I think because of ex post facto, it would take 2 years at least for the housing problem to be solved in this scenario, and I don’t know if handing private assets over to any particular federal government (ahem, US government) would result in the benefit to unhoused people that this comment suggests.
First sellers get rewarded tho. Imagine massive housing speculation tank, but if you sell quick, maybe you beat it. So it doesn’t take two years.
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Just apply a 300% tax on empty property. Empty houses don’t contribute to the local economy by using local businesses.
How would this help house homeless people?
It’s a compromise, from the before times when one could assume people elected to their public positions where attempting to do those jobs in good faith.
The idea would be to give everyone something they want so that everyone could agree and actually get something done.
In this case, the house hoarders don’t immediately lose the resources they’ve hoarded, and instead get charged for the damage they’re doing to the economy. Ideally that money goes towards housing the poor, but that’s a side effect.
The point would be to make house hoarding non-viable as an income source, incentivising the hoarders to un-hoard.
Sadly, it wouldn’t do either without a much higher tax, which would never get agreed to
Nowadays it’s just a pipe dream that the money’d power wants to compromise on anything.
The Welsh (or some Welsh councils?) have already done it. Although the problem there is more with holiday homes people buy and leave empty most of the year. It’s fun to read people complaining that they have to sell it. Yes, that is the point.
I’d hope that it would encourage renting the unit even at a discount to avoid the fine.
Which would in turn lower rents by the surge of units on the market for rent.
People using homes as an asset (the same way they buy stocks/etc) would panic realizing that their golden goose is suddenly draining their bank account. They’d either offer rental prices dirt cheap, or give up and sell the property at whatever price people can afford (eg, 10% of what they currently charge).
There are currently MANY empty properties so this could have a larger effect than we often realize. Currently some cities try this the inverse way by giving tax credit to residents.
Prices are artificially inflated due to reduced supply. Increased supply should lower cost * making homes more affordable.
- Absent other fuckery
Meh, they would redefine vacant and claim “their” property isn’t affected by the law.
Right and that is also a solvable problem.
Based on what evidence do you think that laws apply to people with money. Laws were made to protect commerce, and by extension, those with the money. There will always be a loophole for them.
As a current landlord about to extend a lease at exactly the same terms for 3rd year in a row (and I fix everything within 24 hours) - I agree with this too.
It’s ridiculous that my largest store of value is a speculation bubble and a piece of paper with my name on it
Sell your house and stop participating if you’re concerned about it
This advice is indistinguishable from unsolicited mail wanting to buy houses in cash at above market rate… Presumably so Blackrock can jack it up, restrict supply, and charge way more while doing way less.
Which is exactly what OP post is trying to fix.
I’m not a hero, but I’m doing what’s fair given the system we have. Even I’m saying this is fucked, but it’s the best I can do to affect things for the better.
Chris? Lol
I couldn’t disagree more. All the hatred should be directed at individuals/companies that own a bunch of properties. They are specifically in the business of fucking people.
The thing I hate most is that all of these clowns will tell you you MUST raise rent every year. They also would likely try and murder you if you even got close to forcing them to pay their employees more every year, or even just other people’s employees. Keep in mind, if you own the property, you are making money with equity no matter if you have tenants or not. So all the rent is gravy but they want to squeeze people to death because they legally have to maintain their own rentals, which the cost of upkeep is REALLY far below the rent paid. Again, $0 in rent is STILL making money off the property.
One day you’ll learn the difference between hard and liquid assets.
100% as long as you’re talking about paid off property. That doesn’t really exist since every company that makes this their business model is over-leveraged as fuck and landlords with a single property are very likely to still have a mortgage.
As opposed to the people who merely own one family of serfs?
Wtf are you talking about?
Edit: messed up the formatting.
Does it matter to a family that can only rent if they rent from a corporation vs individual?
Spreading out renters is not a solution.
The following math works if the all landlords own the maximum allowed.
If the maximum rentals one could own is 1000, only 1‰ of the population can be landlords.
If the maximum rentals one could own is 100, only 1% of the population can be landlords.
If the maximum rentals one could own is 10, only 10% of the population can be landlords.
If the maximum rentals one could own is 1, only 50% of the population can be landlords.
To go back to the beginning, if there is no maximum, only 1 person (0.0001%) of the population can be a landlord and everyone else is a renter (the whole “you will own nothing and be happy” line).
What percent of the population do you want to permit to be landlords? Mind you, not property managers, specifically landlords.
Remember 100% of the population can be a property manager because everyone can manage their own property. But the largest percentage of the population that can be landlords is 50%.
I see that you differentiate from people who happen to have extra space and want to rent it out, that I can understand. But also understand that someone can buy 1 home specifically to fuck over other people.
The problem is that some people want to own other people’s homes. Some people want to own 1000 people’s homes and others just 1 is enough. In either case it is not the number that is the problem but the desire to own other people’s homes for the sole purpose of rent seeking that is the problem.
That is what is meant by the comment about “merely own one family of serfs” is about.
None of the shit your said counters my original point. Individual renters with a single rental property inherently care about it and it will almost never be their only income. They’re not doing it to squeeze the most money out of it. Most just need rent to cover their own expenses.
Previous comment is still utter fucking nonsense.
You were given a great answer but to put it even more bluntly, just because someone owns one slave it doesn’t make it any better than someone owning a whole plantation of slaves. It’s horrible either way, I don’t care if you have more time to take better care of your slave because it’s your only one; you still own a fucking slave
It wasn’t a great answer. It was incredibly banal and doesn’t take reality into consideration. This idiotic logic can be applied to anything. It doesn’t make any more sense just because you repeat it.
We live in a capitalist country. We’re all slaves by this primitive thinking. You can shift the blame endlessly.
A properly maintained rental that is fairly priced is not unfair to anyone.
Why make an allowance for property managers? Seems like they see a group of people being exploited, and want to find a way to take a cut of that exploitation.
Good question. I understand where you’re coming from with that statement. I have seen ads such as: (https://bsky.app/profile/derek.bike/post/3kkwecolbwk23) and very much share your sentiment.
Short answer: The Division of Labour
Long answer (sorry in advance):
I work in tech, I can choose to work in tech all day because I am the most productive in it. Then I can hire a chef that cooks for me, a maid to clean, a gardener to garden, etc and a manager that manages the home. Each cook, maid, gardener, and manager can in turn have multiple clients. And if they work all day in the thing they are most proficient at, they can in turn hire other people to do the stuff they do not do. This style of living is usual in India, Singapore and outside “The West” more generally. You can see here that the property manager is a part of the division of labour and so “competes in the marketplace” with other property managers for that position, the same with me and all the other workers do for our respective roles in the example.
This is peak liberalism/free market dynamics. I don’t think this is sustainable without coersion. But this is what is meant by “social production” by both Smith and Marx.
Furthermore, you can choose not to hire anybody and be your own property manager which is, in my opinion, more sustainable and totally allowed.
The problem with landlords is that if all the land is owned by someone else, you do not have an option of managing your own land without “hiring” anybody else to do it so you are trapped. This also allows landlords to squeeze money out of people. And the biggest issue it allows other people to rule out your own existance. This sentiment is perfectly encapsulated by the following quote:
Land, n. A part of the earth’s surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows that if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to exist.
- The Devil’s Dictionary https://archive.org/details/devilsdictionar00bier/page/68/
I hope that shows my position on the matter. I would like your take on it. As can be seen in this thread, there are those who do understand the position and instead of engaging with it, just deride it.
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Landlords are scum, but tenants are fucking disgusting.
You don’t hear much about good tenants or landlords for two reasons.
One is of course the simple matter that people who are content tend to be quieter. Same reason that it’s easier to find complaints about most products.
The other is reduced exposure. Good tenants will generally stay in one place longer and good landlords will retain tenants for longer periods as well. So you end up with just fewer people to even potentially say anything about them, good or ill.
try 100%. housing should be covered by taxes.
There are literally amendments to the Constitution preventing this from happening have you all lost your mind!
Why do we have to pretend the constitution matters when our enemies don’t?
Ummm… Because our enemies don’t… 🤷
They’re just kids living out a simplistic power fantasy. “If I were king of the world, I’d solve this huge, intractable problem with a simple order”. Like Mao ordering all the sparrows to be killed. Hopefully, once they experience the world a little, they realize that big problems are big because they’re difficult and complicated to solve.
Housing is more complex and the proposed solution may not work, but there are some problems that could be solved by someone with absolute power pretty easily. For example, if we shipped health insurance CEOs off to El Salvadorian labor camps instead of innocent immigrants, people would stop having their claims denied and the concept of a deductible would go the way of the dodo.
facepalm
Housing the homeless is a good idea, but doing it in a random, hap-hazard way is dangerous.
Govt takes over a block of brownstones, and throws a bunch of random people off the street with abuse/violence/psychological issues in them as fast as possible for six months, it’s a recipe for disaster.
You have to be careful about housing people as a government, you become (at least partially) responsible for their actions. Somebody starts cooking meth on an end unit and all of a sudden you have a fire that kills 30 people.
When the govt plans housing they can take flammability, safety, and location into consideration. If you’re just buying up slums to rehab, most of that goes out the window.
They need to invest in group homes for the people you are describing. One well paid housekeeper oversees 5-10 mixable homeless people. By mixable I mean not mixing those with mental issues in with drug users, etc. This is now impossible to hope for in the US with the horrifically cruel “religious conservative” party in control.
People have vacant home??? Where?
There are 15 million vacant in the US: https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-vacant-homes-are-there-in-the-us/
Wtf. That is crazy. what are they waiting for?
…since gross vacancy rate is a measure of all vacant properties — including vacation properties — states with several popular tourist destinations, like Florida and Hawaii, will always register slightly higher rates. The Census Bureau notes that the largest category of vacant housing in the United States is classified as “seasonal, recreational, or occasional use.” In over one-fifth of US counties, these seasonal units made up at least 50% of the vacant housing stock.
Is the movement now to ban vacation homes?
Also note that California, with the worst housing crisis, has one of the lowest vacancy rates, while Maine, Alaska, and Hawaii have among the highest rates. There’s not a housing shortage on average, there’s a housing shortage in the places people want to live - which largely means the places where they can get jobs.
It should also be noted one of the reasons California has such a bad housing problem is other states shipping their own homeless there.
I don’t think vacation homes should be banned, just heavily taxed. I realize that not everybody who owns a vacation home is a multi-millionaire. Some people have a crappy place that’s been in the family for generations. But, they’re still doing much, much better than the people who own 0 homes.
While I’m all for making it harder to just sit on housing, the “more empty homes than homeless” this, while technically true, is very misleading, and I wouldn’t want to try to force unhoused folks into the empty homes without a lot more pruning.
In-demand places don’t typically have much in the way of empty homes, as it doesn’t typically make financial sense not to rent them out. Empty homes in places like this are generally in between tenants or on the market to be sold. Meanwhile, there are places with huge numbers of empty homes, typically because of population drain. The homes sit empty not because someone’s hoarding them, but because people don’t want to move to places like Cairo, Illinois.
The statistic, whilst technically true, doesn’t take into account demographic and population changes. People want to live in places with vibrant economies and lots of job opportunities, and that’s not typically where the huge supply of empty homes is. So we can’t just redistribute our way out of this problem. Building, and especially infill in cities, is absolutely necessary in huge quantities.
Also homelessness is not simply lack of a home. It’s invariably more complex, and you won’t generally be successful with simply giving a property and washing your hands of it.
There may be disabilities, insufficient life skills, or vices and self-destructive behaviors that will fail this approach for all too many. A secure place to live is only the starting point
People want to live in places with vibrant economies and lots of job opportunities
Homelessness does not exist on this tier of Maslow’s hierarchy.
Having a home is not useful if living it in means you can’t feed yourself. You can find owned, unoccupied housing that’s been on the market over a year. The owners don’t want it, but no buyers want it either. If you freely gave a homeless man one of those houses without any further aid, he’d probably abandon it because he’d have to be within reasonable distance of a city to actually be able to survive.
Ban corporations from owning residential properties. Houses shouldn’t be held like stocks or cryptocurrency. Only allow individuals to own a maximum of two residential properties, which must be occupied by the owner at least 5 months out of the year or be surrendered to the government, to be sold to an individual who will live in the house.
In the Netherlands we have wooncorporatie, which are non-profit home rental companies. I think it’s a reasonable model, although the center right government tried to get rid of them for years. (Now we have a coalition of far-right parties in power, and they don’t even have anything like a consistent ideology much less policy so who can know what the future brings?)
I don’t like the idea of US government taking the property at below market value, since that would violate the takings clause of the Constitution.
What I would be in favor of is a real estate tax that increases if a property isn’t permanently occupied. Something that would encourage people to either reduce rent or unload the property.
It should be a reasonably gradual increase so that landlords aren’t penalized if they can’t find a tenant in the first or second month the unit is vacant. However if it’s been a year they should be approaching the point of owing more in taxes than the property is worth.
Then you can take it for back taxes.
It would also discourage air b2b type arrangements, unless you own and live in the property. No more buying a house so you can rent it out for exorbitant rates.
I don’t like the idea of US government taking the property at below market value, since that would violate the takings clause of the Constitution.
I don’t like this phrasing because it seems like you only care that there’s a rule against it, and have no opinion whether that rule is good or not.
Well, yeah you have a point. However, at this point I’d rather see people just knee-jerk obey the Constitution even if they don’t understand why, as opposed to the way everyone in this administration wipes their ass with it.
Good point.
Annual land tax. The more you hoard - the more you pay.
There are specifically tax deductions for taxes paid on your primary residence, so theoretically there is a higher cost to owning multiple properties, however this cost is simply too low to be much of a deterrence
As in acrage? So if I was an independently wealthy birdwatcher that built a privately owned wilderness preserve I’d be taxed more than the local slumlord?
Yes. The land is a finite resource.
That depends on how you measure it.
You can try and live in an infinite coastline house I have in my pocket.
Couple the increasing property taxes on vacant homes with an agreement that there are no property taxes on properties leased for free to qualified individuals (people who would qualify for government housing anyway essentially) and the government will pay for repairs. The government gets a cheaper place to house the homeless, having only to pay for repairs, the landlord gets an appreciating asset with no repairs to worry about, and the homeless get a place to live. Seems like a win all around unless I’m missing something.
I like this idea.
The only thing I can see that you’re missing is the requirement that poor people still suffer.
It’s bad enough to punish incident property hoarders for their hard work (inheriting wealth is hard work - you have to pretend to not be a piece of shit until Grandpa dies). You can’t also let poor people benefit from that at the same time!
Whether a property is occupied seems too easy to game.
Currently many places already tax a “primary residence” differently. My town’s approach is all residences pay the same property tax rate but your primary residence has a significant value exemption so is effectively taxed less. This advantages people who own their own homes while giving some discouragement to people hoarding homes or having a vacation home or being a landlord. However the difference needs to be greater to have an a real effect. I’d argue the exemption for primary residence should be enough that lower income people be free of property tax on their own homes and the difference made up by higher rates on their own rest of us. It would be too expensive to hoard vacant properties, less profitable to airBnB
And there is already process and precedent for towns repossessing for unpaid property tax.
Honestly I would be okay with giving them 6-12 months of leeway. There’s a ton of reasons why it could take 6 months or more to be able to find a tenant, especially if the previous tenant did significant damages or if there’s wider economic issues in the area.
I’d be ok with them being able to appeal the increased rate, but they’d need to show that they are actively working to make it ready to rent.
Okay yeah. That could be a fair compromise. I like that.
Eminent domain in California… You get $0.00 for your contribution.
This idea of yours exists here in Belgium. On top of that in personal income tax we pay as much on an empty 2nd house as one with renters in it.
There’s punishment on houses that are below standard for isolation. Forced to renovate.
Yes papa government, tax us hard.
Well they could fix it in 2 years by this logic
That’s assuming that there’s no such buildings already. That assumption would be extremely incorrect.
Mhhh true. But is this known? At least where I live the municipalities have no real overview over this…
Almost every Realty website I know of will show you how long a house has been on the market, and we could also get data from insurers because you are supposed to let your insurance know if a home is vacant obviously I’m sure some people don’t but it would cause them to look into it more and NAB them on that too
Alright, I am convinced! When do we start?
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