Or worse like where I live (Switzerland), people rent flats, then subrent them for a lot more and go live in Thailand (or somewhere else). And then we all complain because the prices for (renting or buying) flats is insane here.

The final price is determined by supply versus demand, not by the number of subrenters in chain.

The real problem in your situation is that these people are able to rent flats for sub-market prices. But it's not your problem. Your problem is that you don't have enough realty supply. And/or more people who want to live in interesting city than interesting cities of Switzerland can house.

The latter seems to become a major problem in most countries.

Don't know about EU laws, but in Russia every apartment rent agreement I've seen (which is statistically insignificant amount, maybe 4-5 agreements) had explicitly prohibited reselling/subrenting.

Same in Bolivia. You're even explicitly disallowed to rent rooms out to people unless you notify the owner. I agree with it to, if I were to own an apartment and rent it out, I wouldn't want any random person to live in my home.

(a) Switzerland is not in the EU. I have no idea if some other Swiss law might ban it.

(b) Switzerland is crazy expensive. So you can probably make megabucks renting out property there.

I am from Switzerland as well and to do such a thing would be illegal and I haven't heard of people doing it...

High-end flats in Oslo rent out pretty well IIRC. Just have to front some cash to buy the pad.

A lot of people inherited flats from after soviet union times (where you lived in, you now owned after filling some papers) plus some people bought them when prices were affordable (if you had influx of hard cash) plus people tend to buy flats because rent market is unreasonable.

Until housing prices fall 1% before inflation and wipe out your gains for the year.

It's a long position that pays dividends. Why care about volatility?

It's fallaious to not consider the market value of your assets as well as any income streams. In fact, this example is even worse because it also doesn't consider the cost of capital and fluctiations in the income.

For the specific example of buying apartments in Oslo to rent out, sensible analysis will show that this gives a worse risk-adjusted return than other options (e.g. the stock market). But hey, go right ahead. It's not my money ;)

Stock market is prone to crashes; also you can't live in your stocks when out of other options.

If you believe in long term economic stability, then go ahead and invest in stocks. We don't. And now we know at least we'll have a place to live.

When economy is stable, realty prices grow; when economy is shaky, realty prices fall but slower than stocks. Stocks are more liquid on the other hand.

How nice is living in Thailand? Quality of life wise, people wise, tech wise?

I never tried to do it myself but many people spend winters there. Or even telecommute from there. I guess it's a place to live cheaply by the beach. Cuisine is also nice as I've heard.