7 ms·

> There are already enough houses and condos in the city with no lights on because no one actually lives in them. To me, there seems to be a pretty obvious pub

> There are already enough houses and condos in the city with no lights on because no one actually lives in them. To me, there seems to be a pretty obvious public policy response. Institute a very high property tax, which is abated on some kind of curve according to the amount of time the owner or tenants spend living in a property, with no tax being due if the property is legitimately occupied for more than, say, ten months. It might not solve the problem entirely, but at least you would reduce the effect of a diminution of housing supply that is driven by these kinds of absentee owners, and that must be driving up rents, at least.

kitcar 11y ago
What you're describing is similar to the approach south Florida takes - assume many purchasers are non-residents, and therefore rely on property taxes rather than income taxes to fill the coffer https://southfloridaforbeginners.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/the-low-tax-illusion/ https://southfloridaforbeginners.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/th...
ryandrake 11y ago
This is normally done via a "Homestead" tax exemption, where if your vacation home is assessed at $100K, you get taxed on all $100K, but if you live on it, you only get taxed on $100,000-N, where N is the exemption. This is meant to encourage owners occupying their homes, which is a great thing. I don't know if they have it in Vancouver. In California, the exemption is a measly $7000. Which is essentially nothing, given home prices in the Bay Area. What they need to do is increase that number 10-20X or make it a percentage of the home's value. This would greatly help solve the problem of foreign "investors" buying up all the housing, leaving it vacant, and essentially just treating homes like bars of gold in a safe. And don't even get me started on Prop 13, which is essentially mechanism to transfer wealth from younger, newer residents to older residents.
- zanny 11y ago
  I'd like to just see a return to homesteading period. If a property goes unused / unoccupied for a year, anyone can move in. No more land squatting to drive up real estate prices and use it as a store of wealth. Yes, this kills real estate as a long term investment. No, that is a good thing, we should collectively much rather see capital invested in the stock market rather than being thrown into precious metals or property as a store of value.
  - refurb 11y ago
    Homesteading is giving unclaimed land new residents. What you're talking about is squatter's rights.
    - zanny 11y ago
      Except I'm not - there already exist squatters rights to occupy someones elses property and eventually claim it their own if they can avoid detection long enough. All that takes is the minimum effort to police the property you own to insure nobody is squatting. What I'm saying is that unconditionally whether or not someone is illegally occupying your property you only have a fixed amount of time to make use of it before it effectively becomes unclaimed land again.
      - infinite8s 11y ago
        No developed country supports anything remotely like squatter's rights.
        Symbiote 11y ago
        Try the UK: https://www.gov.uk/squatting-law/squatters-rights-to-property https://www.gov.uk/squatting-law/squatters-rights-to-propert... I suspect several other European countries have similar rights.
        infinite8s 11y ago
        From that site: "Land Registry will decide if your application is valid and will let the property owner know. The owner has 65 days to object - your application will usually be automatically rejected if they do." So basically you'll only get to stay if the property is effectively abandoned.
        goldbrick 11y ago
        Which is what squatting is...
pascalmemories 11y ago
And how much do your 'Occupancy Police' cost to administer such a system ? If it relies on a property owner filling in a form, they're just going to lie to avoid the cost and without someone going round to every single house and monitoring it for weeks and months of the year, you have no way to detect people avoiding the tax. Super high property tax when I'm not there? Simple, employ a cleaner on some minimal wage and let them stay there when I'm not in town. When I'm in town, put them up in a hotel. I'll probably still save money on the property tax and I can claim to be a caring employer, helping with employment in town. The city council are evil job destroyers by sticking me with huge taxes. Scotland implements a 'second home' variant of their 'council tax' [a weird name for property tax]. Depending on area, it's a locally chosen multiple of the standard tax. But that's based on whether people declare another property and there's a lot of overhead in policing it. I doubt if it actually raises any extra net income. But what if your empty property is actually from a relative who recently died and the estate is being finalized? Does that get hit too? It always sounds simple to just slap extra taxes on rich people (who always happen to be defined as someone other than yourself), but that often leads to unfairness to decidedly non-rich people. Rich people always find a way round these things - they pay lawyers and accountants to make sure they can. No public policy will ever fix that.
- UVB-76 11y ago
  Council tax in the UK is not really comparable to property taxes in other countries like the US. It's a highly regressive tax, and utterly negligible when considering prime real estate in areas like London.
- nutmeg 11y ago
  Why have taxes at all if rich people always find a way around these things? Or laws, for that matter?
- jamespo 11y ago
  Well let's just abandon all taxation by that argument
  - 11y ago
Shivetya 11y ago
I would be careful here. Laws like this are close to demonstrating a lack of respect for property rights and that is not a good direction for any democracy. We have always had areas where the cost of housing was too high but the reactionary idea of taxing it to death is in effect the idea of that some property rights are important but others are not. If any such idea was pushed then be sure that protection is applied to citizens of the country involved. Even this is dangerous as it tells foreigners that their money is welcome but their rights are subject to the whims of the times. The real solution is, build more places to live. What is preventing the building of affordable housing? Find that and fix that. The response is far more proper and rewarding than trying to force someone out of their property because you think they don't deserve to own it if they don't live in a set amount of time
- goldbrick 11y ago
  You have things upside down. Property rights only exist because of law. Also, when did property rights become vital to democracy?
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    It became vital back when economies first started to specialize. If you take the net the fisherman wants to use and string it up as a hammock, you're going to eat fewer fish later. If you take the blacksmith's tongs and use them to crack walnuts, you're not going to get that handful of nails that you wanted to build your house. Property rights alleviate the tragedy of the commons, by taking resources with multiple possible uses out of the commons and dedicating them to uses other than just the one with the highest immediate value. It should be obvious that you can't plant a field on the same land footprint as the foundation of your house. You can't build a road over it at the same time that it's under an apartment building. Property rights are part of our system for resolving the conflicts behind multiple competing exclusive uses for any particular thing. They are not absolutely essential to democracy, but they are the best solution we have yet tried for resource allocation in a specialized economy, and democracies tend to fare better when there is enough prosperity to spread around to everyone.
Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago
>To me, there seems to be a pretty obvious public policy response. Institute a very high property tax, which is abated on some kind of curve according to the amount of time the owner or tenants spend living in a property, with no tax being due if the property is legitimately occupied for more than, say, ten months. This punishes newcomers and rewards staying in the same property, just like California Prop 13. Have a kid and need a new place with more space? Prepare to pay punishing property taxes for that luxury. You grew up in the area and it's time to move out? Enjoy your tax! Moving from the countryside for better employment opportunities? Tax please! Because of the strong disincentive to move, there's now going to be fewer units on the market than would otherwise be expected. House prices go up, not down, and the moving tax is likely to be regressive. >It might not solve the problem entirely, but at least you would reduce the effect of a diminution of housing supply that is driven by these kinds of absentee owners, and that must be driving up rents, at least. In this case it will exacerbate it, just like Prop 13. It's really a moving tax disguised as a property tax. There is, however, a tax that will punish absentee owners but also not create distortions: a land value tax. It's similar to a normal property tax, except it's on the value of the land only, not land and improvements or improvements only. A single family home on a particular lot is taxed the same as a skyscraper or an empty lot sitting on that same lot. This punishes land speculators and NIMBY types, cannot be passed on in rent (normally taxes decrease the supply somewhat, so some of the tax can be passed on, but land is fixed in value and a tax cannot reduce its supply), and does not punish building like a standard property tax does. It allows cities to capture value from infrastructure improvements, such as running a new transit line. The practical concerns are similar to a standard property tax: how do we do assessments? The great thing about it is that land is easier to compare than buildings are.
- munificent 11y ago
  > This punishes newcomers and rewards staying in the same property, just like California Prop 13. Have a kid and need a new place with more space? Prepare to pay punishing property taxes for that luxury. You grew up in the area and it's time to move out? Enjoy your tax! Moving from the countryside for better employment opportunities? Tax please! Can you explain why this would be a moving tax? Obvious, property taxes only apply to the fraction of the year that you own a place. Are you worried about the overlapping period where you have the house on the market but haven't sold it yet? I suppose that would be an issue, but I assume for most people, that's a relatively small fraction of time. It's not like there aren't already lots of other expenses associated with moving.

kitcar 11y ago

What you're describing is similar to the approach south Florida takes - assume many purchasers are non-residents, and therefore rely on property taxes rather than income taxes to fill the coffer https://southfloridaforbeginners.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/the-low-tax-illusion/ https://southfloridaforbeginners.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/th...

ryandrake 11y ago

This is normally done via a "Homestead" tax exemption, where if your vacation home is assessed at $100K, you get taxed on all $100K, but if you live on it, you only get taxed on $100,000-N, where N is the exemption. This is meant to encourage owners occupying their homes, which is a great thing. I don't know if they have it in Vancouver. In California, the exemption is a measly $7000. Which is essentially nothing, given home prices in the Bay Area. What they need to do is increase that number 10-20X or make it a percentage of the home's value. This would greatly help solve the problem of foreign "investors" buying up all the housing, leaving it vacant, and essentially just treating homes like bars of gold in a safe. And don't even get me started on Prop 13, which is essentially mechanism to transfer wealth from younger, newer residents to older residents.

zanny 11y ago
I'd like to just see a return to homesteading period. If a property goes unused / unoccupied for a year, anyone can move in. No more land squatting to drive up real estate prices and use it as a store of wealth. Yes, this kills real estate as a long term investment. No, that is a good thing, we should collectively much rather see capital invested in the stock market rather than being thrown into precious metals or property as a store of value.
- refurb 11y ago
  Homesteading is giving unclaimed land new residents. What you're talking about is squatter's rights.
  - zanny 11y ago
    Except I'm not - there already exist squatters rights to occupy someones elses property and eventually claim it their own if they can avoid detection long enough. All that takes is the minimum effort to police the property you own to insure nobody is squatting. What I'm saying is that unconditionally whether or not someone is illegally occupying your property you only have a fixed amount of time to make use of it before it effectively becomes unclaimed land again.
    - infinite8s 11y ago
      No developed country supports anything remotely like squatter's rights.
      - Symbiote 11y ago
        Try the UK: https://www.gov.uk/squatting-law/squatters-rights-to-property https://www.gov.uk/squatting-law/squatters-rights-to-propert... I suspect several other European countries have similar rights.
        infinite8s 11y ago
        From that site: "Land Registry will decide if your application is valid and will let the property owner know. The owner has 65 days to object - your application will usually be automatically rejected if they do." So basically you'll only get to stay if the property is effectively abandoned.
        goldbrick 11y ago
        Which is what squatting is...

pascalmemories 11y ago

And how much do your 'Occupancy Police' cost to administer such a system ? If it relies on a property owner filling in a form, they're just going to lie to avoid the cost and without someone going round to every single house and monitoring it for weeks and months of the year, you have no way to detect people avoiding the tax. Super high property tax when I'm not there? Simple, employ a cleaner on some minimal wage and let them stay there when I'm not in town. When I'm in town, put them up in a hotel. I'll probably still save money on the property tax and I can claim to be a caring employer, helping with employment in town. The city council are evil job destroyers by sticking me with huge taxes. Scotland implements a 'second home' variant of their 'council tax' [a weird name for property tax]. Depending on area, it's a locally chosen multiple of the standard tax. But that's based on whether people declare another property and there's a lot of overhead in policing it. I doubt if it actually raises any extra net income. But what if your empty property is actually from a relative who recently died and the estate is being finalized? Does that get hit too? It always sounds simple to just slap extra taxes on rich people (who always happen to be defined as someone other than yourself), but that often leads to unfairness to decidedly non-rich people. Rich people always find a way round these things - they pay lawyers and accountants to make sure they can. No public policy will ever fix that.

UVB-76 11y ago
Council tax in the UK is not really comparable to property taxes in other countries like the US. It's a highly regressive tax, and utterly negligible when considering prime real estate in areas like London.
nutmeg 11y ago
Why have taxes at all if rich people always find a way around these things? Or laws, for that matter?
jamespo 11y ago
Well let's just abandon all taxation by that argument
- 11y ago

Shivetya 11y ago

I would be careful here. Laws like this are close to demonstrating a lack of respect for property rights and that is not a good direction for any democracy. We have always had areas where the cost of housing was too high but the reactionary idea of taxing it to death is in effect the idea of that some property rights are important but others are not. If any such idea was pushed then be sure that protection is applied to citizens of the country involved. Even this is dangerous as it tells foreigners that their money is welcome but their rights are subject to the whims of the times. The real solution is, build more places to live. What is preventing the building of affordable housing? Find that and fix that. The response is far more proper and rewarding than trying to force someone out of their property because you think they don't deserve to own it if they don't live in a set amount of time

goldbrick 11y ago
You have things upside down. Property rights only exist because of law. Also, when did property rights become vital to democracy?
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  It became vital back when economies first started to specialize. If you take the net the fisherman wants to use and string it up as a hammock, you're going to eat fewer fish later. If you take the blacksmith's tongs and use them to crack walnuts, you're not going to get that handful of nails that you wanted to build your house. Property rights alleviate the tragedy of the commons, by taking resources with multiple possible uses out of the commons and dedicating them to uses other than just the one with the highest immediate value. It should be obvious that you can't plant a field on the same land footprint as the foundation of your house. You can't build a road over it at the same time that it's under an apartment building. Property rights are part of our system for resolving the conflicts behind multiple competing exclusive uses for any particular thing. They are not absolutely essential to democracy, but they are the best solution we have yet tried for resource allocation in a specialized economy, and democracies tend to fare better when there is enough prosperity to spread around to everyone.

Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago

>To me, there seems to be a pretty obvious public policy response. Institute a very high property tax, which is abated on some kind of curve according to the amount of time the owner or tenants spend living in a property, with no tax being due if the property is legitimately occupied for more than, say, ten months. This punishes newcomers and rewards staying in the same property, just like California Prop 13. Have a kid and need a new place with more space? Prepare to pay punishing property taxes for that luxury. You grew up in the area and it's time to move out? Enjoy your tax! Moving from the countryside for better employment opportunities? Tax please! Because of the strong disincentive to move, there's now going to be fewer units on the market than would otherwise be expected. House prices go up, not down, and the moving tax is likely to be regressive. >It might not solve the problem entirely, but at least you would reduce the effect of a diminution of housing supply that is driven by these kinds of absentee owners, and that must be driving up rents, at least. In this case it will exacerbate it, just like Prop 13. It's really a moving tax disguised as a property tax. There is, however, a tax that will punish absentee owners but also not create distortions: a land value tax. It's similar to a normal property tax, except it's on the value of the land only, not land and improvements or improvements only. A single family home on a particular lot is taxed the same as a skyscraper or an empty lot sitting on that same lot. This punishes land speculators and NIMBY types, cannot be passed on in rent (normally taxes decrease the supply somewhat, so some of the tax can be passed on, but land is fixed in value and a tax cannot reduce its supply), and does not punish building like a standard property tax does. It allows cities to capture value from infrastructure improvements, such as running a new transit line. The practical concerns are similar to a standard property tax: how do we do assessments? The great thing about it is that land is easier to compare than buildings are.

munificent 11y ago
> This punishes newcomers and rewards staying in the same property, just like California Prop 13. Have a kid and need a new place with more space? Prepare to pay punishing property taxes for that luxury. You grew up in the area and it's time to move out? Enjoy your tax! Moving from the countryside for better employment opportunities? Tax please! Can you explain why this would be a moving tax? Obvious, property taxes only apply to the fraction of the year that you own a place. Are you worried about the overlapping period where you have the house on the market but haven't sold it yet? I suppose that would be an issue, but I assume for most people, that's a relatively small fraction of time. It's not like there aren't already lots of other expenses associated with moving.