The sky is blue
How would people here feel about a tax that increases in rate per-property owned? People and organizations can still own as many properties as they want, but at some point they’re going to be taxed so much it’ll be impossible to profit off of them.
It’s already like that where I live. It’s called the homestead exemption – property taxes are cut in half if it’s your primary residence
The homestead exemption is not a tax. It is a discount on tax. Therefore there is no penalty for owning extra homes. Landlords not only benefit from the homestead exemption but also get you to pay the property taxes on the house you’re renting.
Extra tax on non resident properties vs discounted tax on your residence. As far as I can tell, it’s the exact same thing
The problem right now is one of supply and demand, not because corporations are buying up too many properties. It’s the other way around where corporations are buying up properties, because due to not increasing supply, and demand continue rising, it’s a good investment.
We need more high density housing all over the place. I live in a nice little town right outside a large US city. We have a train right into the city, and a nice little downtown area that could certainly use more business. They have been trying to put up apartment buildings, but the NIMBY-ism is through the roof. It’s like every little attempt to add more housing, people start whining to high heavens how it is killing our “small town” feel. I mean, I get it, I moved here for a reason, but something has got to give.
I can only imagine what’s happening in more rural areas where everyone wants their big lots and single homes.
So I don’t really oppose increasing taxes per home, but I don’t think it’s really going to solve the issue of increasing home prices as that’s not the root of the issue.
Personally, I’d prefer a monthly fine for unfilled housing, that is based on the rate you are charging for it. Landlord wants to jack your rent up 20%? If you leave, they pay a fine, based on that amount until they fill the unit. The fines go to subsidizing housing costs, so there is a self-balancing system. Right now, with property values increasing at insane rates, owners don’t really need to rent to break even, which leaves them free to price gouge their tenants. There is little pressure pushing rates back down, and there is all the freedom in the world to jack them up as high as you want.
Until we actually remove republicans and republican lites from the legislature I highly doubt we’ll see any progressive tax reforms, like actually taxing the rich. You could probably find more support for expanding house buying programs. Stuff like lowering the down payment requirements, and or give a large grant for a portion of the house value if it is high and it could be clawed back at sale.
If I could, I would pass a law saying that no corporation could own more than two dwelling structures. That still allows them to own things up to apartment high-rises. But only two.
No. You make it so that they cannot hold single family dwellings period unless for the purpose of listing and selling them to non-corporate individuals.
There are reasons why a business might actually need or benefit from having a single family dwelling in a way that aligns with their business. For instance a local theatre company owns two large homes here so that when traveling cast come for shows they have somewhere to house them without spending exorbitantly on hotel rooms for weeks at a time, and the cast get a more comfortable stay. The homes are typically occupied at least a portion of each month, and everyone involved benefits.
It’s reasons like these I wouldn’t want to put a total and complete ban on businesses owning single family homes, but in my opinion there should be a reasonable business justification for it and it needs to be very limited.
What frustrates me is there doesn’t seem to be anyone in a position to promote change to this problem that is really talking about it. They may pay it lip service but nothing beyond that.
It’s a national problem, but policies that affect housing are mostly local. So you need to override local control with state/federal policy, or convince a 50,000 municipalities to change their laws.
And the few states that have passed reforms for zoning, etc. are getting sued to shit in court by the city/towns.
This problem was 50 years in the making, it would take more than 50 years to fix.
Ban corporations/private companies from holding empty residential housing. Problem solved. Not complicated. Our system fucking sucks and is designed to protect land owners which is why we’re in this situation. This is fucking up our entire society, slowly bringing us down, we’re losing to China. This change needs to happen soon otherwise we’re going to see the working class get milked hard enough that our real economy will collapse.
Ban corporations/private companies from holding empty residential housing. Problem solved. Not complicated
Who passes this law? Who signs it? My municipal and state governments are infested with real estate agents landlords, attorneys, and bankers, all of whom profit from artificially scarce housing.
Build more housing. That’s what you need to prioritize.
We have significantly more vacant units (around 15M) than homeless people (around 600k-1.5M by various estimates).
New dense energy efficient units connected to social services and green energy infrastructure would be great for everyone. But the idea that we just don’t have residential space to house people is totally wrong.
And where are they located, and why are they empty?
There’s your next big problem, a significant fraction of them aren’t where people want (or need) to be, or are vacation homes and don’t belong in these stats (unless you want to eminent domain them). Suburbs and ghost towns and remote regions pushes the average up.
https://todayshomeowner.com/general/guides/highest-home-vacancy-rates/
And where are they located, and why are they empty?
https://smartasset.com/data-studies/vacant-houses-2023
More than 300,000 housing units in New York City sat vacant. However, the Big Apple’s total vacancy rate of 8.3% in 2022 fell slightly from five years earlier (9.7%). Meanwhile, San Francisco had over 52,000 vacant units in 2022 for a 12.7% vacancy rate.
Turns out nobody wants to live in checks notes New York City or San Fransisco.
a significant fraction of them aren’t where people want (or need)
There are definitely large numbers of vacant units in areas that were de-industrialized or hit with natural disasters. However, speculators moving in and gobbling up the properties at their bargain basement rates, then squatting on them to drive up the overall value of real estate in the area, result in artificially high real estate rates across these neighborhoods. Even in places with ostensibly low demand for housing, the prices remain higher than in historical periods of high demand.
Suburbs and ghost towns and remote regions pushes the average up.
Over-development in less accessible places can make neighborhoods unattractive due to the commute. But the solution to this problem is often to improve mass transit in these neighborhoods and develop local public services (schools, post offices, grocery stores, etc) at their centers. Then do the one thing that Americans hate and fear more than anything - BRING IN THE MIGRANTS. Populate the neighborhoods with large socially cohesive cohorts of new people and energize the neighborhoods with public works spending.
This creates a virtuous cycle of economic growth and development that brings in still more people and creates new demand for more goods and services. This is exactly what big midwestern towns did to revitalize in the wake of deindustrialization. Chattanooga, Tennessee installed public Gigabit internet and became the center of a Tennessee tech boom. Detroit accumulated a network of art collectives in its low rent housing and reinvented itself as a cultural center. Atlanta, Georgia is enjoying an enormous economic expansion thanks to new federally subsidized battery plants in the city.
When public policy identifies a housing surplus, policymakers can create a virtuous cycle of development by building new business capacity in the immediate vicinity. Then you solve joblessness, homelessness, and a stagnant economy in one go.
https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/spotlight-new-york-citys-housing-supply-challenge/ 🤷
I don’t disagree with the rest, walkable cities are important, speculators shouldn’t be involved in housing, etc. But some places genuinely have a lack of available housing and the solution is to build away.
Some places have a lack of affordable housing. But anywhere you go, you can find living space at a high enough price point.
The only real exception is in the midst of a natural disaster or similar event, at which point the housing is typically exhausted because it is gobbled up by state bureaucracies for housing troops going in or refugees flooding out. And these sudden shortages are resolved by moving people to long term housing in surrounding areas, not by throwing up enormous tower blocks overnight.
That’s not even to say we don’t need new builds. A lot of the existing housing stock is old, poorly maintained, or inefficient. But the idea that we simply don’t have enough units to go around is real estate developer ad copy. It isn’t based in reality. And pursuing the policies advocated by the “not enough housing” folks inevitably leads to large new Luxury branded establishments that get sold off to speculators rather than lived in by the unhoused.
Sounds like eminent domain talk if you think there’s enough suitable available homes already
Could that be because those homeowners are charging rents high enough to cover both mortgage and insurance and more on the rented property?
What a terrible article. The solution is throwing more subsidies? Of course it’s not! The solution is making it illegal to own more than a few properties. It really is that easy.
that will make it easier for people to buy, and even harder to rent. Ie. that will worsen the problem.
EDIT: it’s apparent that Lemmy users don’t understand why someone would actively want to rent, and think everyone wants to buy. This makes the entire topic very difficult to discuss.
What do you think drives the price of rentals? Not being able to afford to buy keeps people stuck in rental living where they can be price gouged. If the price of houses drops due to an oversupply, more renters will buy, which reduces demand for rentals, which will drive down the price of rent making it more affordable to rent.
supply. and I look at growing population + foreign investment + rising post-covid building costs.
you’re talking about shifting rentals to buys, which is stupid, because it flat out ignores lack of supply. we need more housing.
Landlords hording property reduces the supply to people who want to buy. This shortage reduces the supply:demand ratio, which drives prices higher. Higher house prices informs the price of rent which is controlled by the people creating the shortage.
People aren’t suggesting to abolish investment property, they are simply saying we should remove the abuse investment.
but landlords “hording” property increases the supply to people who want to rent, which drives prices down.
The entry cost of the housing market is a greater driver of rent than vacant rental properties. The laws even encourage property owners to leave a property empty than lower the rent.
“More supply will increase demand”
Hmmm
not my quote.
More supply of houses for sale will make it easier to buy.
Buying is not renting.
Removing rentals from the supply makes renting harder and more expensive.
But right now the situation is people who want to own homes being forced to rent, not people who want to rent being forced to buy a home.
that is not THE situation. That is A situation.
it ignores foreign students wanting to rent while they study.
it ignores people renovating and needing a place to live for 3-5 months.
it ignores people needing a place to live after they move to a new city for work while they shop around to buy a place.
so much ignored.
Soooo many landlords just eager for those 3-5 month rental contracts.
/s
heh, yeah, which is yet another problem!
Pretty sure renting is what townhouses and apartments are for. Single family homes don’t need to be rentals at the rates they are now.
Wait a second. You think that if large-scale landlords have to sell property, that will magically make it harder for other people to buy it? Now now. You can do better.
also, I said EASIER TO BUY.
EASIER TO BUY.
HARDER TO RENT.
Can you hear me now?
I was having trouble understanding what you meant because you didn’t think about the obvious implications of millions of properties being unloaded in a short time.
If the number of landlords drastically increases, which would happen when you have mass property sales, then there’s more competition, and rent goes down.
Or, depending on your setup, the government seizes some of the properties that people refuse to sell, and turns them into public housing. This also drives rent down.
So then, what happens? Oh yeah, both buyers and renters win. Was that clear enough? Perhaps I should write in all caps.
false.
Raise property taxes 500% for property that is not registered as the owners primary residence.
That should do it
Don’t be stupid. How else an I going to make money by doing nothing? Get a job? That’s for people who don’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps!
Why is the for profit house building industry involved in solving the problem they had a hand in making?
Reform the CPA and just build ourselves. Or use the army core of engineers. They are getting paid either way.
I mean I agree with the notion that corporations shouldn’t be buying up entire neighborhoods, but at the same time if a corporation is building neighborhoods then I think it’s fine if they own them. We need more units ultimately
And that kids is how I ended up I owing my soul to the company store.
That’s stupid. If a company is buying up already existing units to manipulate prices then there’s clearly an issue with that, but if a company is buildings new units to sell or rent, then where’s the problem? They’re literally introducing new units to the market. God, people on Lemmy are so brain dead.
It’s one thing to build a house and sell it, it’s another to build it for the sole purpose of renting it at peak market rate.
Corporations use to build company towns and rented them at higher rates than they paid the workers.
People fought to stop this but there are always people who insist on relearning these lessons the hard way.
There’s nothing wrong with the concept of renting. It only becomes a problem when companies are manipulating the market or price gouging. If companies are renting out units are peak market rate, then the issue there’s way more demand than supply. The solution is fairly easy, build more units to flood the market and bring down the prices. It’s a tried and true method. Want to see in action? Look at how Texas managed to get all of its major cities to have a big decrease in their average rents compared to last year:
Austin managed to slash rent prices by 9.3%, San Antonio by 8.2%, Dallas by 3.7%, Houston by 3.2%. It’s not just Texas, Nashville managed to slash prices by 8.3%, Atlanta by 5.2%, Baltimore by 5.5%, and the list goes on and on. What’s the thing common with all these cities? They build more units. They flood the market with so many units that landlords have no choice but to bring rent prices down.
It’s not just rents, housing prices are also down in places that build more:
https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/home-prices-falling-cities-where-prices-dropped-most-past-year/
Home prices went down by 11.2% in Miami, Denver by 6.3%, Seattle by 5.5%, Kansas city by 4.9%, and the list goes on and on.
Want cheaper rents and houses? BUILD MORE HOUSES. Can’t do that? Update the outdated zoning laws to allow for multifamily buildings, mixed zoning properties, and higher density. This is the path forward.
These articles are speculative on the cause. I don’t see any data on the supply increases.
Some of these cities, didn’t increase supply. For example San Francisco saw similar decreases it they offer to exploration there.
The rents decreases are year over year but are flat over a two or three period of time, it’s just as likely the rent increases were a bubble that popped and not because of some unspecified change in supply.
I mean every city is different. In the case of San Francisco, it could be that city is shrinking and that is driving down prices. However, in the case of the Texan cities, which are all growing, the decrease in rents is indeed due to flooding the market with new housing units:
Though the price housing has gone up considerably which is slowing down construction, which might bring up the rents again. However, this still shows that building new housing units in mass does bring down prices.
A few? How about just 1.
To be fair, everyone doesnt want to own housing all rhe time (say you study somewhere for a year for example, you might want to rent. Or when you try out anew city) so some landlording is needed. We don’t need landlords having lots of homes though.
Landlording should never be done for profit. Socialize the fuck out of it. My water, electricity and healthcare is socialized, why do parasites profit off my home?
Profit, profit, I’d say reasonable profit and mandatory standards.
For example, when I lived in sweden I knew a landlord, he was stopping because you beeded around 50 appartments (might be inflated from his side, but in many countries you can live off of 2 so …) to make a decent salary.
In sweden you cant rent out a shitty appartment, you cant set the rent as you like it, and youre taxed etc. etc.
I mean it should be like a normal job, not granting you robber rights.
The solution is making it illegal to own more than a few properties
This problem does not have a single solution. Get rid of landlords and you’re still left with a large group of people fighting over a limited supply. Better zoning laws, removal of parking minimums, better transit + micro-mobility infrastructure, and more below market not-for-profit housing.
It’s not a simple problem, even if the motives that created the problem are.
I think we agree, with the caveat that you need to be careful when stating a position like yours, because it’s often used as an excuse to do nothing at all.
The solution is to build more housing where people want to live.
Don’t get suckered into their blame game. This just results in everybody pointing fingers while the prices continue to soar.
Prices only go up because there’s competition to buy them.
I feel that you missed one basic aspect of economics. Competition is one reason prices might go up. There are other reasons, which are relevant here. Monopolies, collusion, price fixing, goods that people can’t live without, speculation, those are also reasons that prices go up.
In the housing market, it’s not fair, it’s not free, this isn’t a basic supply and demand situation.
There’s always talk about tax breaks for home owners…
Never talks of raising taxes on landlords and empty units tho.
That’s what would fix it. Tax them out of the housing market slowly and.prices will go down as they get out of the business.
Need a Land value tax and the ability to build medium/high density housing.
Or you know, just build more houses?
We’ve got 15 million vacant homes in the US.
The issue with this figure is that it comes from the Census Bureau, and their definition is broad and simple that it doesn’t into account for example. Here’s the definition they use:
Vacant Housing Units. A housing unit is vacant if no one is living in it at the time of the interview, unless its occupants are only temporarily absent. In addition, a vacant unit may be one which is entirely occupied by persons who have a usual residence elsewhere. New units not yet occupied are classified as vacant housing units if construction has reached a point where all exterior windows and doors are installed and final usable floors are in place. Vacant units are excluded if they are exposed to the elements, that is, if the roof, walls, windows, or doors no longer protect the interior from the elements, or if there is positive evidence (such as a sign on the house or block) that the unit is to be demolished or is condemned. Also excluded are quarters being used entirely for nonresidential purposes, such as a store or an office, or quarters used for the storage of business supplies or inventory, machinery, or agricultural products. Vacant sleeping rooms in lodging houses, transient accommodations, barracks, and other quarters not defined as housing units are not included in the statistics in this report. (See section on “Housing Unit.”)
https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/definitions.pdf
As you can see this definition doesn’t really take into account a lot of genuine factors. For example, a lot of units are in really poor condition and require renovations in order to be livable again, but they’re counted as vacant because they still have their exteriors in place. Same goes units. They’re also counting units that are not entirely completed, units that are occupied but just temporarily like vacation homes, and mobile homes. We do have a lot of vacant units in this country, but it’s not as much as this figure would lead you to believe. In reality, we need new units, we need a lot of them, and we need them ASAP.
Wouldn’t a tax hike only get passed through to the renter?
That’s why you set it exponentially based on units owned by parent company, maybe break it down as a tax paid by shareholders for huge corporations landlords.
They could try to pass it on to consumers, but smaller landlords wouldn’t have to pay it.
Making the biggest get out of the game first
They will just split the units owned on more companies then.
That’s why you set it exponentially based on units owned by parent company, maybe break it down as a tax paid by shareholders for huge corporations landlords.
That might not have been clear.
Set it at the parent company level so it’s not easy.
If they have X amount invested in rental real estate, that can just be taxed then
Believe me, the tax code for the wealthy is already complicated, they can handle this
Then there is no parent company…? Just another random company. It does not need to be complicated and this is far from it. It needs to be such that they can not easily avoid the taxes.
Not really, because the rental market does not behave like commodities do. Generally, you have to live within a reasonable distance of employment. For this and other reasons, renters are much more vulnerable and tend to get exploited far beyond the cost of the service.
Basically, if tenants had any more money to exploit, they would already take it. Rents are maximally high wherever possible to extract maximum money from people who need a place to live.
Consider the common joke that I pay this much in rent every month but the bank says I can’t afford a house where the mortgage would be substantially less.
Agreed, and this would be solved by sufficiently high land value tax - if wasn’t profitable to be a landlord nobody would do it and the price of land would decline sharply. Henry George saw all of this coming a long time ago.
First time I’ve heard of the idea of a separate land value tax… Frankly it seems like an awesome idea, especially for cities.
I imagine it would make dense housing more profitable than McMansions, and punish the NIMBYs who keep standing in the way of affordable housing. Maybe we could make the tax increase significantly with the number of properties an individual owns and start it at the highest rate for things like shell corps and LLCs.
We don’t need tax credits.
We need Private equity out of the housing market.
We need better safeguards for tenants.
Financial moves like tax credits and incentives always end up benefitting the haves.
We actually need Mom and Pop landlords abolished. They own 80% of rentals.
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R47332.pdf
Wow. 70% as of 2022.
Build. Social. Housing.
Its not a difficult concept. The “market” is not going to build anything that lowers the price. The market is not going to build anything fast enough. The market is absolutely not going to give a flying fuck about building to create communities.
The meritocratic, capitalist way, would be to to put a property tax on it and to increase that tax, until
- rents increase so much that people can’t afford to live in cities anymore
- cities lose essential employees
- society shuts down
- THEN property loses value
- then it can be bought cheaply again
- and also rented for a low price, because the tax on the low value property is also low
Let’s go people!
That’s stupid, we already tried social housing and it didn’t work. The market is the one and only thing that can reverse the situation, and it has done so before too, we just need to put in place the right incentives
Other countries made it work… i wonder how lol
Which countries? Unaffordable housing is a problem worldwide
Singapore
Singapore is an authoritarian city state. Their model can’t be replicated in any country that’s not an authoritarian city.
Well there is your answer ;)
the regimes along with ruling elites collude for it not to happen but sure we can play “politics” circle jerk around it
What are you on? There is no grand conspiracy. A city is much easier to manage than a big ass country and an authoritarian government has the power to carry out it’s plans while giving zero fucks about the people. People don’t realize that Singapore is one of the most authoritarian developed countries out there. In Singapore, all land is held by the state, people cannot own any property, they can only lease it from the government kind of like China. Neighborhoods have very strict ethnic quotas. For example, if you’re ethnically Chinese and want to live in a neighborhood that is already 85% Chinese? Well tough luck because you’re legally not allowed to buy there until that percentage comes down. Because everything is publicly owned, the government is in charge of maintenance, and a good chunk of the buildings aren’t well maintained. You can’t complain about it because Singapore is authoritarian. You also can’t complain about the location or the design of the buildings because the governments gets decide all of that. What’s more is that a lot of these projects are built on top Singaporean cultural and historical sites, which a lot of Singaporeans argue is an erasure of their culture. Despite all of these problems, their system works because their government is authoritarian, the city is small enough to be effectively managed, they’ve lucked out with a series of competent leaders. If any of three things isn’t present, you’ll have a recipe for disaster. Want an example? Just take a look at the Soviet Union.
Vienna, among other places, has had a successful model for decades.
https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-architecture-austria-stigma/
I’ve never understood the need for a downpayment to purchase. If you can make the monthly payments that’s all that should matter.
It’s risk mitigation for the banks. You don’t have to put 20% down, but generally you’ll have to pay an additional insurance (PMI) if you don’t.
