70% is ~5.4% yearly, 40% is 3.4% growth yearly. Seems, fine?
These are incredibly reasonable growth rates. Am I missing something?
Spanish wages grew only 2.7%/yr L10Y [1], and its nominal GDP/capita looks completely flat [2].
This explains why the city is affordable for international tourists but not locals. Regardless, a high "tourist tax" would probably be better for their economy than an outright ban.
[1] https://www.ine.es/jaxiT3/Tabla.htm?t=59150
[2] Compare https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=spain+gdp+per+capita+10... vs https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=USA+gdp+per+capita+10+y...
Let's look at the bay's wage growth[0]: 11% (or ~1%/yr) from 2010-2020, but they removed CPI-U inflation[1], so it's something higher (annual was ~1-3% in that time period). Which puts the bay area housing at 5%+ higher growth, 2x to 7x worse than Spain.
So, once again - Spain is doing well when it comes to housing prices. Tourism frustrates locals because they think it's increased their housing costs wildly - but in fact it's because their economy is switching to a tourist economy unless they find an industry to grow.
[0]: https://bayareaequityatlas.org/indicators/income-growth?year... [1]: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SA0&output_view=pct_...
An apples-to-apples comparison illustrates my point:
L10Y cumulative change in:
Bay Area rent: +46.0% [0]
Bay Area wages: +45.7% [1]
Vs:
Barcelona rent: +70% (if we believe TFA)
Spain wages: +30% [2]
Or:
Cumulative 2010-2020 change in:
Bay Area rent: +57% [0]
Bay Area wages: +34% [1]
which also looks bad (but not as bad as Barcelona L10Y). Indeed, there were lots of complaints about housing costs in SF then.
[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUURA422SEHA [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06418840500000003 [2] https://www.ine.es/jaxiT3/Tabla.htm?t=59150