Tax empty properties owned by corporations.
Ban foreign investors from buying up properties.
Increase taxes on non-primary, non-secondary properties dramatically (so if you own a home and a vacation house, you’re fine, but you’ll pay way more in taxes if you own more than that).
Release federal funds earmarked for subsidizing the mass construction of low and middle income properties that must be sold at below market rate in order to qualify for the subsidy.
Re-evaluate zoning laws nationwide to make it easier for residential housing to be built into areas that it currently makes sense but is forbidden due to draconian zoning laws propped up by NIMBYs.
Sorry if any of the above hurt your bottom line in the end, but it’s more important to ensure that everyone has a place to live than it is to protect the “ownership as a means of passively generating wealth” model we are currently living under. The line cannot go up forever.
Why not crop off the reddit advertisement
*per unit
I don’t know about the US but Canada’s population has been skyrocketing at about 12-15% increase per decade. Yet we’re building houses at an unbelievably glacial rate. This is totally unsustainable.
Here’s the real problem: the household wealth of most Canadians is tied up in the real estate values of their homes. Governments are afraid to unleash a building spree because that bubble will burst and destroy the wealth of the middle class. Instead, the current government is deeply committed to growing the population and the economy through immigration. But this will only put more and more upward pressure on the housing market. The middle class gets richer, housing gets less and less affordable, and immigration resentment grows.
Don’t tax anything remotely to do with building and owning property. Tax the fuck out of owning empty property
Doesn’t address some issue of how every time a house goes up for sale in my neighborhood, it’s immediately sold to some company, usually hundreds of miles away. Property isn’t empty, but there’s no chance of an average person to manage to own a house, and rental rates are largely at the discretion of a handful of companies.
If property keeps getting built faster and faster it’s just a matter of time until the bubble pops. Taxing empty property will accelerate that popping or at least deflate it.
There’s no need for competition in the rental market because there isn’t enough housing. The problem is multifaceted, people should look not only to taxes but also liberalizing zoning laws.
Agreed, zoning laws and by extension car dependant infrastructure are a huge source of costs both to the individual and society.
Starting at the unnecessary additional land that it mandates, to promoting a one size fits all solution for every individual, to the additional roads and parking that becomes an enormous burden on the taxpayer to subsidize.
Incentivize not just more construction but more dense and varied construction the does not require the additional expense of private automotive transport.
Wouldn’t that just drive rents up? Landlords would instantly pass the cost onto renters.
Not every tenant in every market can raise rents unless landlords collude which is supposed to be illegal.
You wouldn’t really need collusion to figure out what your new tax liability was and raise rent by that much. Just like how the cost of an EV goes up by the exact amount of any new tax rebates you’d qualify for by buying one.
You need collusion to make sure all the landlords raise rents by the tax increase. Not every landlord is undercapitalized and lose money over a tax increase so they could not raise rents and steal rents from other landlords.
You still don’t need collusion…it’s got nothing to do with undercapitalization. The IRS would publish a new rule, the underwriter would increase the escrow payment to cover the new tax liability (meaning the amount the property owner pays the bank monthly would increase) and the owner would increase the rent by that same amount. You would only need collusion if you wanted to raise the rates higher than the tax increase. If you wanted to, for example, increase rents by 2x the tax increase, then collusion could be helpful…but its still super risky. It only takes 1 landlord to not be OK with it to expose the whole thing.
You do need collusion to keep the more profitable landlords from just taking the increased taxes out of their profit. Regardless landlords are proven to be colluding via RealPage so your point is moot.
And outlaw Air bnb, why build an apartment when you can just build condos and make the place into an overpriced pseudo hotel with no cleaning service
Or just ban Landlording of housing and problem solved. The homelessness crisis immediately ends and houses become so cheap that everyone can afford them.
There is a need for renting, so there has to be some balance to avoid all that capital being driven toward forcing renting to be the only option while still allowing some housing stock be available for renting (eg people who know they won’t be there more than two years)
That’s what apartments are there for
Who would get to own those?
Oh man, I sure would have loved to live nowhere near my job and forgone most of my hobbies for nearly 3 years. There’s definitely no reason why anyone would ever need to rent a SFH ever.
So you wish to and can afford to buy a home right now? Are there even enough homes? If not, where will you live? How will such housing be provided for you and what will you offer in exchange?
Personally I’d like to see housing provided as a basic human right along with health care, income and a few other things but I’m guessing that’s not happening any time soon. Interested to hear what you think of how this will work.
“The United States boasts approximately 15.1 million vacant homes, a staggering number that accounts for 10.5% of the country’s total housing inventory.”
There are enough homes for everyone
Ok, that’s great. So are we confiscating them? Or are we forcing the owners to rent them out, and if so who’s paying? I’m serious - how would you approach this?
Landlords get 2 years to sell and after that if they still haven’t sold they go to auction and get whatever money comes from that.
And to counter your 2nd argument I don’t give a fuck how bad they get screwed. They should have thought about that before they decided to become leeches on society and profit from basic human rights.
Landlords get 2 years to sell and after that if they still haven’t sold they go to auction and get whatever money comes from that.
Are these just empty houses or all rental properties? Who are they selling the homes to? How will those people pay for them? Could those buyers, say, then rent out a room to help with the mortgage payments? And you say you don’t care, but should people who put their money into a home and left it empty, say because of a divorce or some medical problem be penalized too? What about people who rent out a home that they inherited and don’t want to sell because it has sentimental value? I assume in your mind this is a blanket forcing of people to sell or even forfeit an asset they paid for?
They should have thought about that before they decided to become leeches on society and profit from basic human rights.
I’m curious if your “leeches” characterization applies across the board. Logically if you think people who rent out physical spaces this should apply to anyone who rents out something of value… say their labor or a taxi driver or has a business where you pay to borrow something. Wouldn’t those be “leeches” too?
I agree that housing is a basic human right, but unfortunately most of the rest of the world doesn’t. And that means we don’t have mechanisms for dealing with this and I’m troubled with some aspects of your ideas - it would be unfair to many. I know quite a few people who could only afford to buy a house by renting out a room or by creating an in-law apartment, backyard apartment and so on. They are landlords but I’m struggling to think of them as leeches. Would you call them all leeches?
What? All they have to do is evict their tenants and just keep their building vacant. Presto: they are no longer landlords, just mere property owners.
I mean the law wouldn’t just be “landlording is illegal” you have stuff in there to prevent these leeches from keeping them empty out of spite.
I would say that owning 3 homes for personal use is just fine and anymore than that is illegal. Also not hard to look at a landlord and see what properties they are renting out and what properties they live in and force them to sell the properties they use to rent out.
I don’t think you’ll see the results you want out of this. Instead what you’ll see is that the rental companies will shut down and divide up their properties among their shareholders so that each shareholder ends up with 3 houses (or whatever number you set as the limit). If there are too many houses and not enough shareholders then they will sell more shares until the numbers work out.
I’ll get the trains ready to forcibly move the unhoused to where to where an empty house is…you wanna start rounding them up, or are you still busy finding them a job they’re able to do so a bank will let them buy one of those houses?
Edit: the situation isn’t as simple as you’d like it to be. If it were, it’d been solved already.
Found the landlord
I’m not sure if this comment is facetious or not but the world financial system also collapses pretty much instantly… The global economy is hooked on to real estate like a crackhead. Any sudden bans like the one suggested is likely to end in a greater and more immediate catastrophe.
As someone that works for a living that’d be a good thing. The parasitic draw the FIRE (Finance Insurance Real Estatr) economy has on my income would cease.
For who? The landlords? Oh nooooo
It’d probably take a lot of 401k balances with it. Which is the problem in a lot of economic things, the BS part of the economy is also holding everyone’s retirement effectively hostage. So nuance is needed to get some progress over time.
