> So I don't really see a structural problem with this system.
This is the disconnect. Residential real estate is fundamentally different than owning stock, in that people need a place to live and building residential construction is much more difficult than issuing stock. When wealthy people from abroad buy multiple apartment buildings in desirable cities, and then proceed to keep living elsewhere (probably in a different residence in another desirable city) they create a problem that in no way resembles the result of buying stock in a company.
I agree that buying housing stock and leaving it empty is an issue. But they're not the cause of all the housing issues, in most cases they're a tiny fraction of the problem. Most cities have vacancy rates of just a couple percent. Given the average person in a big city moves every 4 years and a home is empty for 1 month inbetween tenants/owners, you'd already have 2% permanent vacancy rates. Most cities have vacancy rates of 3-4%, Lisbon has 5%. It's definitely stupid to allow high vacancy rates and most cities have laws against them (here in Amsterdam you get fined for leaving your house empty), but even shaving off 1 or 2% off the vacancy rates isn't solving the housing problem. It very often features in newspaper articles because it's a clickbait story: rich person buys home and leaves it empty. Again, it's stupid and we should expand laws against it, but solving it still keeps 99% of the issues with housing which have nothing to do with this phenomenon.
And this phenomenon is limited precisely because housing is a market, and from a financial perspective it's a stupid idea to buy an asset and forgo its use or its returns.
Beyond that, nothing that I noted about assets has a disconnect because everyone else owning housing simply rents it out at the market rate, which is both the most expensive but also the cheapest marginal price to provide an extra unit of housing, which is the same for any asset and there's no real disconnect here.
Progressively tax the shit out of each subsequent property owned. Prevent foreign/corporate ownership of property outside of short stay, hotel/motel type accommodation.
Make shelter an extremely unattractive asset to own.
Unfortunately, many politicians across the world are also landlords.
I don't think "basic need" is a good argument, as many other things are basic needs but function perfectly fine in a market-based system. This perspective sounds moral, but proposes nothing to actually resolve the problem (other than to advantage a particular section of the population at the expense of another - namely, people who would like to be homeowners). I note that most such proposals make no allowances for people who would like to rent - because they don't actually care about anyone other than themselves; they want to own a home, ideally at a low price, in a good location, with good services, on a large block.
Food is also a basic need, but does not get any of the attention because it is a functioning market.
In many places, property is not a very functional market, as suppliers (developers) are unable to respond to demand thanks to regulations/zoning.
If bread and milk were being hoarded by speculators (not some random luxury like truffles) you'd be hearing exactly the same discussion.
The point is that rich people with vested interests are stacking the deck against newcomers.
>market-based system
The free market does not exist. Property markets around the world are being heavily distorted through favourable tax treatment and speculators.
>other than to advantage a particular section of the population at the expense of another
This is business as usual, except that the advantage almost always flows the other way.
We'll see how that plays out in the coming year.
Lots of revolutions in history have been triggered by unaffordability of food, and step 1 of the classic formula for keeping people happy is food ("Bread and circuses")
I'm a bit conflicted on this. I definitely see what you're saying (and often repeat it myself).
But it should be noted: property is simply an asset like any other. If there's easy and outsized returns to be had, the demand for this asset would increase, pushing up the price to the point that the returns on the asset are in line with returns of other assets which have similar risk/effort profiles.
To say that one can make money 'doing nothing' owning any asset (that has a positive return) is true. But that's not per se some kind of economic or political problem, it's a normal feature.
Of course to absolutely do nothing and still earn enough to live off of, means you must have earned enough money to purchase a large amount of assets. Supposing rental income of 5%, and supposing rent is 25% of someone's wages, and supposing a 20% tax rate on your returns, you'd essentially need to purchase assets worth 100 times what someone spends on rent.
(ex: if you need 40k to live on, spend 25% or 10k on rent, you'd need 100x that or 1 million returning a 5% return that's taxed 20%, leaving 40k in net income.)
Amassing 100x your rent is no easy feat, and in fact it means that someway, somehow, you've provided 100x your rent in value, without spending a penny of it, and saved it all, then poured it into an asset (incurring risk and requiring some level of commercial effort), and then, yes, you could start to approach doing 'nothing'.
For many that's a life's worth of work. Buying such assets is really no different from putting in an equivalent amount of money into a retirement fund, and that fund in turn buying assets like companies. Whether it's companies that buy and rent out cars, or real estate, or produce and sell, the people owning these enterprises through their retirement fund are 'doing nothing' while others are working.
But the important part to note is that anyone has access to this system. Every person can, proportionate to their income (based on their economic value to society) buy assets.
In fact, I'm able with a click of the button not to just buy a part of a in Portugal, but rather the biggest and most successful company on the planet: Apple. I can buy a small part in it, and profit when many of the planet's smartest and most educated people build & sell some of the most cutting edge consumer technology day in day out. Whilst doing: nothing.
So I don't really see a structural problem with this system. What is problematic is the stuff around it. For example, in some countries real estate goes untaxed and is subsidised, and is bailed out when things go bad. Subsidised private profits, and socialised public losses. It's unfair and a failure of markets and governance. Another example is that swathes of people indeed inherit value to the point they've never done any contribution to the world to get into a position to 'do nothing', rather than work to retire off of the fruits of their labour, they could in effect retire from work before ever even starting. This is where the system breaks down and must be balanced, again by e.g. taxing inheritance and balancing things out.
Finally, markets work when price & profit signals can balance supply & demand. If there is a shortage of bread, demand outpaces supply, the price rises, and overnight new bakeries will pop up bringing down the price. In real estate high prices often do not trigger new supply in many countries, either due to geographical limitations (e.g. the mountains of Taiwan limiting buildable space, or simply the fact physically there is a limited area we consider to be 'downtown new york' for example), but more often due to political limitations (NIMBYism). Because in real estate markets in many areas do not naturally solve the problem, government intervention is needed to ensure more equitable and fair outcomes moreso than in other types of markets. Again here I see a role for stronger taxation on outsized profits and some income support for groups otherwised pushed out of neighbourhoods.