The ongoing election campaign has become an opportunity for political parties to present populist solutions to problems that are not always real. One theme are the seemingly high mortgage rates. In reality, however, rates are much lower than the current and projected increase in prices and wages, which means that the burden on debtors would decrease even if they would not pay their instalments and the interest would increase their debt.

According to the increasingly popular narrative, apartments purchased for investment purposes are almost synonymous with unoccupied buildings, that is uninhabited properties. The villains are investors, both institutional (apartment funds) and individual (wealthy individuals). They allegedly buy apartments from the market in order to “speculatively” refrain from placing them on the market in anticipation of a further increase in real estate prices.