And Airbnb. Fuck that company and the people that buy houses and use them for this. My parents live in the mountains in a popular spot for vacations and camping. Nowadays they are the only house on their entire street that isn’t an Airbnb.
Unused housing should be taxed mercilessly.
And single-family homes should have a 100% annual tax on them, unless they are owned by an individual human/family (none of this LLC bullshit) who own only 1 house. Make a 6-month exception for inherited houses just so they can be sold, but otherwise just tax the shit out of them.
Make hoarding housing a liability.
Disagree, my grandfather’s home has set vacant for nearly 4 years now after his passing. The estate cannot be wrapped up due to my estranged uncle not believing the property is worthless.
The county keeps upping the tax assessment, and so he’s convinced it’s worth something and refuses to visit the preoperty.
On paper this is an unused house in reality the roof finally fell in about 6 months after my grandfather died. The county refuses to condem it because they want the tax revenue and my estranged uncle has held up the estate indefinitely with unrealistic expectations.
I wouldn’t say my poor as fuck family deserve a 100% annual tax on the assessed value of a near worthless asset.
I imagine the options would be to pay the tax or just, I dunno, get rid of the property? You said it’s worthless.
I am a former landlord and I approve of this message. We are back in the house we rented out for 22 years after we moved across the country to a better job, in a place we didn’t care for. We kept our house here so we could come back. We rented it out for 22 years at 30% or even less than market rate ($1600 a month in 2022 for a 3 bed two bath house near LA and a 10 m walk from the train) and we endured crooked and incompetent property managers, failed appliances and tenants who didn’t pay rent. One became a bank robber after we evicted them for not paying rent. They could have started robbing banks earlier I guess so they could at least pay the rent. Anyway, it worked out very well for us. We are back in our house where we like to live. People and companies who buy a bunch of houses and don’t rent them out to give people places to live shouldn’t be able to profit from doing that.
Anyway, it worked out very well for us
This proves the point. This is the kind of story that should end “so, in the end we ended up losing money on the place”. But, if an absent landlord can hire crooked and incompetent property managers, deal with deadbeat tenants, and still have it work out very well for them then it’s an investment where you really can’t lose.
I’m sure you’re lovely people. I don’t mean to criticize you in particular, just the game.
Had we sold our house when we took that job back east we would never have been able to come back here on what we could have saved from what a working person makes. So like I said, it worked out for us.
As a current landlord about to extend a lease at exactly the same terms for 3rd year in a row (and I fix everything within 24 hours) - I agree with this too.
It’s ridiculous that my largest store of value is a speculation bubble and a piece of paper with my name on it
I couldn’t disagree more. All the hatred should be directed at individuals/companies that own a bunch of properties. They are specifically in the business of fucking people.
As opposed to the people who merely own one family of serfs?
Wtf are you talking about?
Edit: messed up the formatting.
Does it matter to a family that can only rent if they rent from a corporation vs individual?
Spreading out renters is not a solution.
The following math works if the all landlords own the maximum allowed.
If the maximum rentals one could own is 1000, only 1‰ of the population can be landlords.
If the maximum rentals one could own is 100, only 1% of the population can be landlords.
If the maximum rentals one could own is 10, only 10% of the population can be landlords.
If the maximum rentals one could own is 1, only 50% of the population can be landlords.
To go back to the beginning, if there is no maximum, only 1 person (0.0001%) of the population can be a landlord and everyone else is a renter (the whole “you will own nothing and be happy” line).
What percent of the population do you want to permit to be landlords? Mind you, not property managers, specifically landlords.
Remember 100% of the population can be a property manager because everyone can manage their own property. But the largest percentage of the population that can be landlords is 50%.
I see that you differentiate from people who happen to have extra space and want to rent it out, that I can understand. But also understand that someone can buy 1 home specifically to fuck over other people.
The problem is that some people want to own other people’s homes. Some people want to own 1000 people’s homes and others just 1 is enough. In either case it is not the number that is the problem but the desire to own other people’s homes for the sole purpose of rent seeking that is the problem.
That is what is meant by the comment about “merely own one family of serfs” is about.
None of the shit your said counters my original point. Individual renters with a single rental property inherently care about it and it will almost never be their only income. They’re not doing it to squeeze the most money out of it. Most just need rent to cover their own expenses.
Previous comment is still utter fucking nonsense.
You were given a great answer but to put it even more bluntly, just because someone owns one slave it doesn’t make it any better than someone owning a whole plantation of slaves. It’s horrible either way, I don’t care if you have more time to take better care of your slave because it’s your only one; you still own a fucking slave
It wasn’t a great answer. It was incredibly banal and doesn’t take reality into consideration. This idiotic logic can be applied to anything. It doesn’t make any more sense just because you repeat it.
We live in a capitalist country. We’re all slaves by this primitive thinking. You can shift the blame endlessly.
A properly maintained rental that is fairly priced is not unfair to anyone.
There are literally amendments to the Constitution preventing this from happening have you all lost your mind!
Why do we have to pretend the constitution matters when our enemies don’t?
So those who want to buy a house but can’t afford it are still fucked. Cool.
I think it’s valid to address issues with proposed solutions, especially prior to their implementation. For what it’s worth, their argument is not entirely sound, since most these proposals have built in subsidies for home buyers, but it’s good that they are providing their perspective.
Their “issue” is that they think it doesn’t benefit them personally, and they think everything ought to be about them.
Just apply a 300% tax on empty property. Empty houses don’t contribute to the local economy by using local businesses.
How would this help house homeless people?
I’d hope that it would encourage renting the unit even at a discount to avoid the fine.
Which would in turn lower rents by the surge of units on the market for rent.
It’s a compromise, from the before times when one could assume people elected to their public positions where attempting to do those jobs in good faith.
The idea would be to give everyone something they want so that everyone could agree and actually get something done.
In this case, the house hoarders don’t immediately lose the resources they’ve hoarded, and instead get charged for the damage they’re doing to the economy. Ideally that money goes towards housing the poor, but that’s a side effect.
The point would be to make house hoarding non-viable as an income source, incentivising the hoarders to un-hoard.
Sadly, it wouldn’t do either without a much higher tax, which would never get agreed to
Nowadays it’s just a pipe dream that the money’d power wants to compromise on anything.
The Welsh (or some Welsh councils?) have already done it. Although the problem there is more with holiday homes people buy and leave empty most of the year. It’s fun to read people complaining that they have to sell it. Yes, that is the point.
Prices are artificially inflated due to reduced supply. Increased supply should lower cost * making homes more affordable.
- Absent other fuckery
People using homes as an asset (the same way they buy stocks/etc) would panic realizing that their golden goose is suddenly draining their bank account. They’d either offer rental prices dirt cheap, or give up and sell the property at whatever price people can afford (eg, 10% of what they currently charge).
There are currently MANY empty properties so this could have a larger effect than we often realize. Currently some cities try this the inverse way by giving tax credit to residents.
Landlords are scum, but tenants are fucking disgusting.
Canada instantly bursting in flames
why do you hate me so?
Do you think you provide housing? Here’s a list of common signs:
If someone stole all your tools, you’d kill them, and you don’t think that’s weird.
Unhealthy relationship with caffeine (bonus points for other substances too)
At least one fucked-up bone or joint
There’s some Liquid Nails or silicone caulk stuck in your favorite work shirt
Your hearing isn’t as good as it used to be
Regular porta-shitter use
If two or more of these fit your lifestyle, you may be a provider of housing.
