The cost of space has been increasing throughout the years—more and more are living in smaller living environments with higher prices. These living quarters, although bought with quite a huge price tag mostly follow only the minimum and not the optimum and sometimes don’t even conform with the codes set by their respective countries.

Typical living residences in the major urban areas of most countries are set to a smaller scale. They are typically studio type apartments with all the amenities stuffed into the minimum space requirement for a condominium room set by the codes of their respective countries – take note that these are the minimum livable requirements and not necessarily the most comfortable. But it doesn’t end there, numerous condominium building owners are thinking of ways to get the most of the land they have bought and thus some resolve to numerous tactics to reduce the money they spend on the rooms by somehow cheating the space, such as including the “AC balcony” to create a 22 sqm label on a 18 sqm unit, or subdividing the rooms into smaller units such a the cage houses in Hong Kong.

Space-saving furniture has been introduced to help elevate the comfort of living in these small environments –space-saving beds (best beds 2019), movable furniture, convertible sofas, and numerous hybrid furniture have been increasing in popularity. Although space-saving furniture do provide smart alternatives to make the most of the space you have, it is not the solution to the main problem of the rising prices in the real estate industry– they merely serve as ban-aid solutions.

The increasing prices have resulted to scaling down for others and the loss of homes for some families, the prevalence of squatters and small illegal housing homes paid with high prices have been increasing in highly dense urban cities. Hong Kong’s cage rooms is an example of extreme scaling down practices that compromise comfort in order to make amends with the increasing real estate prices – scaling down per-se is a good thing, and making use of the space effectively is also great, but scaling down to the point of compromising comfort because of something you can’t control like increasing prices is not a good manifestation to how the country is dealing with the main problem of the increasing prices of land itself—reforming the law is the solution, its time to take a step back and observe, for whose interest is the law actually created for? Is it for the people? Or the pockets of the one’s running the law?