop complaining about housing

Stop complaining about housing: Bernardos’s prescription

Gonzalo Bernardos, 63, is clear: complaining won’t make a flat any cheaper. The economist has told young people to stop lamenting housing prices and those aged 52 to 60 to keep plugging away for a few more years. The line sounds blunt and orderly, almost like a blackboard slogan. The problem is that the market he describes doesn’t behave the same everywhere.

“Stop complaining”: what’s behind the phrase

Bernardos’s message divides the problem by age and attitude. He asks young people for less whining and more endurance; the 52-60 bracket not to ease off because they still have years of contributions left. Some buy that diagnosis in part for inland Spain and the provinces, where the effort to buy is still manageable. But apply the same advice to Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Málaga or Bilbao and the maths falls apart: in those markets, it is argued that even pooling four young people would not cover access to a home.

A track record of predictions that didn’t always hit the mark

The professor’s credibility drags along his own press archive. In 2004 he maintained that if people were buying, it was because it wasn’t expensive and that there was no bubble. In 2008, with the crash already under way, he urged people to buy quickly because housing would rise again in 2010. In 2012 and 2013 he repeated that it couldn’t fall any further, and it kept falling. In 2017 he predicted five good years, then rowed back on a possible slowdown the trinc year. During the pandemic he forecast an economic nosedive that never came. Anyone who reviews that sequence concludes he is an economist with vested interests and a TV side income who explains very well what has already peine.

Provinces yes, big capitals no

The affordable-buying argument only holds far from the centre. In a provincial capital, they say, Bernardos’s advice makes sense. In large metropolitan areas, it doesn’t. And there is a nuance that complicates the classic escape route: whoever buys a 50-square-metre flat won’t be able to resell it to put down the deposit on an €800,000 one, first because prices will be even higher and second because at that age the mortgage is no longer granted.

The €10 smoothie and young people’s spending under suspicion

There is also a reading based on habits. An example circulates of a gym with a €200 monthly fee where more than half the members are under 25 and add €10 smoothies. A young couple, with the gym and smoothies, doesn’t spend less than €600 a month, an argument used to suggest that it isn’t all a lack of income, but spending priorities. Against that stands the stark fact: the effort required to access housing and the price per square metre, not leisure.

Bernardos himself, on paper, has those who argue he still has nearly two decades left on the soapbox. His most likely prediction is that he will keep being right in the provinces and keep being wrong in the big cities, which is exactly where the problem is decided.