Again, the comment you responded to explains how this makes it more risky and less profitable to rent out apartments. It's dissuading people from renting:

> you're also making it more risky and thus less profitable to buy and rent out apartments

When something becomes riskier, fewer people do it unless there's some other incentive.

A vacancy tax could incentivize renting, buy enabling squatters does nothing but making rentals more risky. The only thing that can solve a shortage is increased supply or reduced demand. The latter is not feasible since people need housing. The former requires that land owners take the risk on renting out apartments, and anything that increases the risk means less people will do it.

> Find a good tenant

That's easier said than done. The better way to convince prospective renters to rent out their property is to make it easier to kick out bad tenants. If evictions are backlogged, then a landlord risks being stuck with a non paying tenant for a long time.

When a renter buys an apartment or house to live in, that means the place they rented becomes vacant. It is the most basic math, addition and subtraction. Lower real estate prices means less renters and thus lower rents. Unless you conjure people into the country by immigration.

Making renting riskier doesn't inherently make property less expensive. If a shortage of rental properties makes more people want to buy condos and houses, then there's more demand for condos and houses. Making renting riskier also means that apartment buildings are less profitable and less likely to be built.

A more likely outcome is that condos and houses get more expensive because of the shortage of apartments. And fewer apartments get built because investors know that they will not be able to kick out squatters.

If letting becomes a bad return on money, leaving the house empty is an even worse return of money. So you sell, and thereby get money for better investments, while at the same time the house gets an owner tenant. Real estate is fixed and cannot be physically transferred.

As for apartments, they will still be financed by people who intend to live in them. Removing the landlord removes a huge margin, because you're nourishing a stranger.

> Making renting riskier doesn't inherently make property less expensive

It did that here.

> A more likely outcome

You are literally making up stuff and preaching a false reality as you go. No wonder how the US housing market got shafted - seeing what kind of mentality you people subscribe to.

If rents went down, it wasn't because renting became riskier. By definition that's going to raise rents.

More likely it's other factors like remote works becoming less common once covid subsided.

At the end of the day, all of this discussion does not detract anything from my original point:

> You would be surprised about the sheer number of spaniards that would welcome this second-order effect.

Lots of spaniards would clap at this, even if they're mistaken (what your arguing for). So peter335's argument would not be listened to.

> Again, the comment you responded to explains

This kind of thing baffles me. Im telling what is happening here. A guy on the internet refers to another on the internet who 'explains' to me that what is happening where I am in the actual reality is not real.

That's literally crazy. It feels like you people are preaching. Against the reality.