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It would only be an economic crisis for land owners who seek rent. Really housing shouldn’t be something that people profit from.
Some people want to rent (e.g., young people, people with mobile jobs, or people who just aren’t ready to be tied down to one place).
And I don’t have a problem with a small-time property owner renting out a house at a fair rate. In theory it’s a win-win: the renter gets a place to stay, the landlord builds equity in their property.
The issue we have is two-fold:
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Companies buying up massive amounts of property (not just a house or two, but thousands) and turning entire neighborhoods into rent zones, driving out any competition and availability of housing to buy, thereby driving up prices.
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Price collusion amongst these companies, driving up rent far above fair rates, using these software services that share going rates across markets. That reduces consumer choice.
Barring a really interesting solution, like a Land Value Tax or something, my proposal to remediate this housing problem is rather straight-forward and simple:
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Prohibit these software companies from sharing rental rates info to customers. Landlords just need to figure it out in their own markets the old fashioned way.
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Prohibit corporations from buying housing with the intention to rent it. Force these corporations to sell their housing and get out of the landlord business.
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Allow individuals to hold property for renting out, but cap number of properties a person or household can own for the express intention of renting out to five at any given time. That allows a person to build up a nice little savings nest, and provide a rental property to someone who wants to rent, but doesn’t allow anyone to dominate a housing market. Look for those massive profits elsewhere - start a business that creates and provides value.
Anyway, one can dream, I guess.
You can have non profit driven rentals though…? Why does rent need to be profit driving?
Some people WANT to have short-term commitments to their housing location. That is currently accomplished through rent. That’s an important distinction you are missing while trying to preserve elements of familiarity with the way the world currently works.
Acknowledging people wanting to rent was literally their first sentence
And that is precisely what I am disputing. No one WANTS to rent specifically, it’s just that there aren’t a lot of other options for short-term commitments. You’re looking at hotels, couch surfing, van life, nomadism. All of which exist but are less common.
The rest of their statement was about trying to find ways making renting less bad when the real solution is to eliminate the need for rent or landlords at all. You can still have short-term housing options without landlords.
In fact, in a lot of countries it is customary for landlords to require long-term leases most of the time. In most of the Middle East rents are paid annually up-front. In India it’s common to see security deposits of 6 months rent or more. The only force keeping short-term housing options available to those who want them are… Those who want them. The market demand, and the responsiveness to that demand.
But one of the major shifts the world is seeing globally is the breakdown of the relationship between demand and supply, with more and more power going to the supply side. Landlords in particular are colluding indirectly through 3rd party consulting firms against renters. It’s almost comical now to talk about how many countries like Canada, the UK, and the US are having housing crisis while the new construction seems to be almost exclusively low-densith luxury homes. Renters simply do not have the power to influence supply today.
People don’t “want to rent”. They want shelter. It’s just that renting is the easiest way to get that.
People don’t “want to work.” They want money. It’s just that working is the easiest way for most people to get that.
Well, thanks Captain Obvious. Statements like that are technically true, but how helpful are they for contributing to a conversation?
People don’t “want to work.”
I don’t think that’s true, but I suppose then we’d have a debate over what “work” is.
Statements like that are technically true, but how helpful are they for contributing to a conversation?
Well, we were having a discussion about renting vs. owning which you seemed to understand were two different things.
How do you mean “your proposal”?
Do you mean this post on Lemmy? Cause I’d vote for someone running for public office with that as their platform pertaining to the housing situation/crisis
Shit, I’d vote for that person, too.
Alas, I have zero interest in running for any public office.
Funny, that: with notable exceptions, of course, it’s generally the busy-body, loud-mouthed, ideologically-possessed control-freaks who seek any sort of political power. Sensible people tend to mind their own goddamned business, until the politicians and wingnuts force our hands to finally get involved.
You’d vote for a president running on a platform they would have zero authority to enact?
I didn’t specify president per se.
Politicians in most modern governments, of course, aren’t emperors who issue edicts and instantly enact sweeping change.
The imaginary politician in this scenario would run what that platform expressing the ideal. They then try to get those policies enacted against the opposition, which is both the inertia of the bureaucracy and opposing political winds.
You saying the imaginary person running for president with that platform couldn’t snap their fingers and put it in place doesn’t mean they wouldn’t steer the government in that direction, thats almost always the best we can do and I don’t think we should give up because the change we want isnt immediate
Landlords are parasites. Period.
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I mean, 0 new apartments would be built
Existing apartments would be removed from the market too. $100 per month costs the owner more than keeping the apartment empty, because tenants are a risk.
If people thought that such a law was going to be permanent, or if there were fees for leaving apartments empty, then many (most?) apartments would be permanently destroyed - either converted to something else (condos, commercial space, etc) or just demolished so that the land could be used some other way.
You forgot the outcome that they could be sold. You know, so that a non landlord could own one.
I said they could be converted into condos, and that would happen to many of them if they were worth more as condos than as commercial space or undeveloped land (or apartments rented off-the-books at market price). Prices of condos would fall (at least until the market adjusted) but the supply of housing available would decrease, especially for the people who struggle to afford rent today.
I don’t follow your reasoning that goes from landlords selling housing to less housing being available. Also, which landlords are renting out at below mortgage prices?!
Less housing in the sense of (owner-occupied + rented). Not all former rented housing would become owner-occupied housing. People who struggle to pay rent are going to have a hard time getting a mortgage, and if they do then they’re betting a lot on an illiquid asset that they’re paying for with an unreliable revenue stream, especially since that asset might go down in value to below what they owe on it like what happened to a lot of people in 2008. One of the things a renter pays a landlord to do is to absorb a lot of the financial risk.
A couple of anecdotes about when I owned a house:
I would have been better off by renting for above mortgage price than I was by buying, since I had to move a lot sooner than I thought I would. There’s a lot of overhead to purchasing real estate that only makes sense if you plan on staying in one place for a long time. Fewer and fewer Americans are doing that.
I used to rent out the house at below-mortgage price but it was to good friends who were very trustworthy. (Even then, technically they shared the house with me although I would only come for one weekend a month, because then they would be easier to evict just in case.) Their rent covered interest and taxes, so I was paying off principal. I sold the house when they moved out rather than taking the risk of renting it to strangers. With that said, I don’t think this is common.
Not all former rented housing would become owner-occupied housing
Yeah, in your previous post you suggested it would be razed to the ground, which is a bit of a throwing your toys out of the play pen when asked to share. I’ll remind you that the original post was suggesting rent controls back to 1980s levels of rent. Housing prices would likely fall, bringing whole swathes of people who can’t get a mortgage now into the buyers market.
At the moment, most landlords basically get houses bought for them by their tenants. It’s iniquitous. If you’re paying the price for the house, you should get the house, not just someone with a better credit rating.
The reason most renters are renters and not owners is not because there aren’t any houses available to purchase.
This would just make countless people homeless as they lose the option to rent, because they can’t afford to buy/maintain an entire house.
It’s because the prices are so high! Countless people ARE homeless, and the skyrocketing price of housing is the immediate cause, with the vast profits landlords make the indirect cause. If you can make someone else (tenants) buy houses for you, there is no limit to the number of houses you can buy at no real cost to you, so being a landlord makes insane profits so the prices of houses climb as they’re such a money spinner.
What do you think the cost of a house is, just with the cost of the materials and labor to build it, with zero markup?
A fraction of the cost that they go to market with at the moment. The housing market is overheating and has been doing so for decades. The value is in the scarcity, and the profiteering, not the bricks and mortar.
Renters pay the mortgage and then some. It’s iniquitous. If you’re the one paying for the house, you should get the house, not someone who just has a better credit rating.
Until someone needs a home and they build it
Where are they living while they save up the several hundred thousand it costs to build one?
You’re right, the first time shelter was built in human history it was a Blackrock apartment complex.
How could i forget.
If you have to go back to before the concept of money was invented, you don’t really have a good point.
I didn’t.
Blackrock was the only corporate entity that had the building rights to the ferile cresent.
If it weren’t for them nobody would have ever had shelter.
God bless Blackrock
You’ve discovered the problem with organising an economic system around profit
Why? Its not like apartments are built by private industry. Not any lasting ones at least.
What? Of course they are
None of the good ones that have lasted. Only disposable trash that needs to be nearly entirely rebuilt every 50 years.
This is the opposite in the US. Government housing, when it was even attempted, was concrete trash, left to rot for decades.
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It would be a crisis for renters. Land owners by definition already have a place to stay, but the second you implement price controls you’re going to see the rental market go into convulsions. The correct solution is to Just Tax Land.
The correct solution is
to Just Tax Landsocialized housing.There you go
Well sure, people would stop renting in protest, and you’d have to tax unoccupied spaces at high rates to compensate.
It would crash the real estate market, which arguably needs to die since availability is artificially scarce due to wealthy hoarders.
tax unoccupied spaces at high rates to compensate.
Doing just this would help quite a lot today. A bunch of properties sit vacant because it’s cheaper to just pay the taxes and let the property appreciate than it is to bother with renting.
It would be a crisis for anyone who wants to rent, because they won’t be able to anymore.
No one’s going to rent out an apartment if they’d have to do it at a huge loss. So as soon as this went into effect, all rentals would vanish and everyone who can’t afford to buy a house would be homeless.
pretty sure this would lead to some sort of economic crisis
And? We’ve already tried it the other way around, and we’ve really got nothing to lose at this point by trying OOP’s idea out.
Economic crisis? That would be terrible! It’s a good thing we never have any economic crises under the current system!
THATS UNIRONICALLY BETTER THAN OUR CURRENT PRESIDENT
While I like the thought, still terribly bad in my opinion. Presidents should never have a say in any of that. That’s where we have fooled most of America. Legislation can make such a law and then the president can execute it by arresting those who do not follow the law that was made.
The president is a local cop and international diplomat. Locally they should do nothing that is not previously written by Congress and Passed the Senate and then signed (or not signed) by them or previous office holders.
International diplomat means they also cannot declare war and cannot make trade rules. They are a spokesperson.
If I were President I would follow the constitution and the amendments made thereafter. I would never want to be president, but if I ran I would focus my campaign on educating the populous on what the job is supposed to be, and who the members in their communities/cities/county/state are that they should be pushing for to do great things for them.
I would cheer for them to elect legislatives who will write thorough adaptable bills that can help their constituents and keep a platform along the lines of “Presidents don’t make laws, Vote for good people who will write good legislation for your community, and please don’t make me have to perform a job that hurts our people. America’s governing is decided by your representatives”
I think you underestimated how much power “executing the law” gives you. And no matter what you believe, it can be immoral to not exercise this power sometimes.
Sure you can educate the populous and hope good people are elected, but you can’t guarantee things always go how you hoped. What if the Congress passes some truly reprehensible law? One you deeply disagree with? e.g. genocide, apartheid, weapons for the oppressor, tax break for the rich, what have you. Would you still hold on to your beliefs and execute the law faithfully? Should you?
My take?
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corporations aren’t allowed to own land or houses other than the office space and production facilities.
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people can only own the buildings they live in (with proof of living there at least X% of the year)
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The state takes over all houses and land that become unused by these laws
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The state rents out their property as ‘rent to own’, or as housing for the homeless
That’s basically China with extra steps. How are you going to deal with your companies siphoning money out of your economy by buying foreign real estate?
Corporations should be owned jointly in equal parts by the people who work there. Most live local and won’t want to do that.
Ah there’s that glorious protectionism that just shot the global economy in the foot! Constitutional law is gone and you’re day dreaming about reforming business law lmaooooo CLASSIC.
COMMUNIST REVOLUTION WEN?
This whole thread is about day dreaming about business law reform.
The whole world doesn’t stop to deal with each problem individually.
Of course, it’s basically a communist idea from even before the Russian revolution.
To answer your question: since corporations aren’t allowed to own more than the buildings they work with, they could not buy foreign real estate - except for facilities or offices they really use.
I don’t think I know all the answers, it was just a interesting idea I read a while ago.
As far as I know it was never implemented, so weather it would work out or not is just speculation.
Bububutttbut who gets the Waterfront property?!?!?
I saw a new development going up on the river and thought that. Next thought was how delightful it will be to watch the river consume it in my life time. Nature hates vanity.
I say that because some people can’t imagine a system other than the current one and they said that as a kind of a gotcha.
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Ah the ‘state’ So donald trump should take over all housing…
No wait, the nation of people who elected donald trump, who’s imaginary new government(which will be so much more awesome) that state should do it!
You need your revolution first friends, im waiting. It’s your time to shine and you’re still lurking in the dark quoting theory.
I don’t live in the USA, so my trust in my government is at least a little bit higher.
I agree that the government under trump is… not suitable for such a socialist concept. One can only hope that a better one will rise from the ashes.
That being said, in general, control by the state is better for the people, even though it’s less effective. Taking ‘greed’ out of the equation for the housing market would do wonders.
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If you can’t beat 'em, DEPORT 'EM TO HELL!
That sounds like a violation of the separation of church and state!
For me personally I’d like a 50-60 square meter apartment for no more than 2x my annual income. And I’d like to be able to get a loan with a monthly down payment equal to whatever I’ve been paying in rent for the last couple of years.
I can pay 12500 NOK a month in rent, but for some reason the bank can’t trust me to pay the same amount if I were to buy an apartment? Fuck that.
That was a scam they put in place after 2008 when they were being punished for scamming us. (while scamming us for bailouts for the previous scam) It takes a lot of government regulation to keep the banks from stealing, good thing thats gone now!
Turn every company into a worker owned co-op and then it becomes 100x harder for companies to do shady immoral stuff
I mean thats fine as long as the Millions of chinese and vietnamese workers making Iphones get to keep their cut of the company. I just hate nationalistic protectionism. These are all global companys. I’d be down to share.
Why couldn’t the US have guaranteed government housing available to any citizen that needs it? A $100 a month apartment to cure homelessness shouldn’t be a funny joke … it should be questioned with “why should it even cost money”?
Government housing tied to the cost of 1 weeks minimum wage. So simple, so elegant.
The government actually helping people without lining the pockets of the capital class? That’s commie talk
NOT IN MY AMERICA HIPPY!!! -Richard Nixon
The President has that power now, because of the ╣¥th Amendment.
Ah yes, the MISSINGNO amendment. (Or at least that’s how your comment loaded for me)
ü»≡!
What could go right? If apartments cost $100, everyone would own one and there would be no speculative market in them — no rental market at all probably.
If housing was truly abundant, we would still have landlords. The key difference is they would actually have to compete as a service provider instead of as mere land hoarders. “Landlord” would be an honest job for once.
Landlords like to say that many people prefer to rent because then they don’t have to worry about maintenance, doing home repairs, etc. But most people rent simply because they can’t afford to purchase a home themselves. Instead of helping people avoid maintenance, landlords in practice do everything possible to avoid spending a penny on any kind of maintenance. They’re able to be so stingy because people need somewhere to live. With most rentals, you’re simply paying for access to housing, the quality of the service is an afterthought. Very few people have the luxury of rejecting a potential apartment or rental home simply because the landlord has a reputation of poor responsiveness to maintenance requests.
With abundant housing, landlords would be more like hotels operators in vacation destinations. No one would stay at a resort hotel if the rooms were falling apart and full of mold. It’s a luxury purchase that people can go without, so they can afford to demand quality. With abundant housing, rental housing becomes a luxury good.
For example, let’s say anyone who wanted could buy a home with an affordable mortgage. Maybe the government subsidizes the mass production of housing units. Just flood the market with new homes and condos. Make it so there are 1.5 housing units for every 1 household. Or imagine some federal program to double the number of housing units in the US. And then offer low down payment and subsidized mortgages so basically anyone can get one.
In order to compete with that, landlords would have to offer a high quality of customer service. They would have to appeal to those who actually would prefer to rent. They would have to attract those who honestly just hate doing maintenance and don’t want to futz around with it. Those who wanted to not have to do home maintenance could rent, and they would seek out landlords who actually properly maintained their units. With dirt cheap housing available, any landlord that didn’t provide excellent customer service would quickly be driven out of business. Instead of being in the land speculation business, they would be in the customer service business. “Landlord” would actually be a real job for a change.
The problem isn’t landlords it’s land_barons_ rich fucks and corps treating housing as a business working the bottom line.
Not the first gen home buyer getting a 2 FAM or 3 FAM and renting out the spare unit. Not even when they get enough to buy a single and keep the multi as thier first step into making generational wealth.
Its the fuckers that buy up housing to rent at above market and do nothing they don’t legally have to maintain them.
Oh and they leave them empty for months on end instead of lowering rent to get the units all filled out.
Lots of new apartments are being built in my state but 90% is “luxury” crap that’s just going to keep raising rent.
15 years ago I rented an apartment, in the US, for $250 a month.
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“It doesn’t work” because profits. If you are in socialized housing there is no need for profit. It’s also kinda absurd to think that, were rent fixed, that there would not be a sea change in how housing and regulations surrounding housing works. It’s myopic to simply say “fixed rent costs = landlords stopping maintaining property” or some such. It would have to be comprehensive, not a sudden, poorly thought out decree like trump would do.
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Christ dude don’t be so damn binary. Both your comments are. There is nobody saying everyone will or must live in socialized housing in this hypothetical.
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Then this is my take:
- no taxes on first home
- some tax on second home
- taxes on any home past the second grow exponentially, doubling for each additional home
- order of the homes is always from less expensive to most expensive
- same is valid for companies
- for companies owned by other companies, all the houses owned are considered as belonging to the mother (root) company, so there’s no “creating matrioskas to that each own a single house”
Obviously offices and factories are not habitable space and therefore not counted in this system.
Housing shouldn’t be an investment asset, especially in a for profit system, or you’ll just make BlackRock again.
I think that’s what s/he was trying to resolve with the doubling of tax on each additional property. It would become cost prohibitive very quickly to have multiple properties.
You would have to close the endless amounts of tax deductions on real estate to make it matter. If they can write off the loss as a business cost than the portfolio will just eat the tax and pass it on to the renters.
Yes. No single change will solve the problem. It would have to be comprehensive.
And persistent. We cannot get complacent half way through this one.
It shouldn’t be an investment asset.
Homebuilding is still a business though. You still need someone to risk their money, assemble the materials and crew, complete the project and find a buyer for it.
If there’s no demand for a product no one will build it. There’s always going to be demand for a mythical product that can’t be built. Like cheap housing.
I just spent $2,000 on a handful of wood, shingles, and siding to patch my house up. like 1/10th of a single wide trailer. That’s just the materials i’ll be providing the labor which would normally cost $30-$60 hour.
So it shouldn’t be an investment asset, someone still has to invest in it being built, so that a homeowner may live there.
Is that sort of thing not exactly what our taxes should be paying for?
Ya in an ideal world. Currently the system runs by me fixing up a house and losing $50,000 of my hard earned money so a young family can get a cheap house. I’d preferred if the government compensated me for my contribution to the housing crisis?
Property taxes can also be used in this manner, you don’t need national legislation to use your city/town council. You have a lot of power at a local level to solve your local problems, its hard to get peopel organized for it. You tax undesirable housing to subsidize housing your desire. I know my problems here in Maine are different than those in California as far as real estate.
A national plan and blueprint would be nice, but i still think this is a problem with local governments that can’t be solved as each location has its own needs and problems.
There’s no market incentive for building small homes or efficent towns. Think about how much money we spent to get people to use EV’s same needs to happen for housing, you need incentives for buyers and producers to take the great leap.
Problem: universities and other entities which require many buildings. How does this play into it? Do you count the entire campus as a single property?
Just ban being a landlord guys. Tax owning land that you’re not using out of existence. Rent/leases are simple vectors of wealth transferal - they move money from the poor to the rich. Everyone should own their own flat/house. Every business should own the space they work out of.
There is no good reason housing should be an investment vehicle akin to a stock or a bond.
The floor moves to vote in the “Send gansey boy (a.k.a @dickthree) to hell” bill.
Respond with a yay or a nay.
FUCK IT WE BALL(yay)
No one who owns a home would vote for them. It’s not in their self interest, if they spent 300k on a house and this happened, they would lose ~300k. Not worth it at all. A much better idea would be to just have tax breaks for contractors making new homes, that would lower the value of everyone else’s homes, but by a lot less.
Eh, I’d go for it. This whole country thing isn’t about my personal gain, but making life better for everyone.
Housing should not be an investment. They didn’t lose anything except speculated value which comes at the cost of locking others out from the ability to own their own home. In fact, those morons who care so much about “muh investment” are also costing themselves through higher property taxes and ridiculous house prices they’d have to face if they ever have to move.
There are quite a few people who say they wouldn’t be able to afford the house they have now if they had to finance it at today’s prices and interest rates. How can they realize the capital gains on such an “investment” if they don’t own more than one home? They still have to live somewhere.
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Removing speculation from the housing market doesn’t remove ownership.
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you leave individuals who own up to, say, 3 houses alone and start massively taxing anything further. 4+ house voting bloc can suck a dick. corporations will be forced to rent at obscenely low rates to the point that they will be stupid not to sell. they have a minimum tenant percentage to make sure they’re not hoarding, and have mandatory government evaluation for any sale. fail to do any of this for 60 days and your properties now belong to the people.
You need to consider that people need somewhere to live. So, if your only house doubles in value, you generally can’t make use of this fact to get more goods and/or services, since every other house has likely also doubled in value. The only way you can get to these gains is if you’re willing to trade down in some way. For example, you could move to a rural area, where housing is cheaper, or you could move into a smaller home. If you’re unwilling to do any those things, your house becoming more valuable is not that useful. (Unless of course the increase in value is due to the land your house is on getting better in some way. This only concerns cases were your house gets more valuable due to increasing scarcity). In fact, since property taxes exists, you might end up getting priced out of your own house.
Tells this to the millions of voters that thought “tarif every country, specially or allies” would be a great economic plan.
No no, if they force my loan to be 100$ they’re just going to increase interest 10,000 to get to that 300k lol
my second order would be sending you to hell
Well, buddy…
