#rents — Public Fediverse posts

World+EU: Housing consumption costs, as % of household disposable income, 2024 or latest available year.

Greece ranks among the highest for housing costs as % of disposable income (≈36%, EU’s highest, 4th overall).
Low incomes amplify the burden.
House prices rose ~85% vs 47% income growth; rents hit ~10% inflation in 2025

#EU #Greece #HousingCrisis #Rents #HousePrices #RealEstate

Euro area: Construction production and prices Q1 2022 to Q1 2026

Renovations of existing buildings have been a main driver of the recovery in construction activity.
Meanwhile, new building construction continues to decline, partly due to rising prices of energy‑intensive materials like concrete.

#EU #HousingCrisis #RealEstate #Housing #HousePrices #rents #Eurozone

VIDEO: Inflation hotter than expected means RBA rate hikes back on the cards – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

VIDEO: Inflation hotter than expected m…
#NewsBeep #News #Economy #ABCNews #abcnewsaustralia #AU #Australia #Business #businessnews #CPI #Dairy #DavidBassanese #DavidTaylor #EconomicNews #electricity #Energy #Finance #financenews #food #housing #inflation #interestrates #jimchalmers #Meat #RBA #recession #rents #ReserveBank #thebusiness #Trasurer
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/759277/

Price to Rent Ratio vs the Price to Income Ratio in Greece from the Q3 2005 to the Q3 2025

Greece’s affordability crisis is driven primarily by rents rising much faster than incomes, not by purchase prices alone.

Affordability today: the worst in 20 years

From 2015 to 2024: Price‑to‑Rent: +60% Price‑to‑Income: +20%

Rents are rising far faster than household incomes

#Greece #HousePrices #RealEstate #rents #residential #HousingCrisis #property #housing #Eurozone #HomePrices

Buy vs Rent Ratio in Q2 2025 compares the relative cost of buying versus renting residential property across 24 major EU cities

household residential purchasing power remains low in most European cities, leading to increased demand for rentals and consequently rising rents

#Europe #HousePrices #rents #Affordability #RealEstate #EU #HousingCrisis #residential #property #HomePrices #Eurozone

HICP - Actual rentals for housing, EU, Euro area, Greece, 2000 – Q4 2025

EU and Euro area: Both show stable, gradual increases in rental prices over the 25-year period
From around 2020, Greece's annual rental price changes have increased dramatically, surpassing those of the EU and Euro area

#EU #Greece #rents #RealEstate #HousingCrisis #residential #property #Hellas #rentals #property

Construction cost of new residential buildings-producer prices, for Q3 2025

Countries with higher indices may face greater affordability challenges, especially if wage growth hasn't kept pace

Lower index values could indicate more stable construction environments, but may also reflect slower development or lower demand

#EU #Greece #HousePrices #property #HouseBulid #HousingSupply #residential #RealEstate #rents #HomePrices #Eurozone

Rent affordability spending 40% of monthly income in the EU

In 2024, 8.2% of people in the EU lived in households where total housing costs represented more than 40% of their total disposable income

Greece has the highest rate, with nearly 29% of urban residents burdened by housing costs exceeding 40% of their income

#EU #Greece #rents #HousingCrisis #RealEstate #Eurozone #property #homes #rentals #residential #housing #income

Share of population and share of average income needed to rent 25 sqm and 75 sqm apartments by type of region

Across the whole EU, only apartments of 25m2 can be rented for less than 30 % of average income
For a 75m2 apartment, tenants in most cities must allocate more than 30% and often more than 60% of average income to cover the rent

#EU #Greece #rents #HousingCrisis #RealEstate #property #homes #rentals #housing

…

"What is the answer? […]
The cancellation and writing off of existing debt burdens for poor countries (I don’t like the word debt ‘forgiveness’ as there is nothing to forgive)."

by Michael Roberts: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2025/06/30/sustainable-development-and-unsustainable-debt/

#debt #healthcare #health #children #investment #USAid #bonds #liquidity #liquidities #securities #borrowing #debt #deficit #money #currency #MMT #policy #economy #credit #economics #obligations #macroEconomics #rents #funding #politics #neoliberalism

Nobody ever reimburses national debt. Sovereign states restructure it.

#bonds #liquidity #liquidities #securities #borrowing #debt #deficit #money #Treasury #PublicTreasury #currency #MMT #policy #economy #credit #economics #obligations #titles #slogan #macroEconomics #rents #funding #politics

@Dianora There are a few other economic concepts which are IMO key to developing any remedies and/or alternatives. I'll try to touch on the major ones here.

Wage/Rent pricing, mentioned above, is a key stumbling point. Smith:

A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AThe_wealth_of_nations%2C_volume_1.djvu/135

The Law of Rent and Iron Law of Wages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages) dictate that these dynamics are always in conflict and play, and crush the working class, most especially those who live by wage labour (or worse: piecework pay, see Smith's discussion of this for an eye-opener), and rent rather than own their domeciles. Both concepts date to the 18th / early 19th centuries, but are largely ignored in contemporary orthodoxy.

The "obvious" solutions, of, say, providing free/subsidised essentials to the working class or of critical goods and services (food, clothing, housing, education, healthcare) largely further exacerbate the existing perverse market dynamics. I am not saying DON'T help those in dire need. What I am saying is that if this is the sole and widespread remedy, that the underlying problems get worse: wages fall (because "welfare" benefits subsidise its costs rather than employers paying a living wage), education, housing, healthcare and other services get more expensive (because subsidies provide additional revenues).

Winston Churchill (another unlikely champion) noted this in 1906:

Some years ago in London there was a toll bar on a bridge across the Thames, and all the working people who lived on the south side of the river had to pay a daily toll of one penny for going and returning from their work. The spectacle of these poor people thus mulcted of so large a proportion of their earnings offended the public conscience, and agitation was set on foot, municipal authorities were roused, and at the cost of the taxpayers, the bridge was freed and the toll removed. All those people who used the bridge were saved sixpence a week, but within a very short time rents on the south side of the river were found to have risen about sixpence a week, or the amount of the toll which had been remitted!

https://www.landvaluetax.org/history/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can

Instead, a dual strategy of taxing rents (generally: providers of the goods/services above or those acting similarly economically), and providing for increased labour bargaining power though an improved best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA) and coordinated negotiation power (a/k/a Labour Unionisation) is necessary. Both of course run into the Wealth is Power and Logic of Collective Action (Mancur Olson, 1965: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action) problems.

Direct subsidies / contributions as emergency measures directed at dire immediate circumstances are ABSOLUTELY of value. **But they should result in direction to directly addressing the rents/wages dichotomy.

A business which cannot pay a living wage and survive economically is a charity conducted to the benefit of its owner at the cost of its workers, or is provisioning public goods which should see a subsidy in their provision through tax revenues and transfer payments. Below-subsistence wages and labour supports only exacerbate the underlying problem.

Private ownership of real estate is a surprisingly recent development, displacing earlier feudal or monarchical rents (often very long-term leases) largely in the late 19th century. Among the few explorations of this history I've found is Simon Winchester's Land (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_(book)). And of course there's Henry George's Progress and Poverty (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty_(George,_D._Appleton_%26_Company,_fifth_edition)), championing the Land Value Tax (along with: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Milton Friedman (!!!), to name just a few. Social housing has its failures, but also successes, including the Fuggerei (Augsburg, Germany, created by the Fugger family in 1516 and continuing to serve to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuggerei), Vienna, and Japan (through both market and government actions, in part through some idiosyncratic practices).

Housing cannot be both affordable and an investment asset. And of the two, the first function is primal.

Incidentally, I suspect that a large part of the US growth in homelessness may be directly attributable to going off the gold standard, itself a response to the country's peak-oil moment and reliance on foreign energy imports, driving banks and financial institutions to find an alternate asset class: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21304603.

Next are some more obscure economic principles, somewhat addressed in the mainstream, but highly underappreciated ...

2/

#economics #orthodoxEconomics #critique #wages #rents #LawOfRent #IronLawOfWages #MancurOlson #UBI #unions #LogicOfCollectiveAction #RealEstate #homelessness #OilCrisis #PeakOil #Fuggerei #ProgressAndPoverty #HenryGeorge #DavidRicardo #SimonWinchester #AffordableHousing #AssetHousing #BusinessAsCharity #tootstorm

Housing benefits boost set to be wiped out by soaring rents within 18 months
https://inews.co.uk/news/housing-benefits-soaring-rents-2790815

#Rents
#Housing
#HousingBenefit
#Homelessness
#RentRises