The magazine says this is because so many Spaniards live in lots of apartment buildings. But their graph shows that Spain has 19.8 elevators per 1000 people, while Hong Kong (!!) has only 10. Wait, what?
This smells like someone is forgetting a variable. In this case, it's probably the density of elevators per occupant. I'm guessing that Spain has lots buildings just barely too tall to be walk-ups. That's a much less snazzy subheadline.
Buildings in Hong Kong are much taller on average therefore you don't need as many elevator instances to serve them. About 150m is the best height to optimise elevator floor area take versus area gained from additional floors. From the other comment, buildings in Spain tend to be 6-10 storeys (20-30m) whereas at a guess I would say that the average height in Hong Kong is much closer to 150m, hence the more efficient use of elevators per head of population.
Spaniard here. 4 to 10 story buildings are the overwhelming majority here, in some areas it's also a matter of not altering the traditional cityscape (I think it's legislated in some municipalities, but can't give you references).
They were also easier and faster to complete by not exactly stellar construction companies, so they could be dumped into the market (and during Franco's rule, basically as high as you could go with their defective concrete), and I think a lot of my country fellows associate them with the summer town architecture and higher quality of life, while taller apartment buildings were left for lame sunday tourist Benidorm holidays.
There's really really very few people accustomed to living in tall buildings. Taller buildings were built during the construction boom, but a lot of them are vacant.
I find it fascinating that despite not having the house+back yard that many Americans strive for, the Spanish are happier with their housing situations than we are.
As a recently minted homeowner myself, I must say I can see the attraction of apartment living more than I could before. This house is a lot nicer and bigger than our apartment was, but damned if I'm not having to replace the sewer line, the patio, and various other things, despite having had inspections beforehand. The less you own, the less there is to go wrong.
I find it fascinating that despite not having the house+back yard that many Americans strive for
I too find it fascinating and I too live in a large apartment building, but a lot of other Americans would too if it were legal to build those apartment buildings. Matt Yglesias explains why in The Rent is Too Damn High (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078XGJXO?tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=...), but the short version is that cities forbid taller buildings through height restrictions and parking minimums in order to protect the property values of existing owners by limiting housing supply.
> I find it fascinating that despite not having the house+back yard that many Americans strive for
As someone who spent the majority of their early childhood (ages 3 to 9) in such a house, then lived in an apartment in a city (without an elevator on top floor), I never understood why anyone would want a house.
What do you even do with that much space? I live in a very comfortable 52m^2 (560 ft^2) studio and I don't have enough stuff to fill even half the storage space. Sure the kitchen is a bit small, and I guess the bathroom could be slightly more comfortable, but you can solve those with a bigger apartment; a house adds whole extra rooms.
Seriously, what do people do with that much room? Granted if you have a kid and a spouse you'd want something more than a studio, but my mum's apartment is about the same size as my studio and was a 2-bedroom. The three of us (mum, sis, and me) lived there for 15 years together and we were perfectly fine.
Hell even when it was four of us (dad as well) and we lived in that giant house, we only really lived on ground floor, which was essentially a 2-bedroom apartment, and the attic and basement were pretty much empty and/or filled with a bunch of junk.
From the best of my observation, houses are expensive, take up a lot of time, and largely empty/useless.
Because they are a really social society, the Spanish think of their neighbors as an asset not a liability and they also highly value being within walking distance to social meeting places like bars and restaurants (which encourages higher density housing).
Then there is the cultural aspect of being owners not renters as the article goes into in detail.
Happier? Don't get it wrong, people here can't afford other thing. Those who live in "house+back yard" style houses bought it decades ago or inherited from their parents.
I recently moved into a 1bdr apartment here in Brisbane, right in the city centre, and I absolutely love it. I've sold my car, as everything is walking distance (aside from the Gold Coast, which I catch a train to get to), and my neighbours are all awesome people -- they had a housewarming party for me! On the other hand, I don't have a family to raise, and while its very big (big lounge, a huge balcony looking over the city, two-entrace bathroom) if that was the case I could see why others would choose a house; here in Brisbane, the apartments that are big enough for a family either don't exist or do but are more expensive than renting a house anyway.
> I find it fascinating that despite not having the house+back yard that many Americans strive for, the Spanish are happier with their housing situations than we are.
Why would American standards matter to how satisfied Spaniards are? This sentence in isolation seems weird. Is there a wider context?
The article also forgets a lot of second order effects that affect much of Spanish home ownership.
For instance, Franco's rental laws have been weakened, but not by that much. Even when you could theoretically get evicted, a savvy lawyer can easily extend a renter's stay at an apartment, without really paying a dime, for about a year without facing eviction.
There's also pretty weak protections for renters whenever an apartment is vandalized by its occupants. It is not uncommon to hear stories about tens of thousands of euros of damage deal to apartments as retaliation to an eviction.
There's also rent controls that make San Francisco seem like a libertarian's wet dream. The longer you hold an apartment, the less likely than you'll want to leave, and the less profitable it is to the owner.
Such legal frameworks make apartment buildings that are built and designed for renters, managed by a company, to be an exception rather than the rule. There's just too much risk to take something like this on. So most rentals are really by people that own 4, 5 apartments, and select the renter's very, very carefully. For instance, my sister got a rather good deal a few years ago on a little apartment for her and her husband, she was pregnant at the time. The reason the price was so good was precisely that she offered an extremely low risk for the owner: The apartment will get too small for my sister's family by the time the kids stop being toddlers, she has great family references, and her job requires her to have a good public reputation. So she is a very small risk of staying there for very long, of damaging the apartment, and of becoming delinquent. A recent college graduate born in a different state and with a job would not be able to get the same deal, because of the different risk profile.
Another part that it's not mentioned in the article is when your average Spaniard stops living with his parents. Unlike in the US, when adolescents move out of the house to go to college, many Spaniards will live with their parents until they get married, and Spaniards don't marry young. This makes the share of owned houses pretty high indeed, as living with mom does not count as renting.
Spain's cities are extremely comfortable to live in, if you happen to have a job, so I do not expect the number of elevators to change. Number of renters, on the other hand, could be changed pretty quickly by legislation: Protecting renters actually makes renting harder!
Surprising the early populist housing policies of rivht-wing dictator Franco were so similar to those of today's left-wing San Francisco government: rent control, eviction restriction, etc. And the results were pretty much the same: housing shortages, differed maintanence, etc. I guess they both overestimate their ability to improve the situation. I wonder if SF will eventually learn and change it's ways like Spain. The recent fairly reasonable AirBnB regulation gives me some hope while the completely insane proposed 24% transfer tax (Prop G) make me think it is hopeless.
I don't get it. No of apartment building correlates to no of elevators. Why it should matter if the most owners live in their apartments or they rent it ?
I feel like there's a seam in this article. It starts talking about elevators, then goes to apartments. While it's semi-natural to assume $NumElevators is proportional to $numAptBuild, it strikes me as odd that a place that would probably have a significant amount of old construction would have fewer elevators, and older countries would have more old construction. As such, I would more expect the situation to be like, say, Boston, with a lot of new buildings that have nice elevators, and a lot of older, 4-6 story buildings that are entirely walk-ups.
"Homeownership Rates in Select European Countries" -- That graph left out some of the countries mentioned in previous graphs that actually have higher home ownership rates :)
Yes this bothered me too, so i checked: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_Europe, with that kind of doctoring of data for the sake of the story, how can we trust the rest of the data?
When I visited some smaller Spanish towns and villages, I was struck by how abrupt the border between the town / village and the surrounding agricultural land was. People would be living cheek by jowl, in terraced houses, with their cars parked almost inside the houses, in alcoves built into the house, often with a gate.
And this in the countryside, where one would think space would not be at a premium. This article explains a lot.
I would rather say that most euro countries are being ripped of by Germany, in multiple ways like the beggar thy neighbor of internal devaluation, rigid finacial policy when it suits them, way too higher trade imbalances with the other euro area countries, etc ... but is way cooler to say that "they are paying", because they are germans, right ...
[missing reference] I see this thrown around often, but have never found any references which take into account the trade balances, respective debts, tax contributions, etc.
[+] [-] SeanLuke|11 years ago|reply
This smells like someone is forgetting a variable. In this case, it's probably the density of elevators per occupant. I'm guessing that Spain has lots buildings just barely too tall to be walk-ups. That's a much less snazzy subheadline.
For those unfamiliar, here's a beautiful shot of Hong Kong. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/HK_Kowloo...
[+] [-] willyt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darrhiggs|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FranOntanaya|11 years ago|reply
They were also easier and faster to complete by not exactly stellar construction companies, so they could be dumped into the market (and during Franco's rule, basically as high as you could go with their defective concrete), and I think a lot of my country fellows associate them with the summer town architecture and higher quality of life, while taller apartment buildings were left for lame sunday tourist Benidorm holidays.
There's really really very few people accustomed to living in tall buildings. Taller buildings were built during the construction boom, but a lot of them are vacant.
[+] [-] Oletros|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesaguilar|11 years ago|reply
As a recently minted homeowner myself, I must say I can see the attraction of apartment living more than I could before. This house is a lot nicer and bigger than our apartment was, but damned if I'm not having to replace the sewer line, the patio, and various other things, despite having had inspections beforehand. The less you own, the less there is to go wrong.
[+] [-] jseliger|11 years ago|reply
I too find it fascinating and I too live in a large apartment building, but a lot of other Americans would too if it were legal to build those apartment buildings. Matt Yglesias explains why in The Rent is Too Damn High (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078XGJXO?tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=...), but the short version is that cities forbid taller buildings through height restrictions and parking minimums in order to protect the property values of existing owners by limiting housing supply.
[+] [-] Swizec|11 years ago|reply
As someone who spent the majority of their early childhood (ages 3 to 9) in such a house, then lived in an apartment in a city (without an elevator on top floor), I never understood why anyone would want a house.
What do you even do with that much space? I live in a very comfortable 52m^2 (560 ft^2) studio and I don't have enough stuff to fill even half the storage space. Sure the kitchen is a bit small, and I guess the bathroom could be slightly more comfortable, but you can solve those with a bigger apartment; a house adds whole extra rooms.
Seriously, what do people do with that much room? Granted if you have a kid and a spouse you'd want something more than a studio, but my mum's apartment is about the same size as my studio and was a 2-bedroom. The three of us (mum, sis, and me) lived there for 15 years together and we were perfectly fine.
Hell even when it was four of us (dad as well) and we lived in that giant house, we only really lived on ground floor, which was essentially a 2-bedroom apartment, and the attic and basement were pretty much empty and/or filled with a bunch of junk.
From the best of my observation, houses are expensive, take up a lot of time, and largely empty/useless.
[+] [-] outside1234|11 years ago|reply
Then there is the cultural aspect of being owners not renters as the article goes into in detail.
[+] [-] toqueteos|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] girvo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dewie|11 years ago|reply
Why would American standards matter to how satisfied Spaniards are? This sentence in isolation seems weird. Is there a wider context?
[+] [-] hibikir|11 years ago|reply
For instance, Franco's rental laws have been weakened, but not by that much. Even when you could theoretically get evicted, a savvy lawyer can easily extend a renter's stay at an apartment, without really paying a dime, for about a year without facing eviction.
There's also pretty weak protections for renters whenever an apartment is vandalized by its occupants. It is not uncommon to hear stories about tens of thousands of euros of damage deal to apartments as retaliation to an eviction.
There's also rent controls that make San Francisco seem like a libertarian's wet dream. The longer you hold an apartment, the less likely than you'll want to leave, and the less profitable it is to the owner.
Such legal frameworks make apartment buildings that are built and designed for renters, managed by a company, to be an exception rather than the rule. There's just too much risk to take something like this on. So most rentals are really by people that own 4, 5 apartments, and select the renter's very, very carefully. For instance, my sister got a rather good deal a few years ago on a little apartment for her and her husband, she was pregnant at the time. The reason the price was so good was precisely that she offered an extremely low risk for the owner: The apartment will get too small for my sister's family by the time the kids stop being toddlers, she has great family references, and her job requires her to have a good public reputation. So she is a very small risk of staying there for very long, of damaging the apartment, and of becoming delinquent. A recent college graduate born in a different state and with a job would not be able to get the same deal, because of the different risk profile.
Another part that it's not mentioned in the article is when your average Spaniard stops living with his parents. Unlike in the US, when adolescents move out of the house to go to college, many Spaniards will live with their parents until they get married, and Spaniards don't marry young. This makes the share of owned houses pretty high indeed, as living with mom does not count as renting.
Spain's cities are extremely comfortable to live in, if you happen to have a job, so I do not expect the number of elevators to change. Number of renters, on the other hand, could be changed pretty quickly by legislation: Protecting renters actually makes renting harder!
[+] [-] spikels|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __Joker|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neito|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reduce|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] velik_m|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] croisillon|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barrkel|11 years ago|reply
And this in the countryside, where one would think space would not be at a premium. This article explains a lot.
[+] [-] pjmlp|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frogpelt|11 years ago|reply
Why not Spain?
[+] [-] nbevans|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deodorel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alphydan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Oletros|11 years ago|reply