Forum user: Spanish housing costs as much as New York

Good apartment at 350,000 € and the 100,000 a forum user attributes to New York

According to the messages opening the debate, an 80-square-meter apartment in a second-tier Spanish capital: 350,000 euros, and the seller is not shaken. The price of housing in Spain, according to this premise, has decoupled from salaries to an absurd extent: according to one participant, with 100,000 dollars you can buy an apartment in New York 'in perfect condition', and he claims that here salaries are around a quarter of American ones.

The starting thesis is simple and brutal: Spanish housing has become an asset for European pensioners and for those who sell a property and buy another. Half of the transactions would be of this type. The rest, the premise argues, is an extraction machine built over decades and sustained with public money.

How much does an apartment in New York really cost?

Here unanimity breaks down. The 100,000 dollar figures are countered with data of another order: according to one participant's account, a normal apartment bought in the city in the 80s and 90s already cost 400,000 dollars, and that same property is valued at two million. 'That thing about apartments at 100,000, I don't know where you get it from,' summarizes the most direct reply. Another reading reduces it to little more than a built-in closet.

The counterargument is not just about price. According to another voice, mortgage credit in the United States is more expensive than in Europe and the local property tax — the equivalent of the IBI — ranges between 2,000 and 5,000 dollars a year. This is added to the community fees: whoever opens the debate points out that condominium fees range from 700 to over 1,000 dollars. Some break down a case with a mortgage of 350 dollars and a community fee of 1,250, where maintenance weighs more than the debt. The breakdown, item by item, fuels the suspicion that brick is paid twice.

The 70s basement sold for 150,000 euros

Back to Spain, where what irritates is not the price of good housing but that of bad. One participant estimates that in Madrid's peripheral neighborhoods, a 1970s apartment, poorly renovated, without an elevator and of about 50 square meters goes for between 150,000 and 170,000 euros. Below 100,000, in provincial capitals, he adds, what appears are developments from the old INV with half a century behind. Rents of 800 euros for apartments without elevators complete the picture.

And yet, they sell. Some recall that two decades ago buyers paid 350,000 or 400,000 for 80 square meters without blinking. The complaint about price is not always accompanied by an equivalent drop in demand, although one participant insists that demand is plummeting. The apathy of the resigned buyer is, for some, the best fertilizer for the system.

Pensions at 8.5% and salaries at 1%: the generational rift

The analysis quickly shifts to income distribution. One group points out the rise in pensions — 8.5% in the last review — compared to 1% or 2% of salaries, with maximum pensions around 2,700 euros and two extra payments. According to this reading, the bargaining power of that group, with expenses covered, is null, and political pressure to maintain it is maximal.

An anecdote summarizes the clash of mindsets better than any graph: one participant recounts trying to buy rural land in the neighboring village, unused for 20 years, and receives an answer he won't forget. 'Selling is for the poor.' From this comes an uncomfortable reading: the housing stock is in the hands of the generation that bought cheap and votes independently of what happens with young salaries.

'If house prices rise, it's because Spaniards can afford them'

The defense of the status quo has its own quote, attributed in the debate to a minister from the time of the previous bubble: 'If house prices rise, it's because Spaniards can afford them.' The corollary is that there is no bubble but a free market: when no one can afford them, prices will fall on their own and without intervention.

Against this, supply is pointed out. One voice recalls the liberalization of land in the 90s and its result: when everything exploded, a public vehicle was created to absorb excess brick and the sector had to be bailed out. Population pressure is also highlighted — 500,000 people enter each year in a country of 48 million inhabitants — and the uncomfortable question of where to put those who arrive when no one builds.

The diagnosis gaining ground: usury or neo-feudalism

The word that repeats most is no longer bubble. It is usury, in some cases, and neo-feudalism in others: a housing park that ends up concentrated in few hands, whose owners will live off rents indefinitely. Whoever maintains that they are safe because they are owners will receive, sooner or later, the same treatment they give, summarizes one of the harshest voices.

There is no consensus or recipe. The rental laws of Switzerland, Germany, or Luxembourg are cited, where the majority rents and the tenant is responsible for the state of the property. It is replied that no rule fixes what is, fundamentally, a collective willingness to participate in the game. And in the middle remains the feeling that summarizes the discomfort: in Spain, housing is paid at major capital prices with provincial paychecks. What is the market waiting for to correct? Or is there no one left with margin to ask for a correction?