Photo: PixabayRenting apartments is too expensive, and buying real estate is almost unaffordable for many citizens. The research entitled "Towards fair housing policies in Serbia", conducted by professors of the Faculty of Political Sciences and economists, shows that housing in Serbia could become cheaper and offers certain solutions.
Apartments are expensive, but it seems only to those who want to live in them. For those who buy apartments in order to rent them out - this, experts say, is a great way to make a profit. They often become owners of several apartments, which reduces the supply and raises the price of real estate.
"It's no secret that people in Serbia use apartments to invest their capital. And that wouldn't be a problem if there were enough apartments so that all those who want to live in the apartments they buy can actually afford them. However, this phenomenon of apartment hoarding, where you use apartments to earn money for long-term or short-term rental, has created a new type of social inequality," said Bojan Vranić, associate professor of the Faculty of Political Sciences.
They say that a new class has been created - the rentier class, which, according to research, represents a kind of unfair competition for people who are trying to get a roof over their heads. The solution, they say, is to change the tax system.
"That the taxes for each subsequent property are progressively increased, so that the second tax is more expensive than the first, the third than the second, the fourth than the third, to demotivate people to accumulate real estate in their possession and thus make it easier for people to get their first real estate" , said assistant professor of the Faculty of Political Sciences Ivan Stanojević.
The arrival of Russians, they say, is only an additional, but not the main reason for the jump in apartment prices. However, the fact is that many landlords evicted previous tenants in order to rent the apartment to Russian citizens for a significantly higher rent.
"What migration, especially from Russia, has caused is the psychological effect that the already expensive rents are now going up even more. What is hidden behind it is that interest rates on loans have risen, then the cost of living has risen and people have to somehow compensate for it, I mean above all this class of rentiers. That's why real estate prices are increasing," said associate professor of FPN Bojan Vranić.
The study, the authors point out, is here to offer one of the possible solutions.
"We think this proposal is good, and now it's up to the legislature to see if they want to go that way," says Stanojević.
As a good example, they cite Denmark, where the state encourages citizens through tax policy to buy an apartment, but only one, in which they will live. However, Danes, who already own an apartment and inherit a property whose value exceeds 35,000 euros, pay high taxes, so they have no choice but to sell the inherited property, writes rts.rs.
Source: rts.rs
