> I had a friend who bought a house that needed a lot of work. Before he could get started on the remodel, someone broke in to the empty house, changed the locks, and started occupying it.
Was this the person's primary residence that they were planning to live in? Or a property that they intended to flip or rent out? Makes a big difference in how the courts would see it.
> Even here on HN there are comments trying to downplay the issue by portraying the victims as mostly wealthy or landlords, which are presumably acceptable victims to people who like these kind of narratives.
I mean, if you can afford to purchase more than one property in order to gain financially from that second purchase, you are wealthy by most standards in this country.
> Or a property that they intended to flip or rent out? Makes a big difference in how the courts would see it.
Are you implying that there is something morally wrong about purchasing a rundown (apparently barely liveable) property, renovating it and selling or renting it? How do you expect the supply of housing to increase (and prices to go down in turn) if you disincentive such behaviour? Seems rather absurd...
It's besides the point what I think is morally wrong or right.
There is a legal difference between "occupying" someone's primary residence, and occupying other types of properties. The first isn't considered "occupying" here but rather "breaking and entering", and the local police are very quick at acting on those types of crimes, especially if the criminals are still inside the property.
No. It doesn't matter whether it is a primary residence, secondary residence, or an investment property. It is the property of someone else. Without permission, opening the door or window and going into it is breaking and entering.
And do not try to argue that breaking, entering, and squatting somehow reduces the housing shortage — the effect is the exact opposite. With insecure property access and rights, people will be LESS likely to invest in fixing up unliveable places. Just think for a second: with solid property rights, it can be an enjoyable practice to invest in and improve a run-down property to a rent-able or sell-able state. But if you are 50% likely to lose your investment and get a massive headache, you'll just go do something else, and let it rot, so no one can use it. Multiply this 100k times, and you have 100k fewer units on the market, just falling into dust.
Or the owners of those 100k units that are just left to rot can accept that their "investment" can't (and shouldn't) make them money faster than inflation, and lower the asking price.
The scenario you describe only exists because the number of "investors" buying up properties to flip and turn a profit vastly outnumbers the number people looking to buy their personal residence, and have the skills and disposition to fix it up themselves.
And judging by the build quality of a lot of flipped properties, the investors don't have the skills or disposition either.
I think we are conflating Private Equity, small-time house-fixer-flippers, and vacation homes.
I think we agree that the PE crowd can rot in hell — they're buying properties to standardize, corner the market, and charge extractive artificially-inflated 'market' rents. They won't be idle long, and I don't think squatting is the fix for that.
I'm quite sure that the PE companies are the primary driver here, not small-time fix-and-flip investors. PE firms are taking the houses off the market for good.
The small-time fix-&-flip people take houses off the market for only a short time, and upgrade the property. If they take too long, they WILL lose money, which is also why even if squatters do zero damage (never heard of it happening), the mere delay can cause it to be unprofitable.
Getting PE out of the market WILL reduce the competition and bring down prices. The same is not true for small time fix-&-flip investors.
The small-time fixer-flippers are taking a risk. Their properties may or may not increase in value at all, even with improvements. The goal is to add value greater than the cost of the improvements. From the people I know who have done it, this is mostly accomplished by sweat equity, i.e., they do a lot of the work themselves, hiring trades only where necessary, as if it is all full-price trade work, it will NOT be profitable. If you think that individual enterprising people adding value, including bringing non-viable housing stock back to market viability —AT THEIR OWN RISK— is somehow bad, we should make a regulatory or tax policy against it. Making random people subject to arbitrary effective confiscation at the whims of random squatters is not fair to anyone.
Same for vacation homes. If you think it bad policy that they exist, then enact new tax or regulatory schemes.
Making random people subject to random confiscation and expense will not get the results you want. It will get people even more strongly motivated to be angry at squatters.
Don't misunderstand me, I think squatting is a bad thing.
But its worth understanding why it happens, and a major factor is that home costs, to buy or rent, are out of control, which lowers the perceived ethical barrier to doing so.
There will always be that weird self-interested-self-described-"anarchist" who has convinced themselves that "property is oppression" because they don't want to pay for stuff. I'm not proposing anything to address that guy. I'm saying we should do what we can to prevent people from agreeing with that guy in the first place.
And one of the ways to dissuade people from agreeing with the professional squatter is by discouraging the PE-driven fix-and-flip (which is distinct from the small-time fix-and-flip, but only early in the development of that business. Eventually, you're successful enough that it makes more sense to buy cheap, in cash and without financing, hire others to fix at your leisure, and rent. That's the transition from labor-class to capital-holding class).
You can upgrade from trespassing to B&E by gently pushing an unlocked door to gain access so I think the term is a little loaded here, considering you are trying to claim moral equivalence between 1) entering someones home for burglary or to actively displace the residents and 2) squatting a vacant and unused building
For 2), how do you tell the difference between a building that is truly abandoned, and one that has just been bought and the new owner is in the process of arranging to repair and upgrade it?
Unless you are going to setup surveillance and track every footprint, there is a LOT of process before the hammers start swinging.
I didn't say abandoned, I said vacant and unused. The biggest difference between the two examples is that one included home invasion. Not any qualification for authentic, artisanal squatting
This is still the same issue. Simply saying a building is "vacant and unused" and is therefor qualified for confiscation (which is effectively what squatting is), would be a travesty.
I owned a house that was "vacant and unused" for many months before I could sell it. I moved in with my wife-to-be, and it turned out to be right at the housing market crash. Sale fell through, zero interest for months, so we took it off the market and invested in some upgrades. There were many months where there was zero activity, except for intermittently mowing the lawn or clearing the snow. Eventually, we made some upgrades, put it back on the market and sold it.
Had someone squatted in that house, especially with the typical trashing of the place, we would have lost both houses and been affected for decades.
Yet you are saying this would be OK for someone to just move in because we're having a hard time getting it sold? Seriously? (if so, my response to your lack of knowledge about how things actually work and your lack of ethics is unprintable in polite society)
Please re-read the last couple comments, I feel that I was quite specific and clear about the distinction I made to the point that I am having trouble reading you as acting in good faith.
My prior point was about emotionally manipulative language, which is what I see on display here with you trying to hold me accountable for a hypothetical. Please do not do that, it is very frustrating, I don't ask you why you beat your wife so don't ask me to justify squatting as morally acceptable.
Or, to put it another way, I'm literally saying that we shouldn't use the same language to describe home invasion (behavior that can get you lawfully killed in some places), to describe squatting, because it is emotionally and intellectually dishonest.
I agree that we may be having a problem of definitions, and we may be like the blind men discussing different parts of the elephant.
I am definitely discussing in good faith, as I'm seeing situations where relatively ordinary people have second homes, are in transition, or indeed are trying to add value to a property to resell, and are entirely unfairly losing the right to enjoy their property, and being saddled with the costs of evicting a squatter and repairing their damage.
In particular, at what point is a building "vacant" and at what point is it "unused"? More specifically, at what point do these get to the level where they should be subject to what is effectively confiscation by squatting?
Would you consider that the house I moved out of, but didn't sell during a market downturn and before making upgrades, which was vacant for more than a half year, be "unused" enough that I should have been subject to the whims of squatters? What about if that caused my wife and I to also lose our newer primary residence?
What about seasonal vacation homes? I know people who have them, purchased long ago, with kit houses, and are closed and inaccessible during the winter, but are used extensively other seasons, when extended families and friends travel from across the continent to use the places. Are those sufficiently vacant and unused?
I'll agree that a case may be made for places that are truly abandoned and unused. I might even agree that a 'no-harm-no-foul' rule could work, as in if the squatters may enjoy it and must leave when asked and leave no trace of their presence, it'd be OK/legal.
But I certainly disagree that granting squatters rights to either of the owners-in-transition or seasonal-homes examples is reasonable.
So, please provide more clarity on exactly what you think should be the boundaries.
> people will be LESS likely to invest in fixing up unliveable places.
Someone's still paying for the house flipping. By definition the flipper makes a margin between what they paid, the repairs, and the price they get at the end.
So why should we encourage house flipping instead of having howners buy the damaged property and pay for a renovation company ? Housing wise the end result is the same, minus the flipping.
If your argument is that the buyer converted a 4 person house into a 20 doors appartment, that's a better proposition, but they're also in a much more protected position and won't be bogged down by squating laws.
Of course they are - even in the case of 'flipping', they are at least working to add value. Barring complete incompetence, the repaired and upgraded place is MORE valuable.
>>By definition the flipper makes a margin between what they paid, the repairs, and the price they get at the end.
NO; there is nothing 'by definition' about it. While investors all desire to make a profit, many actually lose money, either due to poor planning and/or execution of upgrades or just ill-timed market downturns. The RISK of loss is reason to justify a profit. Moreover, SQUATTERS ADD ANOTHER RISK that almost guarantees a loss — even if they do zero damage and somehow the costly eviction process is free, the loss of time itself costs money.
>>So why should we encourage house flipping instead of having howners buy the damaged property and pay for a renovation company ? Housing wise the end result is the same, minus the flipping.
YES, I agree, this would be better. However, the result is not necessarily the same. While many flippers have poor or overly trendy tastes so that their upgrades don't add value, individual homeowners are even more unskilled. Plus, people upgrading buildings for a first or second living bring advantages and economies of scale, including buying materials at trade and/or bulk prices vs retail prices, ability to employ workers more efficiently across multiple properties at once, etc. OTOH, the homeowners have the advantage of caring more because they'll live there.
But notice, BOTH of these are ONLY MADE WORSE option by squatters. An investor may take a loss on one of a bunch of properties due to a squatter. But a homeowner who buys a run-down home to upgrade and move into, can be bankrupted by a squatter. Now, you have two homeless families, no just one.
There is simply no justification for giving people the right to steal other's property just by breaking and entering.
If we want to make a process, perhaps akin to found valuables, whereby someone can claim a property, and the previous owner must show that s/he is actively working to upgrade it, I could support that.
I might even support some kind of people can move in, but must cause no damage and move out when caught; a kind of 'no harm — no foul' rule could be reasonable. But, just "gee that looks empty, let's move in, and we have rights greater than the owner!", is a hard NO.
> economies of scale, including buying materials at trade and/or bulk prices vs retail prices, ability to employ workers more efficiently across multiple properties at once, etc.
You're arguing for having professional home renovators, that works the same if the house is flipped or not. So let's choose not.
> squatters
You're protected from squatters when it's your primary residency. You make it sound like you'd go buy some groceries and when you're back at home your house is occupied with no recourse. No.
It only becomes a legal quagmire when you're flipping properties, it was your winter vacation house, or you're actually spending your life in the Bahamas. Nobody's having issues while their house is actively renovated and they move in as soon as it's finished.
>>you're flipping properties, it was your winter vacation house, or you're actually spending your life in the Bahamas
So, you are saying that people who do any of those things should be subject to arbitrary confiscation of their property or rights to it?
NO, that is absurd and obscene. Everyone who has a second property is not wealthy to the point where it doesn't matter. I know many people who have remote properties that they visit intermittently or seasonally, who struggled to earn and invest enough to make it possible and have spent decades working on and improving the property. In some cases, the value has increased greatly, and in others, it's still just a remote camp on a remote wild spot.
Under what ethical reasoning should they be deprived of their property? Particularly, that they should be deprived of it randomly and at the whim of squatters? (e.g., if society decides that no one should be allowed to own a second property, then we should pass laws to outlaw and/or tax them out of existence in an organized way; there's no justification for arbitrary taking)
EDIT, add:
>>You're arguing for having professional home renovators,
No, this does not necessarily mean professionals, it means anyone doing it repeatedly or at scale, including a lot of semi-pros. Professionals and trades are often involved. And once you do it a few times (I know people who have done some), you do get economies, efficiencies, and knowledge that makes things both more economical and have better outcomes than the average homeowner/first-timer can do. I still don't see the argument against flipping a house (except for bad jobs, which homeowners can also do), and certainly none that says anyone should be subject to arbitrary confiscation by squatters
> Under what ethical reasoning should they be deprived of their property ?
Ask the Spanish government ?
Otherwise most countries have adverse possession laws, the only difference being how drastic the requirements are. Spain just decided to lower the bar that much.
There is a genuine difference though, as in, the law in Spain treats the two scenarios differently.
I'm not sure where the GP's situation took place but given the article is about Spain the person you're replying to could probably be forgiven for thinking it was there
By incentivizing people renovating, then living in, the rundown house they bought, instead of seeing that option as equally valuable as just selling/renting the house? Its one thing to produce more housing, its another to somehow magically produce more housing in such a way that does not devalue the other resources. Step 1 is to disincentivize speculative/rent-seeking home purchases.
Its been said a couple times in sibling comments, but the problem comes down to the fact that people are buying houses as investments, and not as houses.
In most of Europe, the US and Canada, the cost of home ownership grossly exceeds the median income, to the extent that lending is almost always necessary. Thus owning a second home is always the realm of the wealthy, even if they are still ultimately laborers. Buying that second home is often the first step from the labor class to the capitol-holding class.
Its frustrating that the housing crisis is often described in terms of Marxist dialectic, but the crisis often feels lab-grown to illustrate the flaws of (literal) rent-seeking behavior by the capitol-holding class.
Hard like the people that got it cheap? Or hard like the people that inherited such things?
I guess you can fuck off to the sticks, but I'm not sure that works as a defense for a society that has made an element of participation contingent on absurd expense or debt. Does 'work hard' feel good when the thing you purchase with your labor is expensive in order to service the desires of the wealthy?
I'm not going to say our current setup is indentured servitude or serfdom, it clearly isn't and social mobility and changing your station are possible and even commonplace. I will say that our current system has resulted in a large class of people whose productive excess is routinely paid to a small group for the benefit of being allowed access to a residence (they don't provide other services or benefits, they don't actually labor to produce the house as a finished good).
Was this the person's primary residence that they were planning to live in? Or a property that they intended to flip or rent out? Makes a big difference in how the courts would see it.
> Even here on HN there are comments trying to downplay the issue by portraying the victims as mostly wealthy or landlords, which are presumably acceptable victims to people who like these kind of narratives.
I mean, if you can afford to purchase more than one property in order to gain financially from that second purchase, you are wealthy by most standards in this country.