I think I agree with your argument that we should discourage foreign speculators, but I would go further by adding that we should discourage domestic speculatio

I think I agree with your argument that we should discourage foreign speculators, but I would go further by adding that we should discourage domestic speculation as well, so I think I disagree with your apparent argument that you deserve your own house’s appreciation. The market should be designed to reward hard work and productive investments. Something is wrong if the rewards to speculation in scarce resources exceed the rewards to work. I believe this is a progressive-era concept from Henry George. This means that hard-working people should be able to find opportunity when they come here, and the market shouldn’t reward speculators for sitting on land without making any improvements. Landlords should be rewarded for maintaining the building, and for constructing new housing, but not for appreciation on the land. But the Bay Area housing market has seemingly been designed to do the opposite. Proposition 13 protects land speculation by limiting property taxes to a little over 1% of assessed value and rewards seniority through the the acquisition value pyramid scheme. It also encourages localities to raise funds through counterproductive development fees instead of broad-based taxes. And despite the strong economy, our rate of housing construction is far below past times and other cities. We have a housing market that rewards holding onto properties, allows landlords to capture wage growth, and discourages development. I would like to see this system change. For your points about discouraging demand, I think I would agree at the national level but not at the local level. The federal government should encourage companies to locate in other cities. But localities have little power to do so. What local governments can do to discourage housing speculation is to increase land taxes and allow developers to flood the market with more housing.