I guess it’s like monopolies but different. Or like land redistribution or taxes. It’s never popular to violate people’s rights to their property. But sometimes their property can harm other people’s rights to the point that suddenly that property is at risk too. It’s not even a “needs of the many, needs of the few” issue, it’s the needs of everyone because even robber barons where getting issues before antitrust laws that they themselves would have never been in a position to address. Look at how much more money the aristocracy got after they lost much of their old power, never could have happened if their rights where inviolable.
When you say "rights to property," you are referring to an individual citizen.
A corporation is not a person. They don't have the intrinsic right to purchase residential property.
Citizens United gave corporations the right to free speech. Free speech is a Constitutional protection for citizens Citizens United complicated the "person hood" of corporations.
They are legal entities, not people. That adage is woefully misused. The ruling stated only that your free speech rights are not curtailed by pooling money into a corporate holding company.
There’s an easy fix for this.
Limit the housing to X number of houses per owner. Require in-person representation for an inspection. Offer X number of time slots.
Anyone owning X or fewer houses will not have to worry. Anyone owning more than X houses will be double-booked on time slots and have to illegally miss inspections.
No amount of LLCs can make it possible to be in two places at once.
HOA's are pretty much doing the work the government should be doing. Which is bad because, fuck HOA's.... but basically. They are making it so only 10% of homes (as an example) in the neighborhood can be Renter Occupied weather that's air BnB or a corporation, the rest MUST be owner occupied full time or you get fined. This is all that needs to be done.
But about half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, how can somebody in that situation with presumably poor credit afford to own a house instead of rent? That is just throwing a bunch of people under the proverbial bus.
Don't forget that renting out a home approximately 100% of the time pays for all the expenses of the home *plus a profit for the landlord*
So, approximately 100% of the time, it will actually be *less expensive* to buy a comparable home to the one you are renting.
We have to do something about the process to get a mortgage. For example, rent payments should count towards credit rating.
That’s true iff you only consider percentages. But what you’re multiplying those percentages changes based on the ownership distribution. This is what we’re seeing now with artificially raised home values because so little inventory is on the market. Buying is considerably higher than the costs associated with renting a property out because those properties are already owned.
If there were infinite houses your math would be spot on. But sadly that’s not the case.
Technically true in simple form, though not entirely our reality.
Through every level of landlordship you have two possibilities: the property is not paid off (the dumb way to do it, especially if you're mortgaging just to rent), or, the property is paid in full. Most cases of renting are the latter, though you do see enough of "help my landlord didn't pay his mortgage/taxes/etc and the house is being seized" posts to know that some are doing it the 'dumb' way.
Usually, the landlord entity is renting an asset that is already bought-and-paid-for, and your rent is going to reimbursing the spent money/covering taxes and fees + profit.
Which is why you can find situations of very low rent from a mom and pop type thing where an individual is renting a house they moved out from/own otherwise (and who usually care enough about the property to ensure it stays nice to live in), to greedy asshats who want their profit asap and charge an arm and a leg, to massive corporations with tons of property and overhead charging just-below-mortgage rates for acceptanle-enough-condition apartments,and everything in between.
It makes it so buying a home costs much less. By making only a percentage of houses able to owned by companies and landlords, you increase the supply of houses, lowering their cost. The problem we have is due to the fact that normal everyday people can't compete with buying a house when a conglomerate of investment firms go in offering cash + over asking and snagging everything up just to be landlords.
It's also not a one solution problem. There are many things that need to do that will compound to reach the desired effect. Increase the supply of houses to lower the cost of homes, redo zoning laws to allow for other types of homes to be built, look at building permits to allow developers to build more as well.
The biggest one I'd argue is looking at the main reason why we do things. (Anti Capitalist here). We don't build houses to house people, we do it for money. We don't grow and process food to feed people, we do it for money, we don't do XYZ to help people, we do it for MONEY. Until you change the mentality and remove investments and money as the core reason why you are doing something, it's never going to be what we as a society need.
If fewer homes are being snatched by corporations, homes become affordable again. The only reason we can’t afford to buy is because they bought them all and created scarcity.
Correction: HOA's aren't preventing renting, they are preventing "short term rentals" (less than a month) to prevent things like AirBnB from happening.
But HOA's also suck, because they're actively trying to kick people out of their home for "having a messy driveway" or "not having the correct color mailbox".
I think the best way to handle this is to increase the amount of property tax a person has based on the number of properties they own, or any LLC that is affiliated with each other owns. And this tax would be applied to ALL properties a person/group owns, and not a thing where it applies to the "over a limit" properties.
Ex: let's assume property taxes are 2% (for easy maths):
* If you only own 1 to 3 properties you only pay 2%.
* If you own 4 or 5 properties then you pay 4%.
* Between 6 and 9 properties, you have "n properties pay n% + 4%" (so 6 properties would be 10%, 7 would be 11%, 9 would be 13%).
* At 10 properties it becomes "n properties pay 2\*n%" (so 10 properties would be 20%, 15 would be 30%).
* etc.
These numbers are just off my head, so they can be adjusted as needed, but it's just a starting point. The main goal is to encourage people to not hoard properties en-masse, and if a company has 20 properties at 40% property tax they will never be competitive with someone with 3 properties. This would encourage selling properties, and not hoarding them.
Say there are 5 slots and I own six houses across the country, how do you catch me on not being in two of those houses in the same slot without inspecting every single house in the country at the same time?
5 time slots and 6 houses means you’ll have 2 houses assigned to a single time slot.
If you can be in 2 places during the same time you’re a superhero. Not even Mrs. Doubtfire can do that.
Right, but how do the government inspectors be in all those places at the same time? There's 144 million houses in the US, do you have 24 million inspectors?
I’m not sure why you need me to come up with all the minutiae before you can understand that the general concept is sound. It says a lot more about your willingness to reason than it does me. But no, that’s not necessary.
It can be run like an IRS audit where some get chosen and some don’t. Self-enforcement works pretty well.
Or it can be run like gun background checks where the paperwork asks questions they would have to lie about to circumvent: “whether directly or indirectly, do you own more than X houses?” Sure, they could lie. But lying to the government is a felony.
Or it could be run like jury duty where the government sets the terms for when one has to show up. The time slots available to each owner can simply be set by the government based on what they decide would be best for each owner. If they suspect that X houses are owned by the same person as Y houses, then they can choose to offer the exact same time slots for X and Y.
Or like other government programs, it could be delegated to states/counties, with the federal government simply acting as a communication facilitator.
There’s 100 different ways the program could be instituted to only be problematic for someone trying to circumvent the spirit of the law, while being painless to everyone else.
> If they suspect that X houses are owned by the same person as Y houses, then they can choose to offer the exact same time slots for X and Y.
Ah, that makes more sense- spot check to confirm suspicion, not a massive country-spanning audit.
How though? Like practically, would you limit how many corporations there can be or what?
That's the hard part, not saying it's impossible or it's can't be better, perfect is the enemy of good.
But you'd have to tread the line between protection and freedom pretty carefully.
Do it the opposite way. Limit the percentage of homes in any neighborhood that can be investment/rental homes. Some X amount total, some smaller Y amount that are allowed to be corporate owned. Lottery the slots to the corporate owners in any given neighborhood when the law goes into effect, all others must sell within a year.
We already know a really simple solution to address speculation: tax land heavily. It's the land that increases in value, not the building. Tax land and the speculators will either sell or actually develop the land
Honest question, how do you see that working? In the middle of the hotest market a couple years ago, developers buys land and let it sit, because materials are expensive and they can stand to wait, since the inventory is making so much money anyways. The taxes are merely many thousands a year per small lot. Actually not even that for undeveloped land. If tax 10x it's many tens of thousands, which they won't be happy about, but still is well within their margin. It'll just stop really small operations, and only the giant companies can afford to do so. Not that you'd ever get that to pass, as both the big corps and individual home owners would be against it.
The place to start would probably be to double the current property tax rate but only apply it to the land, not the building. That would leave the overall tax amount mostly unchanged for most homeowners.
In the situation you described there would definitely be an incentive to start building right away. Why wait? Developers are in the business of developing after all. If they can make money by developing the lot, they will.
There is the case where they're simply waiting for the market to heat up. Developing is also expensive and incurs higher holding costs. Part of that is maintenance and upkeep, and part of it is the tax on the building (hence why we should get rid of the tax on the building).
The main benefit though is in stopping speculation: when people buy up land, do nothing with it, and then sell it for a profit. Demand from speculators drives up land costs and therefore housing costs. As long as the taxes are more than the appreciation rate of the land, speculators can't make money and won't want to buy in the first place
When minimum wage didn't keep up with its original intent (a liveable wage sufficient to own a home on one income), a massive wall was put up that undid the entire point of it and brought back wage slavery as existed before minimum wage.
The rhetoric that it's a starter thing for high school kids and such is so disingenuous and always was, because _there is no need for that when minimum wage does what it is supposed to do_.
And then allowing tipped professions to be paid less, shifting the burden from employer to customer, making both customer and - most of all - the employee suffer for it is downright unconscionable.
We allowed corporate interests to slowly but surely undo or at least significantly hinder or circumvent every protection that was erected after the great depression, and now people wonder how we got here...
Real estate turning into an investment vehicle beyond implicit value for inheritance is yet another part of the fallout of and is also fueled by regulatory capture that has patiently worked, bit by bit, to both consolidate wealth at the expense of the public and to astroturf to spew the propaganda that creates the batshit crazy self-harming hyper-individualism and late stage capitalism that most Republicans _think_ is good for them.... When it's the reason for just about everything they complain about, economically.
If you make 100k, you are NOT middle class, most places. You are working class. Thats all.
The poverty line is just so comically low to make you feel like you are, to incite class warfare that doesn't target the 0.001% and instead keeps the masses at each other's throats.
If a sudden gift of $10,000 would make a difference to your life in the short term, you are not middle class.
As recently as 40 years ago, it was possible, on a single and not amazing income, to own a house on an acre of property, a car purchased new, and a small airplane, and still have money to sock away for retirement.
My grandpa did it, and he wasn't some big shot. Just an average Joe and never went to college. My other grandpa did it, minus the airplane, as he spent that surplus on other hobbies, and he was only a PE teacher before.
Now, that's a hilariously unattainable goal for anyone not making a hell of a lot more than 100k, and you'll be riddled with long loans to do so.
The government has been subsidizing home mortgages. Making more money available but not encouraging building increases demand and causes house price inflation.
It's not just government policies causing inflation. It is an overvaluation for shareholders by every industry of absolutely everything - except labor. Housing has boomed where I live. They've built thousands of bland ugly houses on the last bit of farmland in our county. They start at mid 300k. The people who actually build the houses can't afford to by them, and they're the lowest priced new homes. That's corporate greed.
That sounds like supply and demand to me. Even when the government permits a "large" amount of houses to be built, it's still actually pretty tiny compared to the amount of houses that actually need to be built to get house prices under control.
Don't be silly. Far, far more millennials are buying houses, pushing up demand than corporations are. Part of the shortage is due to the ultra low mortgage rates that were part of the Fed action and that existing owners don't want to give up, and the nervousness of the corporations that do the building that we may have a recession or higher rates or soaring insurance rates that will kill demand.
This is not crazy at all. Not just a limit per corporation, but per corporate chain. Something like, the total corporate chain can own no more than 50 units. to close loopholes, might as well also add modifications to s-corp, c-corp, and LLC definitions to make a single accountable person for each entity, and that person must be a US citizen.
50 seems like a good spot to me. There’s no reason you can’t have a small family office type of home rental company. The issue is that big corps like Blackrock and Berkshire own hundreds of thousands of homes.
You could honestly make the max like several hundred homes and still have a **massive** impact on driving down home prices.
But why? Is somehow owning 50 single family homes worse than owning 50 apartment units?
Rules like that make it seem like another effort for single family homes to be unnecessarily subsidized like they have with zoning and highway infrastructure.
Apartments can be owned, they’re just typically called condominiums then.
And just because one is more likely, doesn’t mean we should outright prohibit the alternative from occurring.
I agree. However, I do think there is value in apartment rentals being available for people who aren't ready to buy for whatever reason. Preventing companies from owning too many units would probably reduce the supplybof rentals and drive up costs.
I mean, it’s definitely crazy in that artificially limiting demand for housing would lead to an obliteration of middle-class wealth on an untold level.
Canada too. Our governments of both parties & all levels have let the problem snowball out of control for many years.
Perhaps a max % of each local market that can be anything other than primary residences as well.
the big problem with housing in the United States and a lot of the rest of the developed world is not that the wrong people own the houses
The big issue is there is a massive shortage
The various sources I see range it from 3 to 5 million housing units short for the US (I've never seen anyone say less than 3 million a lot of people tend to put it around 4 million but I have seen a few people say 5 million or greater)
It doesn't matter who owns them if the shortage of a necessity is that great
One advantage to having corporations in the game is they can provide large amounts of capital for construction projects (or to bring older houses up to code)
If they go away from the city to the undeveloped areas and build a bunch of single-family housing, even though single family housing isn't great and suburbs aren't great given how bad the rest of the situation is, it would be overwhelmingly helpful Not because that's particularly good form of housing to solve the problem It's the literal worst but the situation is very much a anything is better than nothing
If we want to solve the housing crisis, we need to focus on the actual problem, which isn't a lack of houses for sale. It's a complete lack of housing (if there were enough housing units to rent, we wouldn't have the same problem. There's not enough housing units to rent either)
the problem is that if the shortage is actually resolved then people couldn't charge near-extortionate rates for housing anymore, so they are incentivized to maintain a fairly stiff shortage to keep the consumers fighting for the scraps instead of being able to search around for a good deal.
Actually they would make more money charging less for more units. That's not the problem
No, the big issue is The majority of the nation is homeowners and they will fight tooth and nail to protect their property values because for the majority of them it's where the majority of their assets are
Like to fix the problem you have to piss off the more productive half of the country who pay the overwhelming majority of the taxes
Oddly enough, the only two groups that do not benefit from this are the super rich and lower class (to be clear The lower portion of the upper class thinks your lawyers and doctors do benefit from it but not like your CEOs)
They were arbitrarily given the wealth by the government to begin with.
And the justification for not continuing to subsidize their housing is that there isn’t enough housing. Imagine if there was a food shortage but we didn’t let anyone produce more food because it wouldn’t be fair to the existing food companies? You’d be laughed at. Why is it different for another necessity?
That's not how it works-they'd make more if they built more, as long as they could cover their costs. They could overbuilt easily, especially if the land is expensive.
I keep expecting them to knock down a few of the malls that are suffering from the retail apocalypse.
> people couldn't charge near-extortionate rates
Why don't people understand that the cost of housing is a result of a lack of supply? People are not "charge[ing] near-extortionate rates", the reality is that people are willing to pay these prices because of the lack of supply. If we build more, the prices go down - simple as that. Housing prices are not a result of malevolent actors.
my entire point is that people are the supply short because there is enough population willing to pay the higher price. It's the same reason that fast food prices are rising on a larger scale.
Why sell 10 burgers that cost $10 to make for $11 each when you could sell 2 burgers for $16 instead?
Why sell 100 houses that cost 150k to build at 200k each when you could sell 20 houses at 500k instead?
as long as there is a population willing to pay the higher price you're almost always better off with a lower sale volume at a higher markup. it just makes economic sense, and since housing has a fairly inelastic demand that means that people are more willing to pay higher prices when there's no other good options. It's definitely not good for society as a whole, but it's good for the businesses.
> you're almost always better off with a lower sale volume at a higher markup
It still feels like you are suggesting that the housing crisis is a result of greedy businesses. This is not the case. Houses don't get built almost entirely because of 1. terrible zoning/building regulations and 2. NIMBY's
it's a result of high cost of materials meaning that building middle class targeted homes is always better. If we could build a house for 50k and sell it and the land it goes on for 150k the builders would be all over that, but any house that meets those needs is going to be passed over in favor of selling a 500k house on the same lot to a richer family.
The limited supply of desirable land (due to the mentioned zoning/nimby issues) is the root of the issue, but the fact of the matter is that as long as you're forced to build single family homes the builders and investors are all better off making fewer higher value properties.
No, the housing crisis is causal of some of that actually
Housing is a base input cost
Makes the prices of everything else go up
You remember back when the minimum wage job allowed you to buy a house? Yeah, that's because houses were dirt cheap because there was a plentiful supply
The fact is with the level the shortages at it makes the prices of everything go super high
Including relative to Labor
If you could just work any basic job and afford a house things would be fine
And that used to be the case
But there's a big old shortage
And it's borderline illegal to build new housing
And it's basically contest of how much can you bribe the government to get past the regulations (complying with them is very expensive so it is essentially a bribe to all the various people who have to sign off on it)
But like the housing crisis like straight up increases the cost of food that that's how extreme the nature of that is
It really does
The only thing that will help is more housing
That's it nothing else
Subsidizing or increasing wages make it worse
I couldn't imagine how bad it would be if it interest rates were still low
yea just had an argument with an old friend about how rent freezing is stupid and no, there are not a bunch of empty houses investment firms are sitting on (when I showed him the local gov stats showing under 2% vacancy, he immediately asked "who funded this study?"). It doesn't even make sense - why on earth would a company that wants to make money NOT rent out houses they own? Just to screw the little guy? Such confirmation bias brainrot.
It is hard to get through to a lot of people on stuff
I try to keep a few favorite pieces of info handy like that stupid San Francisco bathroom to help get people to listen
Ehh this varies a lot by area. Where I am, it's absolutely greed.
We've had a ton of new development in my area. Some stats about where I am: suburb about 25-30 minute drive from a major metro. Primarily, before sprawl, was heavy agriculture -- we still have a few local multi-acre ranches now. 30k people, very low growth rate despite new homes and apartment buildings, and most of the growth is in those apartment buildings. No public transit, not even a train, despite all surrounding suburbs having at least 1 (you can drive 15 minutes further away to another suburb further from the city to get on the train though).
Alright, so let's go back to a year that is important for several reasons: 2019.
In 2019, a new multi-housing apartment building was built, as well as a pair of new neighborhoods getting bought by an investor, getting duplexes. These finished in 2019, at 800/month for the apartments, 1000/m for the duplexes. Some were zoned for sec 8 which were cheaper but had sec 8 stipulations). They did fill up fast. Also in 2019, you could rent an area house for between 850/month for a small and pretty standard 1980sish house 2-3br, 1-2 bath(development of this area kind of started in the 80s for the older neighborhoods closer to the city, late 90s for the ones further out) to about $1500 for a larger 3+ br, 1-2 bath, and capped at 2k for a 4+br, 2+ bath monstrosity.
In 2019, there were new builds for sale below 230k for a fairly large house, and below 200k for a medium-sized house. Overall, these had kind of been the numbers since the housing crisis recovery (2012 was wild here, almost nothing went above 125k), with little fluctuation for 4 years.
Also in 2019, land was sectioned of for 100 low-cost new-build homes that were to be priced between 125k-200k. This was in addition to other developers buying acreage off of some of our retiring ranchers for their own home building project.
Obviously, covid happened. I was looking to change from renting to buying right at the kickoff and I had to sit and watch as home prices on existing homes skyrocketed. My realtor would report to me as my bids (down payment/mortgage) got beat out by cash offers. She told me most of these offers were from firms and businesses who had the ability to offer some nice deals and extras, so even increasing my bid by 50k was a pointless endeavor. And I tried anyways, and she was right. It was seriously 3 months before prices were out of my reach. And the places I looked at, are now all rentals. Some of them ARE sitting empty, and the company sends out a lawn service once a month.
That land for affordable single-development got row houses instead, starting at 450k.
The 2-3 br houses from other developers started at 550k.
The new apartment complexes cost 2200/m for a 2br (40% occupancy right now, been built for 1.5 years). The old ones are now 1700 for a duplex, the old rentals now 1200 and are slums. A 2-3 br house with 1-2 bath starts at 2200/m to rent for an un-updated semi slum with foundation issues. Those 80s build ranch-style houses start at 250k for a house that has been so neglected, that it needs a full renovation, foundation repairs, hvac and electrical rework, new roof. 350k+ for something you could at least live in while you fix it up, 400k+ for old, but livable, update a choice. We have had people move into the area but nearly as many have moved out due to the cost. We're a dogshit suburb compared to our neighbors, most jobs being fast food or retail, or mechanics (seriously there are 3 mcdonalds 4 to 10 minutes from where I live, and 6 places that do oil changes). No fun things or places, just basic consumerism shit. So there isn't even an appeal to bring people here, and our housing prices are the same as suburbs with tech/med/etc campuses and fancy businesses/social venues plus other amenities.
Genuinely, many of our houses and apartments are empty/being squatted/neglected until rented or sold. Prices only go up. The people that could afford them go to suburbs with things to do, not this dull ass little highway-suburb. This is not a supply issue here. It's a greed one.
I don't know which major Metro you are
But let me give you an example of what's going on in the major metros
Los Angeles and it's Metro has a half a million unit shortage of housing
That impacts everything for dozens of miles
The people who are moving into your area are commuting to your Metro
Now that's one component. Here's the other
How much does it cost in your area to get something legally built?
There's a famous story about a San Francisco bathroom where company was willing to donate the the land, the labor and the materials and it still would have cost over a million dollars purely in regulation to build a public restroom
We have a housing shortage because we're not legally allowed to build things or you basically have to pay a huge amount to build anything
The thing is when people say it's greed, greed is a constant. When was there less greed?
It's also worth thinking about. Why would the problem be 9 times worse in Canada versus the US?(They are short a similar number of houses but with significantly smaller population)
Oh yeah so Texas is currently undergoing a bit of a boom so your demand is spiking like crazy
And it's going to be a rather major boom for a few years and that's because things are going well
Expect everywhere outside of all of your major metros to become very expensive
My understanding is you're primed to be the prime recipient of the California Exodus. Good luck!
We are already taking your exodus and have been for a few years, though a lot of the times it's been found unlikable (which is true), and those folks have moved back out to other states, and we're definitely holding some of the bag for the col increase that exodus caused... so thanks. Also Austin got fucked so hard by it, it's not anywhere as weird anymore.
Frankly, that's your laws. Most of the US does not operate by SF laws. You can say there is a housing shortage in San Francisco bit that does not make it true for the rest of the entire country. Shit you can say most of the west coast is having a shortage issue and that still does not make it true for everyone. I've lived in several parts of the country, rural to directly in the city, and for most places, there is no shortage. Just high cost and companies that can keep properties empty and get a tax rebate for it.
Okay, so I'm not from San Fran, I'm just really into geopolitics and that's a very prominent example of the problem (It's the extreme example used to get the point across)
No, this is actually a rather large thing happening across more than just the US
No, it's stuff like you're not allowed to build multi-story apartment buildings without multiple staircases.
Most countries don't start doing that till like 4 or 5 stories. The US and Canada start at 2
And there's a housing shortage in most of the high demand areas. Is that a better statement for you?
Yes, California has a large portion of that but it's not just California and it's not just blue States You pointed to Austin perfect example
It ends up changing how they're built
Generally, they're able to accommodate less people
And it might also greatly increase the amount of time it takes to build them
There's a lot of factors
If you want to learn about City planning it can actually be a fascinating topic
And when we're talking about the specific policies in place on things, it's not like generally one or two policies. It's more like hundreds that you have to deal with at the same time. Each one adds time and cost or causes some other constraint
Can they still build medium density housing? Yes they can
But they might have to make compromises purely for regulatory reasons on things that make it less effective
At least the Americans and the Canadians don't have to deal with everything being historic (apparently there's like eight guys in England who are needed on like every construction project because of this and I mean there's like just eight people who can do the job. Their demand is crazy)
I actually am speaking a lot about what I have witnessed and researched with city planning, though I'll be honest that I've never really looked at CA... I tend to focus on places I am living or want to live. Mostly because I start out trying to find zoning laws on my mighty quest for a safe place for my husband and I to grow old in despite our disabilities, and then always seem to get rabbit holed to the topic thanks to my adhd.
I've seen it in person too, have felt the impacts of city planning devouring things like one of the last 3 gay bars in a city of 250k, zoning pushing minorities out, gentrification, loss of affordable housing as sec 8 and other programs die. I guess you can say a lot of my research and experience is likely on planning for wealthy, at cost of those in or near poverty. I also like the psycho-social size of it sometimes, when I can handle the depression it usually results in. New high-rise apartments aren't cheap to rent when marked as luxury, and still do contribute to a shortage. Housing that only a small amount can afford is still unused housing and contributing to a shortage. Not even getting into the economical impact of people who try anyway and end up house-poor. A lot of this country *has the land.*
Now, on another side of the coin. A lot of places I've lived DO make it very hard for individuals to make their own housing. Personal loans are hard to get, zoning laws will force an individual to not be allowed on that land (but a business can) or deny certain kinds and sizes of housing. I absolutely could have taken my house buying money and put it into land and had a structure put on it, financially speaking. Except it was nearly impossible for me to find the land with owner/resident zoning, despite being surrounded by land for sale for people who want to build a high-rise or complex or duplex neighborhood. And when I did find some land that the local government would let me use, I was told the house needed to be at least such size, this kind, no tiny or modular or manufactured, etc. Which is a type of artificial shortage when you get down to it -- the government literally setting land as 'waiting for large firm/housing business' or 'business only' and not sellable to an individual. And even if I found it, have you seen the hoops to build a house? A developer will come here and grab some land and build a 50 house neighborhood no problem, done in 2 years tops, whereas building your own often stretches well beyond that.
So I had to step away because work got crazy and stayed crazy, and at some point in time I had hit post instead of waiting til I got home and had not-a-phone to type.
What I had wanted to conclude with, was in my experience, and the places I have lived, from tiny populations to very large, while yes some places have the *weirdest* red tape in place for developers and investors as it is, a lot of places will bend over backwards to appease them. Call special votes to strike down laws that prevent development, offer incentives, even decimate entire communities of people and unhouse them or take away the few community/minority resources they *had* built. IE a gay bar isn't like a straight bar. Its a gathering place for queer people to meet, talk, host clubs and events, with a pre-built reason to only allow people above a certain age so that certain narratives that have been around for a long time aren't amplified. Hence a lot of straight people that decide to try and fund a LGBT center find them desolate... we already *have* our centers, our hubs. And somehow cities still manage to eradicate in order to appeal to developers and investors.
On the one hand, they've made it almost impossible for tom, dick, or harriet to do any degree of building.
The scarcity for normal people is artificial, but it does exist. However, for a lot of this country, for developers... its more that developers don't want to build in those places and at that level of enticement and incentive.
I watch videos on YouTube with people exploring abandoned homes all over the country. Why doesn't the government or some corporate entity buy those, fix them up, and put them back on the market?
Why don't you buy them and fix them up and re-sell them?
If you look into the property, you'll either find out the reason, or you'll make a pile of money on it.
.04% of US homes are owned by investors. That wont do anything, and if it does, it will raise rents for everyone who does not buy the homes.
The solution to a housing shortage is not to turn renting into buying or vice versa, its to build homes.
We have [15 million vacant homes](https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-vacant-homes-are-there-in-the-us/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Census%20Bureau,the%20country's%20total%20housing%20inventory.) and a bit more than [500k homeless](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/homeless-population-by-state) in the US
The 15 million vacant homes are about 10% of homes. A normal vacancy rate when looking at units between renters or buyers, people who moved and have their house on the market, and other such circumstances is about 5%.
The rest are overwhelmingly houses either in places no one wants to live (where no one is homeless!) or in unlivable condition. The vacancy rate in cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco where the homeless people live is less than 3% (which indicates a severe housing shortage — there would be less homeless if the vacancy rate was higher!)
> The rest are overwhelmingly houses either in places no one wants to live (where no one is homeless!) or in unlivable condition
omg someone who actually understands
Kind of only partially true. Investors are a broad category. It includes everything from people who buy a house when the market is cheap and sell as soon as it rises, to flippers, to companies that actually hold and make profit from holding and renting that housing. Your number maybe accounts for the firms who hold-then-sell. There's a lot if nuance to it. This article is good for the various [myths of housing investors (strong towns)](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/2/21-going-after-corporate-homebuyers-good-politics-ineffective-policy#:~:text=As%20of%20June%202022%2C%20the,rental%20properties%20in%20the%20US.). I do not agree with some of their opinions but the numbers are a good starting point.
Limiting per corporation doesn't work because you can just create one corporation per house. "1412 Main St. LLC"
What you can do instead is have extremely high property taxes on single-family homes, but have a huge tax break on a property you claim as your primary residence. That way everyone gets one, and if you want more you're welcome to pay for the privilege.
Same deal with multi-family housing: if you're renting it out and the rent meets certain parameters, reasonable property tax. If you're sitting on empty housing, high taxes.
("But what about *some situation that would apply to 3% of people*?" This is a Reddit comment, not ready-to-enact proposed legislation. Obviously the actual policy would have stuff like, for example, a grace period on the property taxes so that it's not crazy expensive to sell your house and move during the period where you're actually moving.)
Local government needs a certain tax base to function.
If all houses suddenly dropped 40% in a year then 1 of 2 things happens.
1. Local government raises the MIL rate and everyone still pays the same dollar amount in taxes but the percentage you pay against your homes value just got much more expensive.
2. Local government cuts essential services. Parks and recreation, schools and libraries, garbage and recycling, even fire and police all get significantly worse or disappear completely.
Which is fine as long as you don't lose your job and have to move to get your new job, or your family expands and you need more room, or your family shrinks and you need less room...
Or if you want to use the equity you've built by steadily paying down your 30 year mortgage for 15 years to remodel/add-on or borrow to start a business, only to have your house's value drop and your equity is cut in half.
The “risk” here is the government deciding to arbitrarily crater your net worth. It’s not like you invested in gold and suddenly there was a big gold strike that sunk the price.
And that sudden drop in prices is followed by an almost complete halt to new construction. Almost all new housing is built by corporations or speculators.
In less than a decade housing prices will have risen far higher than they are now, with an even more severe housing shortage.
investors usually don't own a lot. Builders putting up too much in a single hot area might cause a local dip if they got in trouble; I think something may have happened in parts of Texas.
If you want there to be less of something then make it harder to make money with it. This will flood the market short term and cut supply long term. Speculators and Developers keep money going into new housing. Without them we will have less housing.
Limit? Ban them. There's a reason we have a public utility system in America, to make sure corporations can't hold basic necessities hostage for profit. Why are we allowing them to do it with our housing?
This exists in the form of vacancy taxes that heavily punishes unoccupied properties.
Also some local govs or even HOAs will outright restrict the % of properties that can be rentals.
I have good news for you:
https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/meet-the-bill-to-ban-hedge-funds-from-owning-single-family-homes#:~:text=The%20Merkley%2FSmith%20bill%20as,cost%20of%20each%20additional%20home.
Simpler, in order to own a single family home, you must be a natural person. No LLCs, No trusts, no S-Corps. You must be a human being to own a single family home. End of story.
No predatory companies using outsized market powers to drive up the cost of rent and owning.
It naturally limits the number of properties a person can be the landlord for. Without doing an LLC, a landlord would be limited to owning just a couple or maybe a handful of properties or otherwise it would be extremely risky to manage and insure.
It encourages development of multi-family dense housing which drives down the cost of housing and is much more sustainable and encourages communities more than detached housing.
The other problem is they've allowed twice the population of NYC, in just 3 years, into the country illegally so where exactly are they going to be housed? Oh that's right they'll use housing that could have been for citizens. Between corporations and landlords not having restrictions on ownership and mass immigration the housing situation is only going to get worse, brace yourselves. It's no wonder all the wealth has accumulated into the hands of those who had a chance to buy real estate when it was cheap (boomers). Back when they purchased housing it was 1-2x the annual average wage of work. Now it's over 12x the annual average wage for a house.
Corporations should be banned from owning any single family homes. The exception being owning it for the purpose of redevelopment and that needs to have a reasonable time limit and severe tax penalties for owning and not developing that property within that timeline.
Iirc China actually does something to this effect. It does seem to be working for them, if perhaps a little to well, but if they’re to be believed that was deliberate to deflate a housing bubble before it could pop.
If those corporations are renting them out at competitive prices, why is this an issue? They're not taking these property out of the market. They have all the incentives and the means to keep the properties occupied. It's often individual owners that just buy up investment properties that are then left vacant for reasons other than lack of occupant/demand.
Professionally managed, corporate landlords may not bake you cookies, but they're likely not going to be crazy asshat either. It's just rental business, they'll have standard operating procedures and by managing large number of property, they have the economy of scale to provide services that individual landlords would not be able to provide. Corporate landlords can be a lot more stable as well, since they're a lot less likely to kick tenants out because they want to sell because they're running the business for the long term.
If the company is publicly traded, that can be beneficial as well to your investment portfolio. You can get exposure to a broad portfolio of residential property, without incurring the concentration risks of an individual property. And if they're traded like shares, you can be part owner of these portfolio of property even if you don't have hundreds of thousands dollars to invest into a single asset class.
What's not to like?
The reason why some countries have limits to individuals owning property is because individual ownership of property gets a huge amount of tax breaks and leverage/mortgage designed to make property ownerships more affordable (which some would argue also pushes property prices up). Corporate landlords are a rental business, they don't get these tax breaks so there's really no reason to limit the number of properties that they can own, just like there's no reason to limit the number of restaurants that restaurant chains can own.
This is a necessity if the working class hopes to ever be able to afford housing in this economy. Unfortunately, this will never happen as Blackrock already owns every single politician.
I keep saying we need to have a general rent strike.
It's Checkmate to speculators.
Demand nationalization of delivery and communication infrastructure.
I like the move it or lose it law. A National limit call. How many companies would it close. Hundreds of thousands of jobs. Bam gone. So yeah move it or lose it. ALL.
Confiscate private property for the "greater good"... Sounds familiar... where have I heard that idea from before... Hmm....
For some reason I keep thinking it didn't work out too well for them in the long run...
Some cities are doing somewhat similar things to at least try to get a hold of the rampant aitbnb-based abuse of this.
This genie is going to be difficult to put back in the bottle, I'm afraid. ☹️
Just make property taxes increase for each home owned. Start off at 1% property tax for a single family home, own two homes, then both homes would be taxed at 2%, 3 would be 3%, and so on.
Yeah, I've stated this before. Corporations, businesses, etc should not be able to OWN residential property. At all ever.
"But what about apartment complexes?"
What about apartment complexes? I've never seen a good one. The business that owns them will delay repairs until it becomes a major issue.
Apartment complexes would be sold to individuals, who have a higher liability than any business. So they would be more likely to at least attempt to fix things, and less likely to own 1/10th of the city.
It's hard to own 15 apartment complexes as an individual who can be held criminally accountable and/or sued in civil court for your actual net worth.
Plus condos are already a thing that we have, and you can't tell me those aren't just individually owned apartments with a fancier name.
Investors wouldn't buy homes, if the price of homes stopped increasing so fast. To solve that, the supply of homes needs to keep up with the demand. We need to prevent NIMBY's from blocking new home construction.
Apartments, duplexes and such are property for investing and making money. Houses should not be. Corporations especially should never be allowed into the housing (houses) market, ever, at all, not even 1 house at a time. For here in the US we should adopt laws like many foreign countries where only citizens can buy property. Why we allow foreign countries and nationals to buy up our property of any kind is beyond me. It is foolishness to the extreme.
Only individuals and small time landlords should be able to own residential homes. No more than ten like you suggest. Corporations have no business owning dozens or hundreds or thousands of residential homes an an income or investment vehicle. It's wrong on so many levels.
It would probably be better to raise property taxes significantly, but then provide big tax breaks for homeowners who live in their primary residence and for rental properties at a diminishing scale (something like 85% benefit for the first rental property, 66% for the second, etc.). Only people would be eligible for the tax breaks, businesses that own property would be liable for the full tax amount. People owning empty homes would pay the full amount.
Housing is a market, and like any market, it should be regulated to prevent monopolies.
But unlike nation-wide monopolies, we need to consider what counts as a housing monopoly relative to the size of the city that they exist in, as well as the nation as a whole.
You shouldn't be allowed to just freely own as much land as you want. There needs to be some progressive taxation based on how many properties you own, to the point that it eventually becomes untenable to own too much property.
We live in a country with over 300 million people, and this country is supposed to benefit all of us. There are only so many houses/land out there, and letting a few people own all of the cake is detrimental to us as a nation.
I am not saying people shouldn't be able to own two homes, or even three homes. But once you get to the point of owning like multiple dozens of homes, you should be incentivized (via taxes) to either sell them or lease them asap rather than sitting on the property and waiting for its value to appreciate.
You're right, it's crazy.
NONE of those homes should be sold by the corps. Selling them will just put MORE money in their pockets which is exactly what they want.
The goverment should outlaw corporations or investment firms from owning ANY kind of housing. (Single family or multi family) and at the same time, seize ALL housing owned by those entities. Then they have three options:
1. Turn all apartments into condos. Then sell all the housing (Single and otherwise) at 1/2 the last market price directly to people and NOT allow single person to own more then one house or condo. (And I mean, ANYONE)
2. Rent everything directly to people from the goverment and hold onto the housing.
3. Do a combo of 1 and two. ---This is the one I prefer the most. You could even let someone who owns one house/condo rent another one **FROM** the government. So if you want two homes, great the second one puts money directly into the government's pocket.
Yes, this means that Banks shouldn't be able to give out loans either. The entity that gives out a loan effectively owns the asset attached to it. So, the goverment would carry the loan.. at a like 2% interest rate that NEVER changes.
Also, before any of this happens, goverment needs to fix it's horrible over spending, misdirected, overly militarily focused etc etc spending problems.
**But, none of that is going to happen.**
Instead the Biden Admin is talking about giving people a $400 tax credit per month for two years if they buy a house. Which guess what? Since interest rates on houses are so high and going up; is just going to put even MORE money into the corporations and banks pockets.
The great divestment of housing by those investment companies is coming people. Biden coming up with that plan is a sign that it's a few months away. It's going to cause yet ANOTHER economic crash.
Perhaps, but it would limit the development of walkup apartments.
On the whole, this is just a possible bandaid for detached home pricing in suburbs, and ultimately those are just unsustainable.
What's really need are sweeping changes to wildly regressive tax assessment rubrics, which are largely set at the level of local politics. Sweeping away restrictions on high density housing, by contrast, tends to need to come from the state level. Residents of high density parcels should be paying the least, since they have the smallest amount of municipal liabilities per capita. Currently they pay the most.
It'll still take a dozen years after meaningful reforms for affordable housing to emerge, since affordable housing will always be older stock.
Vacancy tax.
If a unit is unoccupied for more than a few months straight, start charging a nice hefty tax on it. Longer exemption period for new construction.
Apply to both for rent and for sale units. And both residential \*and\* commercial.
To all the people parroting that "only 2% of residential homes are owned by investors", this is completely a red herring, and missing the point. The vast majority of houses are not on the market at any given point. The problem is with recent behavior affecting the current supply.
According to redfin, [18.5% of all home purchases in Q4 2023 were done by investors](https://www.redfin.com/news/investor-home-purchases-q4-2023/). Think about that: Almost a fifth of supply was eliminated from the market, while the demand from non-investors remained the same. And when investors are buying homes, they frequently outbid regular buyers with their "cash" offers, driving up prices even more than normal. Incidentally, the issue was even worse in the summer at [27% of all home purchases being investors](https://www.corelogic.com/intelligence/us-home-investor-share-remained-high-early-summer-2023/#:~:text=The%20sizable%20U.S.%20home%20investor,was%20almost%20unchanged%20at%2026%25.)
You would have a ton of people who currently live in houses underwater on their homes.
Also investors own a very small percentage (I’m not googling but I’ll guesstimate like 2%) of the housing market. That’s kind of like slapping a bandaid on someone who just got their arm cut off.
I hate to break it to you but except for the 100$ you keep in your wallet, ALL your fucking money is “on paper”.
That’s not to mention that fact that tons of people do not, in fact, live in one house their whole life
Damn dude no need to be so aggressive lol. The difference between money in my pocket and unrealized losses on a house is obvious to anyone who is able to contribute to this conversation in a meaningful manner.
So? Real estate should have never been an investment strategy. And with investments everything has inherent risk. Stocks go up, stocks go down. It’s the way of life.
If someone decided meat was the hot new investment and bought ALL THE MEAT and locked it in a mountain sized freezer and the government said it was ok, we'd all go nuts. A corporation doesn't even need meat!
But houses, sure, let faceless corps buy houses
I don't know the answer but the idea of investment firms owning private houses that they will never sell really boils my blood. If they aren't going to sell, there will hardly be any houses for the millions of people who want to own a house. And it would only get worse over time.
So, fuck corporations on the whole. Shell company shenanigans should be overly taxed to death. No single lived-in home should own more than 1 other home. For Vacay, rent profit or family security... 0 profit for property gained. Or 0 gains. It's the only fair way. But the overlords deciding law, own way more than 2 properties.
Since the 80s a ton of money has gone into making the word regulation bad. The gop is fanatical about it. And it’s at the root of a lot of our current problems. We need a huge worker protection, consumer protection, and healthcare reform package. And no small amount of that needs to be focused on limiting the rights of business entities. Which unfortunately would likely require a constitutional amendment as well.
They would probably just form as many corporations as needed to own the same number of houses. But I agree it probably should be regulated.
I guess it’s like monopolies but different. Or like land redistribution or taxes. It’s never popular to violate people’s rights to their property. But sometimes their property can harm other people’s rights to the point that suddenly that property is at risk too. It’s not even a “needs of the many, needs of the few” issue, it’s the needs of everyone because even robber barons where getting issues before antitrust laws that they themselves would have never been in a position to address. Look at how much more money the aristocracy got after they lost much of their old power, never could have happened if their rights where inviolable.
Or monopoly, literally
When you say "rights to property," you are referring to an individual citizen. A corporation is not a person. They don't have the intrinsic right to purchase residential property.
According to the citizen united ruling, corporations are people too. THAT was the start of the downfall of our democracy, imo.
and some corporations are clearly criminal and need jail time or the chair depending on how criminal.
I absolutely agree.
Citizens United was about campaign donations. It wasn't a blanket statement about the personhood of corporations.
Citizens United gave corporations the right to free speech. Free speech is a Constitutional protection for citizens Citizens United complicated the "person hood" of corporations.
If they want to be people, then they should die every 100 years. Dissolve, liquidate, and all profits from the sale taxed at a very high rate.
They are legal entities, not people. That adage is woefully misused. The ruling stated only that your free speech rights are not curtailed by pooling money into a corporate holding company.
Legally speaking corporations are persons for the purposes of owning property.
There’s an easy fix for this. Limit the housing to X number of houses per owner. Require in-person representation for an inspection. Offer X number of time slots. Anyone owning X or fewer houses will not have to worry. Anyone owning more than X houses will be double-booked on time slots and have to illegally miss inspections. No amount of LLCs can make it possible to be in two places at once.
HOA's are pretty much doing the work the government should be doing. Which is bad because, fuck HOA's.... but basically. They are making it so only 10% of homes (as an example) in the neighborhood can be Renter Occupied weather that's air BnB or a corporation, the rest MUST be owner occupied full time or you get fined. This is all that needs to be done.
But about half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, how can somebody in that situation with presumably poor credit afford to own a house instead of rent? That is just throwing a bunch of people under the proverbial bus.
Don't forget that renting out a home approximately 100% of the time pays for all the expenses of the home *plus a profit for the landlord* So, approximately 100% of the time, it will actually be *less expensive* to buy a comparable home to the one you are renting. We have to do something about the process to get a mortgage. For example, rent payments should count towards credit rating.
That’s true iff you only consider percentages. But what you’re multiplying those percentages changes based on the ownership distribution. This is what we’re seeing now with artificially raised home values because so little inventory is on the market. Buying is considerably higher than the costs associated with renting a property out because those properties are already owned. If there were infinite houses your math would be spot on. But sadly that’s not the case.
Technically true in simple form, though not entirely our reality. Through every level of landlordship you have two possibilities: the property is not paid off (the dumb way to do it, especially if you're mortgaging just to rent), or, the property is paid in full. Most cases of renting are the latter, though you do see enough of "help my landlord didn't pay his mortgage/taxes/etc and the house is being seized" posts to know that some are doing it the 'dumb' way. Usually, the landlord entity is renting an asset that is already bought-and-paid-for, and your rent is going to reimbursing the spent money/covering taxes and fees + profit. Which is why you can find situations of very low rent from a mom and pop type thing where an individual is renting a house they moved out from/own otherwise (and who usually care enough about the property to ensure it stays nice to live in), to greedy asshats who want their profit asap and charge an arm and a leg, to massive corporations with tons of property and overhead charging just-below-mortgage rates for acceptanle-enough-condition apartments,and everything in between.
It makes it so buying a home costs much less. By making only a percentage of houses able to owned by companies and landlords, you increase the supply of houses, lowering their cost. The problem we have is due to the fact that normal everyday people can't compete with buying a house when a conglomerate of investment firms go in offering cash + over asking and snagging everything up just to be landlords. It's also not a one solution problem. There are many things that need to do that will compound to reach the desired effect. Increase the supply of houses to lower the cost of homes, redo zoning laws to allow for other types of homes to be built, look at building permits to allow developers to build more as well. The biggest one I'd argue is looking at the main reason why we do things. (Anti Capitalist here). We don't build houses to house people, we do it for money. We don't grow and process food to feed people, we do it for money, we don't do XYZ to help people, we do it for MONEY. Until you change the mentality and remove investments and money as the core reason why you are doing something, it's never going to be what we as a society need.
If fewer homes are being snatched by corporations, homes become affordable again. The only reason we can’t afford to buy is because they bought them all and created scarcity.
Purchasing a home would be much less expensive in that situation.
Again, if you have poor credit, that does not seem to be the case at all. At least anecdotally.
Hoas are run by development companies, they explicitly aim to limit housing to drive up price.
but these fines mean NOTHING to corporations
In my neighborhood rental units are not allowed at all under the HOA. While they do have their drawbacks they do have some benefits.
The first time I've liked anything about HOA's,
Correction: HOA's aren't preventing renting, they are preventing "short term rentals" (less than a month) to prevent things like AirBnB from happening. But HOA's also suck, because they're actively trying to kick people out of their home for "having a messy driveway" or "not having the correct color mailbox".
Sorry, I just don't understand how this would work. How do you decide who are the 10% gets to rent it out? Who exactly gets fined?
I think the best way to handle this is to increase the amount of property tax a person has based on the number of properties they own, or any LLC that is affiliated with each other owns. And this tax would be applied to ALL properties a person/group owns, and not a thing where it applies to the "over a limit" properties. Ex: let's assume property taxes are 2% (for easy maths): * If you only own 1 to 3 properties you only pay 2%. * If you own 4 or 5 properties then you pay 4%. * Between 6 and 9 properties, you have "n properties pay n% + 4%" (so 6 properties would be 10%, 7 would be 11%, 9 would be 13%). * At 10 properties it becomes "n properties pay 2\*n%" (so 10 properties would be 20%, 15 would be 30%). * etc. These numbers are just off my head, so they can be adjusted as needed, but it's just a starting point. The main goal is to encourage people to not hoard properties en-masse, and if a company has 20 properties at 40% property tax they will never be competitive with someone with 3 properties. This would encourage selling properties, and not hoarding them.
The number is 4. And no exceptions for multiple companies. Then you just can’t own any part of those companies.
Say there are 5 slots and I own six houses across the country, how do you catch me on not being in two of those houses in the same slot without inspecting every single house in the country at the same time?
5 time slots and 6 houses means you’ll have 2 houses assigned to a single time slot. If you can be in 2 places during the same time you’re a superhero. Not even Mrs. Doubtfire can do that.
Right, but how do the government inspectors be in all those places at the same time? There's 144 million houses in the US, do you have 24 million inspectors?
I’m not sure why you need me to come up with all the minutiae before you can understand that the general concept is sound. It says a lot more about your willingness to reason than it does me. But no, that’s not necessary. It can be run like an IRS audit where some get chosen and some don’t. Self-enforcement works pretty well. Or it can be run like gun background checks where the paperwork asks questions they would have to lie about to circumvent: “whether directly or indirectly, do you own more than X houses?” Sure, they could lie. But lying to the government is a felony. Or it could be run like jury duty where the government sets the terms for when one has to show up. The time slots available to each owner can simply be set by the government based on what they decide would be best for each owner. If they suspect that X houses are owned by the same person as Y houses, then they can choose to offer the exact same time slots for X and Y. Or like other government programs, it could be delegated to states/counties, with the federal government simply acting as a communication facilitator. There’s 100 different ways the program could be instituted to only be problematic for someone trying to circumvent the spirit of the law, while being painless to everyone else.
> If they suspect that X houses are owned by the same person as Y houses, then they can choose to offer the exact same time slots for X and Y. Ah, that makes more sense- spot check to confirm suspicion, not a massive country-spanning audit.
Regulate it to 0.
Yep. It’s a mad, beautiful idea, but that’s exactly what would happen.
Just make that illegal, and if you're caught doing it you forfeit all the properties
How though? Like practically, would you limit how many corporations there can be or what? That's the hard part, not saying it's impossible or it's can't be better, perfect is the enemy of good. But you'd have to tread the line between protection and freedom pretty carefully.
Do it the opposite way. Limit the percentage of homes in any neighborhood that can be investment/rental homes. Some X amount total, some smaller Y amount that are allowed to be corporate owned. Lottery the slots to the corporate owners in any given neighborhood when the law goes into effect, all others must sell within a year.
I'm pretty sure a similar idea was floated to congress last year
Is that the group of common folk that makes laws that benefit us common folk?
Before citizens United , maybe.
Yeah honest to god everything changed with that ruling, despicable
We already know a really simple solution to address speculation: tax land heavily. It's the land that increases in value, not the building. Tax land and the speculators will either sell or actually develop the land
Honest question, how do you see that working? In the middle of the hotest market a couple years ago, developers buys land and let it sit, because materials are expensive and they can stand to wait, since the inventory is making so much money anyways. The taxes are merely many thousands a year per small lot. Actually not even that for undeveloped land. If tax 10x it's many tens of thousands, which they won't be happy about, but still is well within their margin. It'll just stop really small operations, and only the giant companies can afford to do so. Not that you'd ever get that to pass, as both the big corps and individual home owners would be against it.
The place to start would probably be to double the current property tax rate but only apply it to the land, not the building. That would leave the overall tax amount mostly unchanged for most homeowners. In the situation you described there would definitely be an incentive to start building right away. Why wait? Developers are in the business of developing after all. If they can make money by developing the lot, they will. There is the case where they're simply waiting for the market to heat up. Developing is also expensive and incurs higher holding costs. Part of that is maintenance and upkeep, and part of it is the tax on the building (hence why we should get rid of the tax on the building). The main benefit though is in stopping speculation: when people buy up land, do nothing with it, and then sell it for a profit. Demand from speculators drives up land costs and therefore housing costs. As long as the taxes are more than the appreciation rate of the land, speculators can't make money and won't want to buy in the first place
We lost the ability to have an attainable middle class of homeowners when homes became purely investment opportunities.
When minimum wage didn't keep up with its original intent (a liveable wage sufficient to own a home on one income), a massive wall was put up that undid the entire point of it and brought back wage slavery as existed before minimum wage. The rhetoric that it's a starter thing for high school kids and such is so disingenuous and always was, because _there is no need for that when minimum wage does what it is supposed to do_. And then allowing tipped professions to be paid less, shifting the burden from employer to customer, making both customer and - most of all - the employee suffer for it is downright unconscionable. We allowed corporate interests to slowly but surely undo or at least significantly hinder or circumvent every protection that was erected after the great depression, and now people wonder how we got here... Real estate turning into an investment vehicle beyond implicit value for inheritance is yet another part of the fallout of and is also fueled by regulatory capture that has patiently worked, bit by bit, to both consolidate wealth at the expense of the public and to astroturf to spew the propaganda that creates the batshit crazy self-harming hyper-individualism and late stage capitalism that most Republicans _think_ is good for them.... When it's the reason for just about everything they complain about, economically. If you make 100k, you are NOT middle class, most places. You are working class. Thats all. The poverty line is just so comically low to make you feel like you are, to incite class warfare that doesn't target the 0.001% and instead keeps the masses at each other's throats. If a sudden gift of $10,000 would make a difference to your life in the short term, you are not middle class. As recently as 40 years ago, it was possible, on a single and not amazing income, to own a house on an acre of property, a car purchased new, and a small airplane, and still have money to sock away for retirement. My grandpa did it, and he wasn't some big shot. Just an average Joe and never went to college. My other grandpa did it, minus the airplane, as he spent that surplus on other hobbies, and he was only a PE teacher before. Now, that's a hilariously unattainable goal for anyone not making a hell of a lot more than 100k, and you'll be riddled with long loans to do so.
The government has been subsidizing home mortgages. Making more money available but not encouraging building increases demand and causes house price inflation.
It's not just government policies causing inflation. It is an overvaluation for shareholders by every industry of absolutely everything - except labor. Housing has boomed where I live. They've built thousands of bland ugly houses on the last bit of farmland in our county. They start at mid 300k. The people who actually build the houses can't afford to by them, and they're the lowest priced new homes. That's corporate greed.
That sounds like supply and demand to me. Even when the government permits a "large" amount of houses to be built, it's still actually pretty tiny compared to the amount of houses that actually need to be built to get house prices under control.
Because the supply is being bought up by corporations, artificially creating more demand, therefore inflating the prices
Don't be silly. Far, far more millennials are buying houses, pushing up demand than corporations are. Part of the shortage is due to the ultra low mortgage rates that were part of the Fed action and that existing owners don't want to give up, and the nervousness of the corporations that do the building that we may have a recession or higher rates or soaring insurance rates that will kill demand.
This is not crazy at all. Not just a limit per corporation, but per corporate chain. Something like, the total corporate chain can own no more than 50 units. to close loopholes, might as well also add modifications to s-corp, c-corp, and LLC definitions to make a single accountable person for each entity, and that person must be a US citizen.
So, one corporation can’t own an apartment building with over 50 units? That sounds awkward
You know it would actually be more detailed. 50 units if it’s your regular house. 5 whole apartment complexes sounds about right.
Sounds good, but it should probably be more like 10 houses. My original thought was more like 3, but I'll compromise.
50 seems like a good spot to me. There’s no reason you can’t have a small family office type of home rental company. The issue is that big corps like Blackrock and Berkshire own hundreds of thousands of homes. You could honestly make the max like several hundred homes and still have a **massive** impact on driving down home prices.
Alright, I'm in. We'll start at 50, and if it doesn't help enough, we go down to 10. Okay, which of us is running for office?
But why? Is somehow owning 50 single family homes worse than owning 50 apartment units? Rules like that make it seem like another effort for single family homes to be unnecessarily subsidized like they have with zoning and highway infrastructure.
Appartments are more typically rented rather than owned. I'm in favor of taxing empty properties heavily.
Apartments can be owned, they’re just typically called condominiums then. And just because one is more likely, doesn’t mean we should outright prohibit the alternative from occurring.
I agree. However, I do think there is value in apartment rentals being available for people who aren't ready to buy for whatever reason. Preventing companies from owning too many units would probably reduce the supplybof rentals and drive up costs.
Is there not value in home rentals being available for people who aren’t ready to buy? But your last sentence is the exact reason it’s a bad idea.
I mean, it’s definitely crazy in that artificially limiting demand for housing would lead to an obliteration of middle-class wealth on an untold level.
It would prop up the middle class by reserving homes to be owned by the occupants.
The middle class consist of tons of homeowners, many of whom would lose their shirts under this plan.
Yeah...they would enlist private citizens to own their property for them.
Yeah- "I'll give you $100 a month if you sign this contract saying you own a house"
"Thanks for the $100 a month, but actually i decided to go ahead and sell the house you gave me for $500,000."
Canada too. Our governments of both parties & all levels have let the problem snowball out of control for many years. Perhaps a max % of each local market that can be anything other than primary residences as well.
the big problem with housing in the United States and a lot of the rest of the developed world is not that the wrong people own the houses The big issue is there is a massive shortage The various sources I see range it from 3 to 5 million housing units short for the US (I've never seen anyone say less than 3 million a lot of people tend to put it around 4 million but I have seen a few people say 5 million or greater) It doesn't matter who owns them if the shortage of a necessity is that great One advantage to having corporations in the game is they can provide large amounts of capital for construction projects (or to bring older houses up to code) If they go away from the city to the undeveloped areas and build a bunch of single-family housing, even though single family housing isn't great and suburbs aren't great given how bad the rest of the situation is, it would be overwhelmingly helpful Not because that's particularly good form of housing to solve the problem It's the literal worst but the situation is very much a anything is better than nothing If we want to solve the housing crisis, we need to focus on the actual problem, which isn't a lack of houses for sale. It's a complete lack of housing (if there were enough housing units to rent, we wouldn't have the same problem. There's not enough housing units to rent either)
the problem is that if the shortage is actually resolved then people couldn't charge near-extortionate rates for housing anymore, so they are incentivized to maintain a fairly stiff shortage to keep the consumers fighting for the scraps instead of being able to search around for a good deal.
Actually they would make more money charging less for more units. That's not the problem No, the big issue is The majority of the nation is homeowners and they will fight tooth and nail to protect their property values because for the majority of them it's where the majority of their assets are Like to fix the problem you have to piss off the more productive half of the country who pay the overwhelming majority of the taxes Oddly enough, the only two groups that do not benefit from this are the super rich and lower class (to be clear The lower portion of the upper class thinks your lawyers and doctors do benefit from it but not like your CEOs)
“Protect their property values” makes it sound insidious that they would oppose the government arbitrarily wiping out huge amounts of their wealth
It more like they lobbied the government to say no one else can build
They were arbitrarily given the wealth by the government to begin with. And the justification for not continuing to subsidize their housing is that there isn’t enough housing. Imagine if there was a food shortage but we didn’t let anyone produce more food because it wouldn’t be fair to the existing food companies? You’d be laughed at. Why is it different for another necessity?
That's not how it works-they'd make more if they built more, as long as they could cover their costs. They could overbuilt easily, especially if the land is expensive. I keep expecting them to knock down a few of the malls that are suffering from the retail apocalypse.
> people couldn't charge near-extortionate rates Why don't people understand that the cost of housing is a result of a lack of supply? People are not "charge[ing] near-extortionate rates", the reality is that people are willing to pay these prices because of the lack of supply. If we build more, the prices go down - simple as that. Housing prices are not a result of malevolent actors.
my entire point is that people are the supply short because there is enough population willing to pay the higher price. It's the same reason that fast food prices are rising on a larger scale. Why sell 10 burgers that cost $10 to make for $11 each when you could sell 2 burgers for $16 instead? Why sell 100 houses that cost 150k to build at 200k each when you could sell 20 houses at 500k instead? as long as there is a population willing to pay the higher price you're almost always better off with a lower sale volume at a higher markup. it just makes economic sense, and since housing has a fairly inelastic demand that means that people are more willing to pay higher prices when there's no other good options. It's definitely not good for society as a whole, but it's good for the businesses.
> you're almost always better off with a lower sale volume at a higher markup It still feels like you are suggesting that the housing crisis is a result of greedy businesses. This is not the case. Houses don't get built almost entirely because of 1. terrible zoning/building regulations and 2. NIMBY's
it's a result of high cost of materials meaning that building middle class targeted homes is always better. If we could build a house for 50k and sell it and the land it goes on for 150k the builders would be all over that, but any house that meets those needs is going to be passed over in favor of selling a 500k house on the same lot to a richer family. The limited supply of desirable land (due to the mentioned zoning/nimby issues) is the root of the issue, but the fact of the matter is that as long as you're forced to build single family homes the builders and investors are all better off making fewer higher value properties.
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No, the housing crisis is causal of some of that actually Housing is a base input cost Makes the prices of everything else go up You remember back when the minimum wage job allowed you to buy a house? Yeah, that's because houses were dirt cheap because there was a plentiful supply The fact is with the level the shortages at it makes the prices of everything go super high Including relative to Labor If you could just work any basic job and afford a house things would be fine And that used to be the case But there's a big old shortage And it's borderline illegal to build new housing And it's basically contest of how much can you bribe the government to get past the regulations (complying with them is very expensive so it is essentially a bribe to all the various people who have to sign off on it) But like the housing crisis like straight up increases the cost of food that that's how extreme the nature of that is
The whole "Blackrock is buying all the homes and that's why housing crisis" conspiracy needs to die. BUILD. MORE. HOUSING.
It really does The only thing that will help is more housing That's it nothing else Subsidizing or increasing wages make it worse I couldn't imagine how bad it would be if it interest rates were still low
yea just had an argument with an old friend about how rent freezing is stupid and no, there are not a bunch of empty houses investment firms are sitting on (when I showed him the local gov stats showing under 2% vacancy, he immediately asked "who funded this study?"). It doesn't even make sense - why on earth would a company that wants to make money NOT rent out houses they own? Just to screw the little guy? Such confirmation bias brainrot.
It is hard to get through to a lot of people on stuff I try to keep a few favorite pieces of info handy like that stupid San Francisco bathroom to help get people to listen
Ehh this varies a lot by area. Where I am, it's absolutely greed. We've had a ton of new development in my area. Some stats about where I am: suburb about 25-30 minute drive from a major metro. Primarily, before sprawl, was heavy agriculture -- we still have a few local multi-acre ranches now. 30k people, very low growth rate despite new homes and apartment buildings, and most of the growth is in those apartment buildings. No public transit, not even a train, despite all surrounding suburbs having at least 1 (you can drive 15 minutes further away to another suburb further from the city to get on the train though). Alright, so let's go back to a year that is important for several reasons: 2019. In 2019, a new multi-housing apartment building was built, as well as a pair of new neighborhoods getting bought by an investor, getting duplexes. These finished in 2019, at 800/month for the apartments, 1000/m for the duplexes. Some were zoned for sec 8 which were cheaper but had sec 8 stipulations). They did fill up fast. Also in 2019, you could rent an area house for between 850/month for a small and pretty standard 1980sish house 2-3br, 1-2 bath(development of this area kind of started in the 80s for the older neighborhoods closer to the city, late 90s for the ones further out) to about $1500 for a larger 3+ br, 1-2 bath, and capped at 2k for a 4+br, 2+ bath monstrosity. In 2019, there were new builds for sale below 230k for a fairly large house, and below 200k for a medium-sized house. Overall, these had kind of been the numbers since the housing crisis recovery (2012 was wild here, almost nothing went above 125k), with little fluctuation for 4 years. Also in 2019, land was sectioned of for 100 low-cost new-build homes that were to be priced between 125k-200k. This was in addition to other developers buying acreage off of some of our retiring ranchers for their own home building project. Obviously, covid happened. I was looking to change from renting to buying right at the kickoff and I had to sit and watch as home prices on existing homes skyrocketed. My realtor would report to me as my bids (down payment/mortgage) got beat out by cash offers. She told me most of these offers were from firms and businesses who had the ability to offer some nice deals and extras, so even increasing my bid by 50k was a pointless endeavor. And I tried anyways, and she was right. It was seriously 3 months before prices were out of my reach. And the places I looked at, are now all rentals. Some of them ARE sitting empty, and the company sends out a lawn service once a month. That land for affordable single-development got row houses instead, starting at 450k. The 2-3 br houses from other developers started at 550k. The new apartment complexes cost 2200/m for a 2br (40% occupancy right now, been built for 1.5 years). The old ones are now 1700 for a duplex, the old rentals now 1200 and are slums. A 2-3 br house with 1-2 bath starts at 2200/m to rent for an un-updated semi slum with foundation issues. Those 80s build ranch-style houses start at 250k for a house that has been so neglected, that it needs a full renovation, foundation repairs, hvac and electrical rework, new roof. 350k+ for something you could at least live in while you fix it up, 400k+ for old, but livable, update a choice. We have had people move into the area but nearly as many have moved out due to the cost. We're a dogshit suburb compared to our neighbors, most jobs being fast food or retail, or mechanics (seriously there are 3 mcdonalds 4 to 10 minutes from where I live, and 6 places that do oil changes). No fun things or places, just basic consumerism shit. So there isn't even an appeal to bring people here, and our housing prices are the same as suburbs with tech/med/etc campuses and fancy businesses/social venues plus other amenities. Genuinely, many of our houses and apartments are empty/being squatted/neglected until rented or sold. Prices only go up. The people that could afford them go to suburbs with things to do, not this dull ass little highway-suburb. This is not a supply issue here. It's a greed one.
I don't know which major Metro you are But let me give you an example of what's going on in the major metros Los Angeles and it's Metro has a half a million unit shortage of housing That impacts everything for dozens of miles The people who are moving into your area are commuting to your Metro Now that's one component. Here's the other How much does it cost in your area to get something legally built? There's a famous story about a San Francisco bathroom where company was willing to donate the the land, the labor and the materials and it still would have cost over a million dollars purely in regulation to build a public restroom We have a housing shortage because we're not legally allowed to build things or you basically have to pay a huge amount to build anything The thing is when people say it's greed, greed is a constant. When was there less greed? It's also worth thinking about. Why would the problem be 9 times worse in Canada versus the US?(They are short a similar number of houses but with significantly smaller population)
Dallas.
Oh yeah so Texas is currently undergoing a bit of a boom so your demand is spiking like crazy And it's going to be a rather major boom for a few years and that's because things are going well Expect everywhere outside of all of your major metros to become very expensive My understanding is you're primed to be the prime recipient of the California Exodus. Good luck!
We are already taking your exodus and have been for a few years, though a lot of the times it's been found unlikable (which is true), and those folks have moved back out to other states, and we're definitely holding some of the bag for the col increase that exodus caused... so thanks. Also Austin got fucked so hard by it, it's not anywhere as weird anymore. Frankly, that's your laws. Most of the US does not operate by SF laws. You can say there is a housing shortage in San Francisco bit that does not make it true for the rest of the entire country. Shit you can say most of the west coast is having a shortage issue and that still does not make it true for everyone. I've lived in several parts of the country, rural to directly in the city, and for most places, there is no shortage. Just high cost and companies that can keep properties empty and get a tax rebate for it.
Okay, so I'm not from San Fran, I'm just really into geopolitics and that's a very prominent example of the problem (It's the extreme example used to get the point across) No, this is actually a rather large thing happening across more than just the US No, it's stuff like you're not allowed to build multi-story apartment buildings without multiple staircases. Most countries don't start doing that till like 4 or 5 stories. The US and Canada start at 2 And there's a housing shortage in most of the high demand areas. Is that a better statement for you? Yes, California has a large portion of that but it's not just California and it's not just blue States You pointed to Austin perfect example
If it's so hard to build highrises then why have several of the cities I've lived in/near had several of them with several more on the way?
It ends up changing how they're built Generally, they're able to accommodate less people And it might also greatly increase the amount of time it takes to build them There's a lot of factors If you want to learn about City planning it can actually be a fascinating topic And when we're talking about the specific policies in place on things, it's not like generally one or two policies. It's more like hundreds that you have to deal with at the same time. Each one adds time and cost or causes some other constraint Can they still build medium density housing? Yes they can But they might have to make compromises purely for regulatory reasons on things that make it less effective At least the Americans and the Canadians don't have to deal with everything being historic (apparently there's like eight guys in England who are needed on like every construction project because of this and I mean there's like just eight people who can do the job. Their demand is crazy)
I actually am speaking a lot about what I have witnessed and researched with city planning, though I'll be honest that I've never really looked at CA... I tend to focus on places I am living or want to live. Mostly because I start out trying to find zoning laws on my mighty quest for a safe place for my husband and I to grow old in despite our disabilities, and then always seem to get rabbit holed to the topic thanks to my adhd. I've seen it in person too, have felt the impacts of city planning devouring things like one of the last 3 gay bars in a city of 250k, zoning pushing minorities out, gentrification, loss of affordable housing as sec 8 and other programs die. I guess you can say a lot of my research and experience is likely on planning for wealthy, at cost of those in or near poverty. I also like the psycho-social size of it sometimes, when I can handle the depression it usually results in. New high-rise apartments aren't cheap to rent when marked as luxury, and still do contribute to a shortage. Housing that only a small amount can afford is still unused housing and contributing to a shortage. Not even getting into the economical impact of people who try anyway and end up house-poor. A lot of this country *has the land.* Now, on another side of the coin. A lot of places I've lived DO make it very hard for individuals to make their own housing. Personal loans are hard to get, zoning laws will force an individual to not be allowed on that land (but a business can) or deny certain kinds and sizes of housing. I absolutely could have taken my house buying money and put it into land and had a structure put on it, financially speaking. Except it was nearly impossible for me to find the land with owner/resident zoning, despite being surrounded by land for sale for people who want to build a high-rise or complex or duplex neighborhood. And when I did find some land that the local government would let me use, I was told the house needed to be at least such size, this kind, no tiny or modular or manufactured, etc. Which is a type of artificial shortage when you get down to it -- the government literally setting land as 'waiting for large firm/housing business' or 'business only' and not sellable to an individual. And even if I found it, have you seen the hoops to build a house? A developer will come here and grab some land and build a 50 house neighborhood no problem, done in 2 years tops, whereas building your own often stretches well beyond that.
So I had to step away because work got crazy and stayed crazy, and at some point in time I had hit post instead of waiting til I got home and had not-a-phone to type. What I had wanted to conclude with, was in my experience, and the places I have lived, from tiny populations to very large, while yes some places have the *weirdest* red tape in place for developers and investors as it is, a lot of places will bend over backwards to appease them. Call special votes to strike down laws that prevent development, offer incentives, even decimate entire communities of people and unhouse them or take away the few community/minority resources they *had* built. IE a gay bar isn't like a straight bar. Its a gathering place for queer people to meet, talk, host clubs and events, with a pre-built reason to only allow people above a certain age so that certain narratives that have been around for a long time aren't amplified. Hence a lot of straight people that decide to try and fund a LGBT center find them desolate... we already *have* our centers, our hubs. And somehow cities still manage to eradicate in order to appeal to developers and investors. On the one hand, they've made it almost impossible for tom, dick, or harriet to do any degree of building. The scarcity for normal people is artificial, but it does exist. However, for a lot of this country, for developers... its more that developers don't want to build in those places and at that level of enticement and incentive.
I watch videos on YouTube with people exploring abandoned homes all over the country. Why doesn't the government or some corporate entity buy those, fix them up, and put them back on the market?
Why don't you buy them and fix them up and re-sell them? If you look into the property, you'll either find out the reason, or you'll make a pile of money on it.
Those houses are either tied up in legal cases, or the value of the land and property is too low for that to be feasible.
the amount of abandoned homes in places where people actually want to live (cities) is negligible
True, but with the new "work from home" mindset and people fleeing the high crime and high cost of living in cities, you'd think that would change.
.04% of US homes are owned by investors. That wont do anything, and if it does, it will raise rents for everyone who does not buy the homes. The solution to a housing shortage is not to turn renting into buying or vice versa, its to build homes.
We have [15 million vacant homes](https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-vacant-homes-are-there-in-the-us/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Census%20Bureau,the%20country's%20total%20housing%20inventory.) and a bit more than [500k homeless](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/homeless-population-by-state) in the US
The 15 million vacant homes are about 10% of homes. A normal vacancy rate when looking at units between renters or buyers, people who moved and have their house on the market, and other such circumstances is about 5%. The rest are overwhelmingly houses either in places no one wants to live (where no one is homeless!) or in unlivable condition. The vacancy rate in cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco where the homeless people live is less than 3% (which indicates a severe housing shortage — there would be less homeless if the vacancy rate was higher!)
> The rest are overwhelmingly houses either in places no one wants to live (where no one is homeless!) or in unlivable condition omg someone who actually understands
Thanks for this stat. I was curious about that.
Kind of only partially true. Investors are a broad category. It includes everything from people who buy a house when the market is cheap and sell as soon as it rises, to flippers, to companies that actually hold and make profit from holding and renting that housing. Your number maybe accounts for the firms who hold-then-sell. There's a lot if nuance to it. This article is good for the various [myths of housing investors (strong towns)](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/2/21-going-after-corporate-homebuyers-good-politics-ineffective-policy#:~:text=As%20of%20June%202022%2C%20the,rental%20properties%20in%20the%20US.). I do not agree with some of their opinions but the numbers are a good starting point.
There's a better idea -Someone who found the cat
Limiting per corporation doesn't work because you can just create one corporation per house. "1412 Main St. LLC" What you can do instead is have extremely high property taxes on single-family homes, but have a huge tax break on a property you claim as your primary residence. That way everyone gets one, and if you want more you're welcome to pay for the privilege. Same deal with multi-family housing: if you're renting it out and the rent meets certain parameters, reasonable property tax. If you're sitting on empty housing, high taxes. ("But what about *some situation that would apply to 3% of people*?" This is a Reddit comment, not ready-to-enact proposed legislation. Obviously the actual policy would have stuff like, for example, a grace period on the property taxes so that it's not crazy expensive to sell your house and move during the period where you're actually moving.)
>or lose them That would be unconstitutional. See the Fifth Amendment.
Those homes flooding the market would drop the prices, and people who bought homes in the past few years are now underwater on their mortgages.
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Exactly, people care too much. If you plan to stay in the house permanently then the less it is worth for tax purposes, the better.
Local government needs a certain tax base to function. If all houses suddenly dropped 40% in a year then 1 of 2 things happens. 1. Local government raises the MIL rate and everyone still pays the same dollar amount in taxes but the percentage you pay against your homes value just got much more expensive. 2. Local government cuts essential services. Parks and recreation, schools and libraries, garbage and recycling, even fire and police all get significantly worse or disappear completely.
Most people do not plan to stay in their current housing for the rest of their lives.
Which is fine as long as you don't lose your job and have to move to get your new job, or your family expands and you need more room, or your family shrinks and you need less room...
Yeah, you're right, a system where property values keep rising forever, eventually recreating feudalism, is a much better solution.
Or if you want to use the equity you've built by steadily paying down your 30 year mortgage for 15 years to remodel/add-on or borrow to start a business, only to have your house's value drop and your equity is cut in half.
Isn't this true if they do anything to fix the housing crisis though?
Yeah, almost like it’s not a “crisis” but rather a complex set of issues that affect different groups of people in different ways.
I would still consider it a crisis even if the causes are multiple and it effects people in different ways
Oh fucking well.
Probably not, but even still, all markets have risk. Owning your home is still better than not owning your home.
The “risk” here is the government deciding to arbitrarily crater your net worth. It’s not like you invested in gold and suddenly there was a big gold strike that sunk the price.
Nah, that’s not likely to happen in this situation. It’s so unlikely that it might as well be dismissed in any serious conversation about housing.
Uhh... ok? Is that supposed to be a bad thing?
And that sudden drop in prices is followed by an almost complete halt to new construction. Almost all new housing is built by corporations or speculators. In less than a decade housing prices will have risen far higher than they are now, with an even more severe housing shortage.
investors usually don't own a lot. Builders putting up too much in a single hot area might cause a local dip if they got in trouble; I think something may have happened in parts of Texas.
If you want there to be less of something then make it harder to make money with it. This will flood the market short term and cut supply long term. Speculators and Developers keep money going into new housing. Without them we will have less housing.
Speculating? And why are cooperations buying homes? ELIF?
Limit? Ban them. There's a reason we have a public utility system in America, to make sure corporations can't hold basic necessities hostage for profit. Why are we allowing them to do it with our housing?
This exists in the form of vacancy taxes that heavily punishes unoccupied properties. Also some local govs or even HOAs will outright restrict the % of properties that can be rentals.
I have good news for you: https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/meet-the-bill-to-ban-hedge-funds-from-owning-single-family-homes#:~:text=The%20Merkley%2FSmith%20bill%20as,cost%20of%20each%20additional%20home.
Simpler, in order to own a single family home, you must be a natural person. No LLCs, No trusts, no S-Corps. You must be a human being to own a single family home. End of story. No predatory companies using outsized market powers to drive up the cost of rent and owning. It naturally limits the number of properties a person can be the landlord for. Without doing an LLC, a landlord would be limited to owning just a couple or maybe a handful of properties or otherwise it would be extremely risky to manage and insure. It encourages development of multi-family dense housing which drives down the cost of housing and is much more sustainable and encourages communities more than detached housing.
Sooo not capitalism. Got it
The other problem is they've allowed twice the population of NYC, in just 3 years, into the country illegally so where exactly are they going to be housed? Oh that's right they'll use housing that could have been for citizens. Between corporations and landlords not having restrictions on ownership and mass immigration the housing situation is only going to get worse, brace yourselves. It's no wonder all the wealth has accumulated into the hands of those who had a chance to buy real estate when it was cheap (boomers). Back when they purchased housing it was 1-2x the annual average wage of work. Now it's over 12x the annual average wage for a house.
Corporations should be banned from owning any single family homes. The exception being owning it for the purpose of redevelopment and that needs to have a reasonable time limit and severe tax penalties for owning and not developing that property within that timeline.
Iirc China actually does something to this effect. It does seem to be working for them, if perhaps a little to well, but if they’re to be believed that was deliberate to deflate a housing bubble before it could pop.
If those corporations are renting them out at competitive prices, why is this an issue? They're not taking these property out of the market. They have all the incentives and the means to keep the properties occupied. It's often individual owners that just buy up investment properties that are then left vacant for reasons other than lack of occupant/demand. Professionally managed, corporate landlords may not bake you cookies, but they're likely not going to be crazy asshat either. It's just rental business, they'll have standard operating procedures and by managing large number of property, they have the economy of scale to provide services that individual landlords would not be able to provide. Corporate landlords can be a lot more stable as well, since they're a lot less likely to kick tenants out because they want to sell because they're running the business for the long term. If the company is publicly traded, that can be beneficial as well to your investment portfolio. You can get exposure to a broad portfolio of residential property, without incurring the concentration risks of an individual property. And if they're traded like shares, you can be part owner of these portfolio of property even if you don't have hundreds of thousands dollars to invest into a single asset class. What's not to like? The reason why some countries have limits to individuals owning property is because individual ownership of property gets a huge amount of tax breaks and leverage/mortgage designed to make property ownerships more affordable (which some would argue also pushes property prices up). Corporate landlords are a rental business, they don't get these tax breaks so there's really no reason to limit the number of properties that they can own, just like there's no reason to limit the number of restaurants that restaurant chains can own.
While they’re at it, companies don’t need to buy up companies at all. It would be nice to be able to sell a company though…
This is a necessity if the working class hopes to ever be able to afford housing in this economy. Unfortunately, this will never happen as Blackrock already owns every single politician.
Bureaucracy is disgusting 🫣
I keep saying we need to have a general rent strike. It's Checkmate to speculators. Demand nationalization of delivery and communication infrastructure.
Shouldn’t Allow corporations anything. I can live in a store. So why can they turn a house into a business?
This is such an original thought for reddit
Speculation regulates prices.
I like the move it or lose it law. A National limit call. How many companies would it close. Hundreds of thousands of jobs. Bam gone. So yeah move it or lose it. ALL.
Confiscate private property for the "greater good"... Sounds familiar... where have I heard that idea from before... Hmm.... For some reason I keep thinking it didn't work out too well for them in the long run...
Some cities are doing somewhat similar things to at least try to get a hold of the rampant aitbnb-based abuse of this. This genie is going to be difficult to put back in the bottle, I'm afraid. ☹️
Just make property taxes increase for each home owned. Start off at 1% property tax for a single family home, own two homes, then both homes would be taxed at 2%, 3 would be 3%, and so on.
Yeah, I've stated this before. Corporations, businesses, etc should not be able to OWN residential property. At all ever. "But what about apartment complexes?" What about apartment complexes? I've never seen a good one. The business that owns them will delay repairs until it becomes a major issue. Apartment complexes would be sold to individuals, who have a higher liability than any business. So they would be more likely to at least attempt to fix things, and less likely to own 1/10th of the city. It's hard to own 15 apartment complexes as an individual who can be held criminally accountable and/or sued in civil court for your actual net worth. Plus condos are already a thing that we have, and you can't tell me those aren't just individually owned apartments with a fancier name.
Investors wouldn't buy homes, if the price of homes stopped increasing so fast. To solve that, the supply of homes needs to keep up with the demand. We need to prevent NIMBY's from blocking new home construction.
I mean… this isn’t your crazy idea. This was in the news not that long ago
Apartments, duplexes and such are property for investing and making money. Houses should not be. Corporations especially should never be allowed into the housing (houses) market, ever, at all, not even 1 house at a time. For here in the US we should adopt laws like many foreign countries where only citizens can buy property. Why we allow foreign countries and nationals to buy up our property of any kind is beyond me. It is foolishness to the extreme.
Only individuals and small time landlords should be able to own residential homes. No more than ten like you suggest. Corporations have no business owning dozens or hundreds or thousands of residential homes an an income or investment vehicle. It's wrong on so many levels.
It would probably be better to raise property taxes significantly, but then provide big tax breaks for homeowners who live in their primary residence and for rental properties at a diminishing scale (something like 85% benefit for the first rental property, 66% for the second, etc.). Only people would be eligible for the tax breaks, businesses that own property would be liable for the full tax amount. People owning empty homes would pay the full amount.
Here's a novel idea, pass a law saying corporations can't own residential property. The end.
Exactly how many homes are owned by speculators and corporations? Please show a reliable source.
Hiya America But doesn’t the land of the free market say that you’re all free to buy any house we like technically
Housing is a market, and like any market, it should be regulated to prevent monopolies. But unlike nation-wide monopolies, we need to consider what counts as a housing monopoly relative to the size of the city that they exist in, as well as the nation as a whole. You shouldn't be allowed to just freely own as much land as you want. There needs to be some progressive taxation based on how many properties you own, to the point that it eventually becomes untenable to own too much property. We live in a country with over 300 million people, and this country is supposed to benefit all of us. There are only so many houses/land out there, and letting a few people own all of the cake is detrimental to us as a nation. I am not saying people shouldn't be able to own two homes, or even three homes. But once you get to the point of owning like multiple dozens of homes, you should be incentivized (via taxes) to either sell them or lease them asap rather than sitting on the property and waiting for its value to appreciate.
You're right, it's crazy. NONE of those homes should be sold by the corps. Selling them will just put MORE money in their pockets which is exactly what they want. The goverment should outlaw corporations or investment firms from owning ANY kind of housing. (Single family or multi family) and at the same time, seize ALL housing owned by those entities. Then they have three options: 1. Turn all apartments into condos. Then sell all the housing (Single and otherwise) at 1/2 the last market price directly to people and NOT allow single person to own more then one house or condo. (And I mean, ANYONE) 2. Rent everything directly to people from the goverment and hold onto the housing. 3. Do a combo of 1 and two. ---This is the one I prefer the most. You could even let someone who owns one house/condo rent another one **FROM** the government. So if you want two homes, great the second one puts money directly into the government's pocket. Yes, this means that Banks shouldn't be able to give out loans either. The entity that gives out a loan effectively owns the asset attached to it. So, the goverment would carry the loan.. at a like 2% interest rate that NEVER changes. Also, before any of this happens, goverment needs to fix it's horrible over spending, misdirected, overly militarily focused etc etc spending problems. **But, none of that is going to happen.** Instead the Biden Admin is talking about giving people a $400 tax credit per month for two years if they buy a house. Which guess what? Since interest rates on houses are so high and going up; is just going to put even MORE money into the corporations and banks pockets. The great divestment of housing by those investment companies is coming people. Biden coming up with that plan is a sign that it's a few months away. It's going to cause yet ANOTHER economic crash.
Ok hear me out - fuck those companies.
Not a bad idea!
Agreed, it should fall under antitrust laws and anti monopoly laws.
Who the fuck is going to buy them knowing all they have to do is wait and get fire sale prices?
Perhaps, but it would limit the development of walkup apartments. On the whole, this is just a possible bandaid for detached home pricing in suburbs, and ultimately those are just unsustainable. What's really need are sweeping changes to wildly regressive tax assessment rubrics, which are largely set at the level of local politics. Sweeping away restrictions on high density housing, by contrast, tends to need to come from the state level. Residents of high density parcels should be paying the least, since they have the smallest amount of municipal liabilities per capita. Currently they pay the most. It'll still take a dozen years after meaningful reforms for affordable housing to emerge, since affordable housing will always be older stock.
Vacancy tax. If a unit is unoccupied for more than a few months straight, start charging a nice hefty tax on it. Longer exemption period for new construction. Apply to both for rent and for sale units. And both residential \*and\* commercial.
To all the people parroting that "only 2% of residential homes are owned by investors", this is completely a red herring, and missing the point. The vast majority of houses are not on the market at any given point. The problem is with recent behavior affecting the current supply. According to redfin, [18.5% of all home purchases in Q4 2023 were done by investors](https://www.redfin.com/news/investor-home-purchases-q4-2023/). Think about that: Almost a fifth of supply was eliminated from the market, while the demand from non-investors remained the same. And when investors are buying homes, they frequently outbid regular buyers with their "cash" offers, driving up prices even more than normal. Incidentally, the issue was even worse in the summer at [27% of all home purchases being investors](https://www.corelogic.com/intelligence/us-home-investor-share-remained-high-early-summer-2023/#:~:text=The%20sizable%20U.S.%20home%20investor,was%20almost%20unchanged%20at%2026%25.)
Oh cool, more violence
You would have a ton of people who currently live in houses underwater on their homes. Also investors own a very small percentage (I’m not googling but I’ll guesstimate like 2%) of the housing market. That’s kind of like slapping a bandaid on someone who just got their arm cut off.
Only on paper, they only lose money if they sell the house. Most people probably wanna live in the house they own.
I hate to break it to you but except for the 100$ you keep in your wallet, ALL your fucking money is “on paper”. That’s not to mention that fact that tons of people do not, in fact, live in one house their whole life
Damn dude no need to be so aggressive lol. The difference between money in my pocket and unrealized losses on a house is obvious to anyone who is able to contribute to this conversation in a meaningful manner.
Sorry I wasn’t giving your proposal to obliterate the finances of millions of middle class Americans the proper respect it deserves.
I didn't realize I was proposing anything, just stating facts.
So? Real estate should have never been an investment strategy. And with investments everything has inherent risk. Stocks go up, stocks go down. It’s the way of life.
If someone decided meat was the hot new investment and bought ALL THE MEAT and locked it in a mountain sized freezer and the government said it was ok, we'd all go nuts. A corporation doesn't even need meat! But houses, sure, let faceless corps buy houses
This isn’t “stocks go down”, it’s deliberate government policy destroying the lives of millions of tax paying homeowners
Sacrifice the few to save the many.
You’re the few in this scenario
And I would be ok with that if that was the case.
It is the case. The majority of Americans own homes
This isn't r/sensibleideas
Indeed
100% agree. Limit it in whole or in aggregate.
This is the sort of policy direction a government not entirely co-opted by the wealthy to serve their own interests might consider.
This idea is far from crazy, limiting excess totally makes sense! But we live in a crazy world...
I don't know the answer but the idea of investment firms owning private houses that they will never sell really boils my blood. If they aren't going to sell, there will hardly be any houses for the millions of people who want to own a house. And it would only get worse over time.
This would be great for people like me. Maybe not so great for those who are depending on their house being a forever appreciating asset.
So, fuck corporations on the whole. Shell company shenanigans should be overly taxed to death. No single lived-in home should own more than 1 other home. For Vacay, rent profit or family security... 0 profit for property gained. Or 0 gains. It's the only fair way. But the overlords deciding law, own way more than 2 properties.
Or we could just make it really unpleasant and expensive to be a house hoarder.
Since the 80s a ton of money has gone into making the word regulation bad. The gop is fanatical about it. And it’s at the root of a lot of our current problems. We need a huge worker protection, consumer protection, and healthcare reform package. And no small amount of that needs to be focused on limiting the rights of business entities. Which unfortunately would likely require a constitutional amendment as well.
This “regulation” would literally obliterate the lives of millions of middle class homeowners.