4 ms·
How about: 1) Introducing a much higher tax rate for rental property income. 2) Making property taxes be reassessed every single year unless your AGI is lower
by deanmoriarty 8y ago
How about:
1) Introducing a much higher tax rate for rental property income.
2) Making property taxes be reassessed every single year unless your AGI is lower than average and you are a resident.
3) Introducing a much (much!) higher tax for non-residents/foreign investors who buy a house purely for investment, and sometimes they don't even rent it out (I know a few rich folks from FAANG who bought a handful of houses in MV, and they keep them empty because they don't want the trouble of dealing with tenants, they say the appreciation is more than enough, to me it's borderline criminal).
I've seen numerous instances of those three events playing out against normal people trying to afford some housing while working a normal job. If it's not obvious, I'm heavily biased against real estate investors, because housing is a need for everybody, so the market should be much more regulated.
- stanleydrew 8y agoRegarding #3, maybe something like Vancouver's vacancy tax: https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-tax.aspx https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-t...
- bduerst 8y agoI've had a hard time explaining point 3) to people in other parts of the US, but its a huge and very real problem in the Bay area. Someone should do a "lights out" analysis in the Bay, where you count the number of homes that don't turn their lights on at night for 30 days.
- malandrew 8y agoSoftware engineers can trivially solve this.
- jacobolus 8y agoKeep in mind the context of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197... It will take a lot of political organizing to undo. There have been several attempts and they all meet stiff resistance.
- woah 8y agoMy guess is that while your anecdote may infuriate you, the effect of investors who don’t rent out their homes is negligible on housing prices. The real fix is to build enough housing for everyone. Eliminating prop 13 could help with this, since it would cause homeowners to be penalized for high home values, building political will to build more housing and bring down the prices.
- rrcaptain 8y ago>My guess is that while your anecdote may infuriate you, the effect of investors who don’t rent out their homes is negligible on housing prices. No that's actually a large part of housing problems. Like a third of Manhattan real estate is empty. And Manhattan is already super dense but still has homeless people.
- Silfen 8y agoNo, Manhattan's vacancy rate is quite low[0][1]. [0] https://www.nakedapartments.com/blog/nyc-vacancy-rate/ https://www.nakedapartments.com/blog/nyc-vacancy-rate/ [1] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/rentguidelinesboard/pdf/18HSR.pdf https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/rentguidelinesboard/pdf/18HSR.pd...
- CydeWeys 8y agoPlease don't make up fake stats. I live in Manhattan and the idea that a full third of the real estate here is empty is laughable. Have you ever visited?? As my sibling comment points out, the real rate (as determined by actual data) is less than 5%.
- kokokokoko 8y agoI think you might be confusing rental property that is unrented vs property that is not in the market but not physically occupied. "about 30 percent of the more than 5,000 apartments are routinely vacant for more than 10 months a year" [1] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/nyregion/more-apartments-are-empty-yet-rented-or-owned-census-finds.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/nyregion/more-apartments-...