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Corps and foreign investors shouldn’t be able to own housing (multi unit should be co-op/market rate nonprofits)
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Individuals should not be able to own more than 5 homes. (The number is semi arbitrary, but at a certain point it is very clearly hoarding, and therefore shouldn’t be allowed)
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AirBNB and similar should be heavily regulated. (They turn permanent residences into short term, which reduces capacity, and drives up prices all around)
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Shift to a land value tax system as the primary means of tax collection. What few landlords/scalpers exist after the above changes will have even less room to breathe. And it would punish vacancy, which would put pressure to keep as much housing available as possible.
There may need to be some exceptions. But if changes like this were to occur, we wouldn’t have this problem.
No reason whatsoever anyone should own 5 “homes” (at that point they are not homes, they are a commodity).
Housing is a human right, and it needs to be entirely decommodified.
Preach.
Housing is a human right.
Private land ownership violates that human right.
All land should be held in trust for the people as a whole and managed by the government for the benefit of the people. Including the houses and apartments on that land.
We should not have private homeowners. We should not have private landlords. We should have socialized housing, just like we should have socialized medicine. Apartment buildings and neighborhoods should be managed by tenant associations, with strict legal limits on their authority over individual tenants, and government facilitators to provide expert advice on building management and keep meetings running smoothly.
But we are a long way from implementing that.
I think I would swap the word government for collective, but otherwise I completely agree, and yeah, we’re a long way away unfortunately. But we can hope, and inform others, and join/invest in projects that are working towards that end!
The government should be the collective. The fact that it isn’t is one of the roots of the problem, and the FPTP electoral systems of most western countries keeps it that way.
I don’t disagree, but I do think the anarchist idea of a government (which is what I personally had in mind) is so far removed from what most people today can envisage when they hear that word, that it’s still worth differentiating.
But consider all the investment banks that would irreparably harm!
Each successive property beyond one should add an additional 10% to the property taxes. The owner may list them in any order, but you pay 110% for the second property and 200% for the 11th
A land value tax would be a good idea as well, especially if its the main form of tax collection. Each successive property would automatically, drastically increase the cost.
It would become a defacto tax on the rich, while helping to prevent hoarding. Two birds one stone.
…And the net result would be that they would charge more on rent. And since taxing at higher rates would deter people from building more rental properties, the housing shortage would get worse.
And since taxing at higher rates would deter people from building more rental properties, the housing shortage would get worse.
Housing is a public good and should be funded as such.
That would be great! Except that cities refuse to do that, and no one wants to put high density housing anywhere near their cute, historic neighborhood.
If you can build the political will to steamroll the NIMBYs, I’m all for it.
If you can build the political will to steamroll the NIMBYs, I’m all for it.
Any solution to the housing crisis necessarily would require the political will to do that. There’s no getting around it.
But yeah, I think we more or less reached a point of agreement. We need to change the culture, it must become more collectivist. We gotta finally start caring for one another.
The problem isn’t political will per se, but specifically steamrolling local NIMBYs. The people with the most political power and will tend to push high density housing out of more desirable areas and into less desirable areas. If you wanted to, for instance, but a 100 unit building in Ukrainian Village or Wicker Park in Chicago, you’d have a really stiff fight on your hands from local property owners who want to keep their neighborhood all brownstones. OTOH, if you want to demo a square block near Garfield Park and build there–and I wouldn’t recommend doing that–you’ll have the local alderman holding a golden shovel for the groundbreaking.
Developers are not generally landlords. They want to build and are fully capable of setting up building co-ops. (They already do it) So fucking with landlords does not in any way mean less housing available.
Fine. Cap the rents and tie them to inflation. These fuckers are greedier than literal dragons, and I’m down for some dragon slaying.
Okay, now you have waiting lists like they do in Copenhagen.
Pretty much every economist will tell you that rent control creates disincentives to building more housing.
Then we lift the restrictions that Clinton put on government housing, and increase the supply.
I don’t care what the racists trained by the Chicago school of economics say, the real world has only proven them right when the rich are pushing on the scales.
Keynes is correct, and 2020 proved that far too well, to the point that the rich started screaming about their wage slaves.
Great! I’m all for gov’t increasing housing supply! But, frankly, most of the pushback from building affordable, high-density housing is coming from the local level. If we build high-density, affordable (e.g., low-income only, versus mixed-income) housing in it’s own area, rather than integrating it into existing communities, we’re only building the slums of the future. As it stands, well-off communities, even in areas that are heavily Democratic (such as, most of California), have been strongly opposed to locating such housing in their neighborhoods, and do everything they can to prevent it.
The YIMBY movement is gaining traction in IB and San Diego
An easier approach would be to turn every apartment building into a housing co-op.
Capitalist for-profit housing simply should not exist.
I can imagine ways of doing that without too much friction. Building residents would have to buy out the building though which many won’t want to do
An easier approach would be to turn every apartment building into a housing co-op.
That would also be a good idea. Not sure about the easier part though.
Capitalist for-profit housing simply should not exist.
Agreed
I’d even say no more than two properties. Make people apply for a permit to own more than that and put extreme limits on the reasons they could be successful depending on the current market.
I don’t have a problem with that either. But yeah, the number itself is semi arbitrary. It should be voted on really.
The vast majority of ‘good’ landlords are people who were sketchy about investing in stock markets. As they rightfully should be because it requires infinite growth to keep people retiring without serious wage redistribution. But let’s kick that football down the road more.
Most of them are old and elderly. There’s no way the government forces private land owners to sell off anytime soon though. Let alone the difference in taxing/sales of land ownership vs home ownership. A hard cap on total homes owned would be nice though. People really out to diversify their savings and equity is a huge one.
There’s so much good that could be done that starts failing when defacto mini government coops start up though. You’ll have a hard time finding the difference between Coop and government owned housing but you’ll see people lambast government ownership like we’ve already seen in this thread lol.
My city levies land tax on any land that isn’t the owner’s private residence
That though really just increases rent, even if rent is unfair already
They have just also added a thing where you don’t cop land tax if you rent out a place at sufficiently below market rate
Let’s go with one home, then we can consider allowing more. Extreme? Yes. But I have no sympathy for the wealthy folks. Sorry, not sorry.
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Not pictured, all the landlords paying an app to create a higher market rate.
It boggles my mind how people still insist there’s a “free market” in rent when we have proof of giant property management corporations colluding nationwide to raise rents.
This shit is why we need rent control.
Investors and Airbnb have really undermined historical market forces here. also data pricing apps that fix prices between “competitors” should be noted here
One landlord told me he had to charge so much because of his Asian wife was greedy.
Glad that old white landlord can hide is greed behind his racism for his wife’s ethnic background.
Rich people are shit people.
“I’mma need to be greedy with you because my wife is asian” AKA why capitalists will always side with racism even if its a transparent attempt to bilk people of money.
What people don’t seem to credit enough is the fact that nearly all wealthy people are shitty people. I’m not being facetious. I know a lot of them, and they almost universally believe that they earned every penny of their fortunes.
The rest of us are just lazy. That’s how they see everything. Some break the mold, sure… But the grand majority are trash people.
It’s appropriate because he owns a lot of houses. Recently sold a couple to make half a million bucks tax free 'cos NZ doesn’t have a capital gains tax which Luxon Luther thinks would be just terrible for the country… For completely selfless reasons, of course. He’s a scumbag and a racist and liar
I’m sorry, NZ doesn’t have captial gains tax??? Thanks backwards as fuck.
I mean, over here in Australia we give a 50% discount, which is already bullshit in my opinion, for assets held for at least a year, and waived for primary residences under a certain value (which is also bullshit, in my opinion. You’d be getting taxed on the gain only, not sure why living there somehow makes that capital gain special), but no capital gains at all? That’s nuts.
Hey, hey, hey. This is New Zealand, we can’t just bang another hole in the desert to get more money. We have to
steal generational wealth from the poors(checks notes), buckle down and work hard; that is the way to get rich!100% it’s fucking insane. But welcome to the fucked up world of NZ tax discussions. The RW and the media pillory any discussion about introducing taxes while we have a massive infrastructure deficit and inequality
If you live in a place you cannot access the capital gain
If I were to sell my house I bought for ~$100k for $500k I would need that 500k to get an equivalent house
Yes. Because we’ve made housing a viable investment, it keeps going up beyond inflation, so that currently you do need all the money from selling a house, including what’s way above inflation on average, to be able to afford another. It’s stupid, and eventually it’s gonna break. I agree though, it’s currently required to not tax captial gains on somewhere you live, else you’ll get priced out.
In an idealised world, though, where we progressively stabilise housing prices, I would propose you get taxed on your capital gain, even if you live there, perhaps only on the gain above inflation, and be still able to buy a similar property with the money left over because the house prices wouldn’t be going up by stupid amount every year.
I get where you’re coming from, and perhaps I didn’t include this nuance before: I want all capital gains taxed, including the place you live in, precisely to stop making housing “a good investment”.
I should say then, I just don’t think it’s terribly fair on people who can’t afford somewhere to own, because those who are in, get favourable tax relief. Someone worked for 10 years and made $600,000? Yeah, have fun getting taxed the normal amount, while those who own housing may have made a couple hundred grand in the same time and get taxed nothing. As an individual, sure, you’re no better off if you buy another house, but you have the option of not buying another house and doing something else with the money tax free. A worker just get taxed and has no choice.
I think all captial gains should be taxed the same as income, with special provisions for housing to get good overall outcomes for inequality and the individual also. But not zero just because you lived in the house.
I just think zero captial gains on housing you live in isn’t ideal either. Averaging the gain across the time you held it, at your tax bracket for each year, seems fairer (in a world where we also use other methods to stabilise the housing market).
Simple maths (but made up) example: you’re in the 30% tax bracket every year (kept earning the same inflation equivalent amount of money). Let’s say your capital gain is $300,000 above what inflation was during 10 years. You then aportion that gain over ten years according to some lookup table which lists the inflation rate for each financial year, and whatever it bumps your tax bracket to that year, you owe that much on that portion per year.
If we pretend inflation was 2% every year, then we just back calculate the inflation adjusted, equal portion of tax across the 10 years.
So for a steady 2% per year it would be something like this:
So you pay 30% (or whatever it brings your tax bracket to) on the equal inflation adjusted 1/10th of the total gain above inflation.
The tax office can just make yearly lookup tables, or calculators, to assist with this.
If this example maths doesn’t make 100% sense, well whoops, this is back of the napkin brainstorming, but I think you can understand my intent.
Hope you enjoy this brainstorm lol
Right, so you’ll hope it’ll stabilise prices, penalise people for moving home if it doesn’t work, penalise people for moving home regardless if they bought before this measure
The general idea is you tax things you want to stop, do you think it’s a good idea taxing selling one house to buy another to live in? I thought it was investment properties you didn’t like.
- Why go after the paper gains of people moving from one primary residence to a different one?
- Taxes on investment houses are directly passed on to tenants, raising rent
People who bought a very cheap house twenty years ago might have a million dollar capital gain and a $30,000 income. If they wanted to move they couldn’t sell that house and buy another under your scheme
I quite like the current policy in Canberra, Australia, where land tax is levied on rental properties, but not if you rent it at a lower rent
I will reiterate, that this back-of-the-napkin idea only works with other policies to stabilise house prices. Because yeah, right now, it wouldn’t make sense. Would need to be phased in over a long-time (certainly taxing people now on capital gains since they moved in decades ago would be entirely unfair).
Though, it still rubs me the wrong way currently that the haves are getting a way better deal than the have nots. Again, in theory, you could sell up and put yourself in the same position as someone who can’t afford a house, by renting, and have a bunch of capital gains tax free, whereas they have to pay a higher tax rate on their total income - that is the normal tax rates - even though they’re poorer. Seems unfair (but I’m not suggesting the fix is immediately taxing capital gains on owner occupiers).
Canberra seems to have a few good rental laws then, as last I heard rent increases are capped at 2% beyond inflation. Which at least means they haven’t had the stupid rental increases all the othe cities have seen the last few years.
Just build more housing lol
Funny how they never mind raising the rent when the market is up, but you never, ever, ever get it lowered when it’s down.
the players are the game. never forget that
Imagine a hoard of people saying that in a drone similar to “this is extremely dangerous to our democracy”.
I hate the player and the game. After all why not both?
That’s one well dressed landlord. Every landlord I ever dealt wore dirty clothes, was missing teeth, and was in desperate need of a shower. 🤔
Market capitalism is destroying us, our homes, and literally our only habitat.
Their guard gates are mostly decorative. We could save our species and the habitability of the planet.
Instead some think we can petition the government they’ve fully owned for half a century to mitigate the harm they bought our government to commit with abandon, lol.
I mean, they’re sort of right.
If there’s 150,000 identical homes for rent in an area, and 200,000 people/couples/families want to live there, then 50,000 are going to be shit out of luck.
The going rate is going to be the maximum that the 150,000th person out of those 200k is prepared to pay.
How do you fight maths?
Build more houses. Less competition means lower prices.
Social housing schemes.
Work from home being a right so you don’t end up with everyone needing to work in a massive city to make ends meet.
Tax landlords. They’re already charging the most the market will bear, and taxes would mean they can’t just snap all those homes up and offer them for rent. If buying and renting homes is a valid business plan, then the tax isn’t high enough.
The problem is there aren’t 150,000 homes for 200,000 people. It’s probably the double but 100,000 of those homes are owned by people/companies who’d rather have them empty while the price rises. Basically using them as stocks instead of shelter for actual persons.
So you think the vacancy rate in expensive areas is 50%? That is extremely wrong.
So you aren’t aware of the Homebuilder Cartel, I’m assuming?
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As someone who owns 3 houses, I believe no one should be allowed to own any houses
You don’t believe anyone should own homes? You are part of this group 💀
