4 ms·

> It's also a temporal issue -- Building housing lowers house prices in the future, restricting AirBnB lowers house prices today. That's not necessarily true.

> It's also a temporal issue -- Building housing lowers house prices in the future, restricting AirBnB lowers house prices today. That's not necessarily true. You assume that apartments that are used as full-time AirBnB rentals would instead be rented out to full-time tenants as "normal" apartments. The problem is that if those apartments would be subject to rent control, a lot of landlords would prefer to keep them vacant. It's estimated that over ten thousand units in San Francisco are intentionally left vacant by their owners, because having a rent-controlled tenant in the unit makes it a lot harder to sell the property. Landlords who purchased their apartments for their appreciation value, rather than monthly cashflow, are pretty likely to do this. If those landlords choose to leave their properties vacant, that will be a short-term reduction in the housing supply rather than an increase. If those landlords choose sell their properties immediately, there is no telling what will happen -- some may be rented out, some may be converted into luxury apartments with smaller numbers of units, and some may be converted into single-family homes (yes, this really happens). Some may be bought by other landlords who intend to leave them vacant and flip them in a few years for a quick profit. Some may be torn down and replaced with larger buildings, which would result in a short-term decrease in supply in exchange for a long-term increase. Of course, some landlords will rent out the apartments, which will result in a short-term increase in supply. But they won't all do that. I expect the effect on rents to be fairly small, and the effect on lawyers' bank accounts to be large.

michaelmrose 10y ago
Perhaps in areas where housing is in short supply holding a housing vacant should results in a rather punitive tax.
- allengeorge 10y ago
  Agreed, but the open question is how to determine that a household is "vacant" (turns out it's harder than one imagines). I'm a big fan of the: if it's not registered as your primary address in tax filing documents it's treated as an investment property and is taxed as such. If no one has that address as a primary address then it's treated as investment + vacant.
- twblalock 10y ago
  > Perhaps in areas where housing is in short supply holding a housing vacant should results in a rather punitive tax. Sure, keep piling on the regulations. Eventually, there will be so many regulations that no sane person will want to be a landlord or housing developer. Or, you could solve the problem properly by building enough housing. The constraints in SF are political, not geographical.
  - michaelmrose 10y ago
    If you disincentive people to build or hoard housing for investment purposes people would still need homes and we have a workable plan whereby a bank provides capital to build and earns interest over the next 10-30 years to ensure people who need homes don't have to fork out 100k+ in costs to move in. If we loosened up restrictions a lot of them could fork out even less for smaller homes even. The purpose of the housing market is to you know house people not provide an optimal investment vehicle or money for entrepreneurs. Taxing inefficiency in the market that is vacant or vacation homes is the smart thing to do.

michaelmrose 10y ago

Perhaps in areas where housing is in short supply holding a housing vacant should results in a rather punitive tax.

allengeorge 10y ago
Agreed, but the open question is how to determine that a household is "vacant" (turns out it's harder than one imagines). I'm a big fan of the: if it's not registered as your primary address in tax filing documents it's treated as an investment property and is taxed as such. If no one has that address as a primary address then it's treated as investment + vacant.
twblalock 10y ago
> Perhaps in areas where housing is in short supply holding a housing vacant should results in a rather punitive tax. Sure, keep piling on the regulations. Eventually, there will be so many regulations that no sane person will want to be a landlord or housing developer. Or, you could solve the problem properly by building enough housing. The constraints in SF are political, not geographical.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  If you disincentive people to build or hoard housing for investment purposes people would still need homes and we have a workable plan whereby a bank provides capital to build and earns interest over the next 10-30 years to ensure people who need homes don't have to fork out 100k+ in costs to move in. If we loosened up restrictions a lot of them could fork out even less for smaller homes even. The purpose of the housing market is to you know house people not provide an optimal investment vehicle or money for entrepreneurs. Taxing inefficiency in the market that is vacant or vacation homes is the smart thing to do.