A week ago, I wrote an article about an issue that has been omnipresent in my country for some time: access to housing. If you'd like to read it, here's the article: @florakese/housing-problems-in-southern-europe
Today, I wanted to talk about the causes of these problems for citizens, especially young people.
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Before the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, the construction boom in my country was more than evident. Half a million homes were built each year. So, a financing bubble developed that burst with the crisis. In other words, the financing tap was turned off, and the little bit dried up.
To solve these problems, measures were taken against the banks, forcing them to be much more careful with the loans they issued to prevent the same thing from happening again.
The result is that today, you need to have at least 20% of the home's value saved, and taxes are at least 10% more.
Today, in theory, the economy is doing well, but access to housing is impossible due to several factors. Much higher construction costs due to the destruction of a large part of the industrial fabric during the crisis. A massive influx of immigrants, not only those looking for a job to survive but also wealthy northern Europeans, will address this in another article.
So, with all this, 100,000 homes are produced per year, but 300,000 would be needed, and that's the problem. The market is completely broken.