Cannibalistic housing market: who pays for the home?

Cannibalistic housing market: broken generational turnover

A 60-square-meter apartment is listed for about 1,500 yuan per month; a renovated loft in the city center, for 4,000. On paper, figures from another country. On the pocket of the signer, the confirmation that the housing price has ceased to be a punctual problem to become the axis of a conflict between generations. The discussion that best summarizes it begins with a laboratory reference: the cited superpopulation experiment as 'Universe 25'. Some took it as an exact mirror of what is coming. And from there come the lobsters of the title.

The experiment that gives the subject its name: why lobsters are discussed

The metaphor is simple and not for that reason friendly. There is a generation that accumulated housing and assets and that, instead of releasing them, defends them with tooth and nail. Those who use it argue that this accumulation comes at the expense of those who come after, condemned to share a flat, to rent for life, or to leave the city where they grew up. 'The lobster devours its young,' they say, is a description more than a poetic license.

Against that narrative there is another equally firm: that the market works like any other and that, if the center has become inaccessible, the answer is not to lament the price, but to change neighborhoods, municipalities, or communities. Saving on rent by moving to the periphery would be, according to this thesis, the rational decision that many do not want to make. The boundary between reasonable sacrifice and resignation is not clear at all, and there the conversation gets stuck.

City center rents vs. salaries that do not accompany

The housing figures put on the table go in two directions. On one hand, the reference of a 60-meter rental for about 1,500 yuan and a city center loft for 4,000, with the nuance that cheap turns out to be expensive and that published flats do not always match those actually rented. On the other, the complaint of an age group that maintains that their salary does not buy even the basement that the previous generation already had at thirty. Mine for me, summarized an intervention that made a fortune.

There crosses an uncomfortable fact: the feeling that effort no longer yields the same. It is argued that for the same work as two decades ago, the reward today is much lower and that this gap does not close with will alone. It is the part of the issue that no payroll statistics resolve, because it measures expectations and not receipts.

Immigration as a factor in housing prices

A part of the analysis places demographic pressure at the center of the equation. The data handled are eloquent in their literalness: 41,969,601 Spanish nationals, of which 30,889,196 born here, against 6,227,092 foreign nationals. The increase in the latter group is estimated at 2.46% compared to the end of 2022 and at 15.5% compared to April 2021.

From these figures, one of the readings of the thread is used: that demographic pressure pushes rent up. How much of the increase responds to this factor and how much to other causes is, however, something that the figures alone do not resolve.

Maximum prices in exchange for fast evictions: the dividing proposal

The regulatory path appears early. Some defend limiting by law the number of flats in the hands of the same owner and closing the circle on purchases by foreigners, as is done in other countries. The harder version asks for expropriation and setting maximum rents.

The counterpoint comes from within the market itself. An owner with a rented flat states it without mincing words: if capped prices and express evictions are wanted, the business loses sense and many will stop offering housing. Charging less and assuming more risk expels supply, it does not attract it. The discussion on price controls hits, once again, the same wall.

'The worst generation in history': the reproach that goes in two directions

Closing the circle appears the generational accusation. A current describes those who accumulated assets as the worst generation in history, selfish and short-sighted, who would have mortgaged their children's future for not giving up anything. The answer returns the blow with the same tone: the young are not only victims, but also heirs of a system voted by their elders for decades and which now they have to support.

And in the middle, the most striking detail of the whole: European mobility scholarships granted to retired people, arguing that they were the first to send their children to Erasmus and now claim the same right. A sample that the distribution between generations is not resolved with a headline.

How much of this fight is economics and how much is simple war of narratives?