Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/17/that-bursting-sound.html
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Majority of London's newly built luxury flats are unsold, raising the spectre of "posh ghost towers"
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Squatters’ paradise.
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Vancouver passed vacancy taxes and suddenly a lot of mansions are available for rent:
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That’s almost got a Star Trek TOS feel to it.
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Not to mention the effect of Brexit. There’s less demand for a lux bolthole in London when the money laundering bankers start to de-camp for other parts of the EU.
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Makes you think staff-toting, oddly-haltered Amazonians with big hair, voluptuous exposed thighs, and in tall boots, will appear from behind the columns at any second.
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Couldn’t happen to nastier people.
Aw, I’m feeling all warm and tingly inside… could this be an epic case of schadenfreude? Why yes, yes it is.
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WHY CAN’T THEY DO THAT IN NEW YORK? (can I make the letters bigger than all-caps? Hmm…)
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I won’t be shedding any tears for the property goblins who stand to lose money on these buildings. But it doesn’t seem like much of a win for regular humans either. What is going to end up happening to these buildings? They’re probably ill suited for any other use (including medium-luxury housing) unless even more money is spent to redevelop the whole building, and who’s going to take that gamble? I would not be shocked if some of them end up being demolished – possibly at public expense –without ever having been occupied.
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Y͍̫̹̥̤̫͚E̩̪̱̲S̳͕̠̜͖̮ͩ̋̾̂̀̋
(Some mental state degradation may occur.)
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It’s a movie.
I strongly recommend it.
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Sticky prices.
First sales volumes slow - then prices decline over a few years. Though given the level of speculation and laundering going in - there could be an actual quick bust of the market.
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You are right, it’s not. A proponent of capitalism would say that a smart businessdude would study his business and see when the underlying causes that create the current situation go away, and change tack. And a not-smart businessdude would just keep doing what they were doing and when the situation changes they fail, and the failure would only be on him.
But what really happens is that others see one person making money and they join the bandwagon and they make money which attracts still more. We get these feedback systems which make points of failure catastrophic. The point of regulation is to prevent these wild swings, these wastes of capital and resources and space. Government is, ideally, the injection of human intelligence into an automatic machine. And if you share my admittedly not-well-supported conceit that humans are intelligent you have to support the existence of a force to put the brakes on this kind of behavior.
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This is true. Friends of ours just moved into a mansion next to the beach with a 3 car garage and a pool for $5000/month. This is not “affordable” for most people, but it is certainly less than most detached homes rent for (mansion or not) in the city. The owners of the house avoid about $10,000/month by renting it out.
My guess is that you will find these deals for a short period of time until the owners realize that they can actually charge market (or near market) rates for no more effort on their part.
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ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO 
ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO
ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO
ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO
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