11 ms·

While not perfect it's absolutely commendable, compare this to the borderline criminal state of real estate market in places like the UK or Vancouver where fore

While not perfect it's absolutely commendable, compare this to the borderline criminal state of real estate market in places like the UK or Vancouver where foreign investors and corrupted politics destroyed and alienated the middle class population...Imho real estate should be absolutely outside the possibility of speculation and 'investment', a house is for a family/person to own and live in not some mega conglomerate side business of rip off rental and overinflated selling prices.

nvarsj 8y ago
The UK is awful. Worse than American cities. No property tax, non existent/weak tenant laws, and renters have to pay the council taxes (in the US the owner is usually responsible for all HOA and taxes). The deposit protection schemes seem more designed to benefit landlords too.
- goguy 8y ago
  Totally agree, most of them are hard assed companies with no morals and very loose practices. One place I used to rent from tried to swindle my deposit for "repairs" of things that were clearly just standard wear and tear over the years. I argued till I was blue in the face and they eventually agreed with me on most of the things and agreed to "refund" me. They messed up somehow and transferred me 2x my initial deposit, normally I would absolutely let them know about their mistake but as they messed me around for months I didn't say a word and kept it. Suprise suprise they went out of business a few months later
  - kileywm 8y ago
    Depending on the local laws, the 2x return of your deposit may not have been a mistake. They may have been legally obligated to return 2x of the deposit amount because they failed to return your correct deposit amount within a certain number of days. Example: 21 days for some areas
- jeffbax 8y ago
  Taxes and HOA just get rolled up into the rent. It's not like those aren't already impacting the price because the landlord must be the one to pay the money.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    There are still important second order effects. Making those the responsibility of the renter makes it harder to comparison shop (remember what it used to be like buying plane tickets when everybody just showed the base fare?) and it means the renter bears the risk of any sudden increase in those costs.
    - bluGill 8y ago
      That is the downside. The upside is renters have better insight into how voting to raise/lower taxes will affect their rent. In the US that is all rolled into rent, and as a result renters happily vote to raise the taxes in the area they live without realizing that it will come back in rent increases eventually. (though there is some time lag as other economic factors affect how much rent can be raised)
      - mikeash 8y ago
        Seems like you could have the best of both worlds by making it the landlord’s responsibility and requiring them to itemize it for the renter. Also, what happens when a property is vacant? Do taxes revert to the owner, or do they not get paid?
        clort 8y ago
        In the UK, yes. The owner is responsible for council tax when a property is empty. This varies across the country, it could be totally zero rated when the property is empty and unfurnished, or it could be that you have to pay entirely. Where I live, landlords can get one month free in any 12 month period for empty (no residents) and unfurnished (except for white goods) properties.
  - 8y ago
- captainbland 8y ago
  Yeah it feels a lot like the feudal system still exists in some small way with our rental system. Revenge evictions are common enough to be a well known problem. In public discourse the right of the landlord to do whatever they like with their tenancy agreements dominates and other viewpoints are still often marginalised, typically with whinges about difficult tenants and the apparent right of landlords to an early retirement while they leech off their tenants' work. A disproportionate number of MPs are landlords. Even Tony Blair made a killing from his own buy-to-let portfolio.
  - 13of40 8y ago
    > Revenge evictions The last apartment I rented (15 years back) had an interesting mechanism for this: The rent was about $2000 but they applied something they called a "subsidy" of $400 off per month. Basically if you pissed them off they could immediately raise your rent by $400 per month to drive you out.
- beobab 8y ago
  For the landlord side: Renting out my one house in London after I bought another one to live in (across the country). I had tenants who flat out refused to pay their rent after a few months living there. This went on for several years, and it took legal battles and numerous court fees to evict them. None of which they turned up to contest. Before they left, they plastered globs of lard on the walls, and destroyed the kitchen floor and wall by rigging the water pipes to constantly overflow down the outside wall. I was not allowed to enter the property to inspect it, nor was I allowed to "harass them" by speaking to them face-to-face, because they didn't want me to. I was powerless. Yes, they lost their deposit, but I was out of pocket tens of thousands, which I basically couldn't afford. I maxed out my credit cards and bank account overdrafts. Even selling the house, it took me nearly 5 years to get back to zero. I'm not saying that UK law is worse for landlords, but the laws aren't particularly on the side of landlords either.
  - Loughla 8y ago
    It seems like you learned a valuable lesson about stepping into a space where wealthy, well-connected players dominate. It seems like if you had the appropriate connections to government, this process would've been easier?
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      How exactly do you imagine that having "connections to government" would affect a problem caused by the law?
      - novaleaf 8y ago
        I'm sure he/she means nepotism/graft/corruption getting the landlord extrajudicial favors.... though their comment seems a bit out of place in this context.
      - rtkwe 8y ago
        It's not even entirely a problem caused by the law, beobab also just didn't know the full extent of their rights as a property owner. Tenent protections are strong but they wouldn't have stopped beobab from getting them out sooner and inspecting the property for damage.
- dazc 8y ago
  The obvious answer for this problem is for the major housebuilders to adopt a 'build to rent model' rather than 'build to sell'. It would eliminate the need for a middleman who is often borrowing money to fund the purchase himself, adding further inefficiencies to an already inefficient business model. The prospect of builders becoming long-term landlords may also incentivize them to build a house that will last the course of the tenancy?
  - purple_ducks 8y ago
    ??? Developers (who hire builders) go to market for finance - they don't have the funds lying around. Those financiers want a quickish (< 3/5 yrs) return, not a long term investment(20+ years).
    - dazc 8y ago
      Yes, I understand they want a fast turnaround on investment which is part of the problem.
- isostatic 8y ago
  The council taxes round here work along the following lines: £50k house -- £750 (1.5%) £150k house -- £1500 (1%) £650k house -- £3000 (0.5%) £3000k house -- £3000 (0.1%)
  - mring33621 8y ago
    So, highly regressive.
    - isostatic 8y ago
      Sadly the main complaint seems to be that wealthy pensioners who live in £1m estates have to pay.
somecallitblues 8y ago
Best comment here. Sydney AU has the same problem. The government is addicted to stamp duty and doesn’t want to do anything about the negative gearing and other handouts for the rich baby boomers. The situation is completely fucked up.
- zerogvt 8y ago
  Feels quite similar to Ireland as well. Another rental market that has gone insane over the past 4-5 years.
- eru 8y ago
  Stamp duty is exactly backwards. They shouldn't tax transactions (that usually improve economic efficiency almost by definition), but they should tax holding land. Negative gearing is a special kind of Australian crazy. Must be the drop bear bites.
rfrey 8y ago
Not denying we have a broken system, but how could we outlaw real estate investment without removing the option of renting an apartment or house?
- FeepingCreature 8y ago
  Didn't you hear? A house is "for a person to own and live in." Who cares about renters, apparently?
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    So those who don't have the cash up front or credit to buy a house are SOL, so as migrant workers who made the mistake of looking for a job somewhere in the jurisdiction.
    - ricardobeat 8y ago
      I don’t think the intention is to reduce rentals, just to stop prices from going up. That said, you need very little cash at hand to buy a house in the Netherlands (in fact, a few years back you needed < €0), there’s no upfront payment. Credit is cheap (~2%) and abundant.
      - geezerjay 8y ago
        > I don’t think the intention is to reduce rentals, just to stop prices from going up. The legislation described in TFA is quite literally designed to cut off the introduction of newly built houses in the rental market, including investments in real estate focused on that market segment.
        mcv 8y ago
        TFA disagrees with you: "Amsterdam’s proposed laws wouldn’t stop new rental housing from being built—according to the city’s proposal, that housing would simply have to be proposed and approved as rental property in the first place."
Kalium 8y ago
How do you feel about companies that buy land and build housing on it, hoping to sell? By most definitions that would be speculation and investment...
- x38iq84n 8y ago
  I am grateful they exist and provide housing development. As developers should naturally do.
- Tiktaalik 8y ago
  The problem is that in Vancouver they're selling it... in Hong Kong, setting up real estate offices and recruiting foreign real estate agents sell the product outside the city. There's no local demand for the housing at the prices that they want to get, so they have to go outside the city. This of course inflates demand and buyers with incomes beyond local Vancouver incomes crowd out locals.
Macross8299 8y ago
Restricting home ownership as investment while not restricting apartment property investment or commercial property investment doesn't make things more fair. It just puts property investment out of reach of the average middle class person and restricts social mobility. e.g. a high-school drop-out plumber can afford to buy a house and rent it out based on just wages/credit, but he likely can't afford to do that with an apartment building.
- ricardobeat 8y ago
  “Homes” includes apartments. Commercial properties are, well, commercial, and don’t need any regulation of this kind since the goal is to ensure that people have access to housing.
  - Macross8299 8y ago
    This Amsterdam law only applies to houses (single family dwellings), as far as I can tell.
lupire 8y ago
Some people can't afford the transaction costs associated with buying and selling real estate every year or few. Clamping down on rentals hurts the economically weak. Your xenophobia is showing, blaming "foreigners". Absentee landowners with vacant properties are a problem. Landlords are a valuable service provider in an economy.
- sametmax 8y ago
  I didn't read any xenophobia in the parent, only anger at speculative investment. It happens that investment firms from china and the middle east are very active.
  - eru 8y ago
    What's wrong with them? They are people too.
    - orasis 8y ago
      Firms are not people.
    - ahoy 8y ago
      The folks that live down the block from me are people. A multinational investment firm is not people.
Tsubasachan 8y ago
Yeah a bit of context on Dutch society: people here truly believe in equality. Amsterdam, no matter how crazy hip it is, must remain open to all levels of society. The government is given a mandate by the People to do whatever it takes to make sure Amsterdam doesn't turn into a millionaire playground. If that means violating capitalism and property rights they will do so without hesitation.
eru 8y ago
Nah, just introduce a land value tax, and then welcome the foreign investors and speculators etc who came in and pay taxes for your local community.
mruts 8y ago
Are you saying it should be illegal to rent property? Moreover, have you considered who is going to benefit from the Amsterdam law? Existing landlords! It’s rentseeking (literally) on the part of landlords who don’t want competition!
conanbatt 8y ago
Do you believe that is true even if places where speculation and investment have better housing conditions that those that don't?
sintaxi 8y ago
Yeah but it gets housing built - which is the only thing that ultimately help affordability in the long run. Vancouver is building rapidly and developing rough neighbourhoods into pleasant ones. Sure, that is difficult on those who have had cheap rent in slum areas but that is the cost of improvement. I'm a long time Vancouver downtown resident who got "priced out" of the market. As far as I can tell policies that encourages construction at all prices of the market improve a city the most.
throwaway34241 8y ago
The three problems I see with prohibiting renting are: 1) It doesn't solve the problem of affordable housing. 2) If the owner leaves the property vacant instead of renting, it makes the problem worse. 3) The less well off usually rent instead of buying, so prohibiting it disadvantages them. While it's presently the trend to blame foreigners and/or investors for economic problems, I don't think this will end anywhere good. If you have 8 households who want to live in 5 houses, there is no way to make them affordable to all 8. Full stop. Not with paying all 8 more. Not with rent controls. Not by making everyone own, or everyone rent. It's totally impossible. The trend now seems to be that affordable housing will be allocated to a lucky few who win a government lottery. Whether this is a politically superior outcome to building more (and allowing the character of the neighborhood to change) is subjective.
- opportune 8y ago
  Prohibiting renting will create downward pressure on property prices and make them more affordable. If you can't rent a property, then it is worthless to you other than as a straight-up investment. If Amsterdam paired this with an unoccupied-residence tax then it would probably drive prices low enough for all housing to be owned by occupants (since housing would be worthless otherwise). If Amsterdam went even further and subsidized/required lenders to approve 0% down home ownership then they could likely fully solve the problem.
  - throwaway34241 8y ago
    How can it make it affordable? For rents, if 8 people want 5 units, the rent will be high enough that 3 people are priced out. For owning, if 8 people want 5 units, the mortgage payment will be high enough that 3 people are priced out. I fail to see any difference. I do think that discouraging unoccupied properties is a good idea though.
    - opportune 8y ago
      Yes, some people would still be priced out, but the equilibrium price under ideal circumstances would result in all units being owner-occupied (almost certainly at a lower monthly payment than renting would entail - there is less demand on the buy side since landlording and speculation are discouraged, and with 0% down financing nobody would be priced out of ownership due to lack of capital).
gregcrv 8y ago
And look at Toronto as well. A similar scheme has probably been used everywhere... https://wolfstreet.com/2019/03/21/billions-in-toronto-real-estate-bought-anonymously-with-funds-of-unknown-origin/ https://wolfstreet.com/2019/03/21/billions-in-toronto-real-e...

nvarsj 8y ago

The UK is awful. Worse than American cities. No property tax, non existent/weak tenant laws, and renters have to pay the council taxes (in the US the owner is usually responsible for all HOA and taxes). The deposit protection schemes seem more designed to benefit landlords too.

goguy 8y ago
Totally agree, most of them are hard assed companies with no morals and very loose practices. One place I used to rent from tried to swindle my deposit for "repairs" of things that were clearly just standard wear and tear over the years. I argued till I was blue in the face and they eventually agreed with me on most of the things and agreed to "refund" me. They messed up somehow and transferred me 2x my initial deposit, normally I would absolutely let them know about their mistake but as they messed me around for months I didn't say a word and kept it. Suprise suprise they went out of business a few months later
- kileywm 8y ago
  Depending on the local laws, the 2x return of your deposit may not have been a mistake. They may have been legally obligated to return 2x of the deposit amount because they failed to return your correct deposit amount within a certain number of days. Example: 21 days for some areas
jeffbax 8y ago
Taxes and HOA just get rolled up into the rent. It's not like those aren't already impacting the price because the landlord must be the one to pay the money.
- mikeash 8y ago
  There are still important second order effects. Making those the responsibility of the renter makes it harder to comparison shop (remember what it used to be like buying plane tickets when everybody just showed the base fare?) and it means the renter bears the risk of any sudden increase in those costs.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    That is the downside. The upside is renters have better insight into how voting to raise/lower taxes will affect their rent. In the US that is all rolled into rent, and as a result renters happily vote to raise the taxes in the area they live without realizing that it will come back in rent increases eventually. (though there is some time lag as other economic factors affect how much rent can be raised)
    - mikeash 8y ago
      Seems like you could have the best of both worlds by making it the landlord’s responsibility and requiring them to itemize it for the renter. Also, what happens when a property is vacant? Do taxes revert to the owner, or do they not get paid?
      - clort 8y ago
        In the UK, yes. The owner is responsible for council tax when a property is empty. This varies across the country, it could be totally zero rated when the property is empty and unfurnished, or it could be that you have to pay entirely. Where I live, landlords can get one month free in any 12 month period for empty (no residents) and unfurnished (except for white goods) properties.
- 8y ago
captainbland 8y ago
Yeah it feels a lot like the feudal system still exists in some small way with our rental system. Revenge evictions are common enough to be a well known problem. In public discourse the right of the landlord to do whatever they like with their tenancy agreements dominates and other viewpoints are still often marginalised, typically with whinges about difficult tenants and the apparent right of landlords to an early retirement while they leech off their tenants' work. A disproportionate number of MPs are landlords. Even Tony Blair made a killing from his own buy-to-let portfolio.
- 13of40 8y ago
  > Revenge evictions The last apartment I rented (15 years back) had an interesting mechanism for this: The rent was about $2000 but they applied something they called a "subsidy" of $400 off per month. Basically if you pissed them off they could immediately raise your rent by $400 per month to drive you out.
beobab 8y ago
For the landlord side: Renting out my one house in London after I bought another one to live in (across the country). I had tenants who flat out refused to pay their rent after a few months living there. This went on for several years, and it took legal battles and numerous court fees to evict them. None of which they turned up to contest. Before they left, they plastered globs of lard on the walls, and destroyed the kitchen floor and wall by rigging the water pipes to constantly overflow down the outside wall. I was not allowed to enter the property to inspect it, nor was I allowed to "harass them" by speaking to them face-to-face, because they didn't want me to. I was powerless. Yes, they lost their deposit, but I was out of pocket tens of thousands, which I basically couldn't afford. I maxed out my credit cards and bank account overdrafts. Even selling the house, it took me nearly 5 years to get back to zero. I'm not saying that UK law is worse for landlords, but the laws aren't particularly on the side of landlords either.
- Loughla 8y ago
  It seems like you learned a valuable lesson about stepping into a space where wealthy, well-connected players dominate. It seems like if you had the appropriate connections to government, this process would've been easier?
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    How exactly do you imagine that having "connections to government" would affect a problem caused by the law?
    - novaleaf 8y ago
      I'm sure he/she means nepotism/graft/corruption getting the landlord extrajudicial favors.... though their comment seems a bit out of place in this context.
    - rtkwe 8y ago
      It's not even entirely a problem caused by the law, beobab also just didn't know the full extent of their rights as a property owner. Tenent protections are strong but they wouldn't have stopped beobab from getting them out sooner and inspecting the property for damage.
dazc 8y ago
The obvious answer for this problem is for the major housebuilders to adopt a 'build to rent model' rather than 'build to sell'. It would eliminate the need for a middleman who is often borrowing money to fund the purchase himself, adding further inefficiencies to an already inefficient business model. The prospect of builders becoming long-term landlords may also incentivize them to build a house that will last the course of the tenancy?
- purple_ducks 8y ago
  ??? Developers (who hire builders) go to market for finance - they don't have the funds lying around. Those financiers want a quickish (< 3/5 yrs) return, not a long term investment(20+ years).
  - dazc 8y ago
    Yes, I understand they want a fast turnaround on investment which is part of the problem.
isostatic 8y ago
The council taxes round here work along the following lines: £50k house -- £750 (1.5%) £150k house -- £1500 (1%) £650k house -- £3000 (0.5%) £3000k house -- £3000 (0.1%)
- mring33621 8y ago
  So, highly regressive.
  - isostatic 8y ago
    Sadly the main complaint seems to be that wealthy pensioners who live in £1m estates have to pay.

somecallitblues 8y ago

Best comment here. Sydney AU has the same problem. The government is addicted to stamp duty and doesn’t want to do anything about the negative gearing and other handouts for the rich baby boomers. The situation is completely fucked up.

zerogvt 8y ago
Feels quite similar to Ireland as well. Another rental market that has gone insane over the past 4-5 years.
eru 8y ago
Stamp duty is exactly backwards. They shouldn't tax transactions (that usually improve economic efficiency almost by definition), but they should tax holding land. Negative gearing is a special kind of Australian crazy. Must be the drop bear bites.

rfrey 8y ago

Not denying we have a broken system, but how could we outlaw real estate investment without removing the option of renting an apartment or house?

FeepingCreature 8y ago
Didn't you hear? A house is "for a person to own and live in." Who cares about renters, apparently?
- geezerjay 8y ago
  So those who don't have the cash up front or credit to buy a house are SOL, so as migrant workers who made the mistake of looking for a job somewhere in the jurisdiction.
  - ricardobeat 8y ago
    I don’t think the intention is to reduce rentals, just to stop prices from going up. That said, you need very little cash at hand to buy a house in the Netherlands (in fact, a few years back you needed < €0), there’s no upfront payment. Credit is cheap (~2%) and abundant.
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      > I don’t think the intention is to reduce rentals, just to stop prices from going up. The legislation described in TFA is quite literally designed to cut off the introduction of newly built houses in the rental market, including investments in real estate focused on that market segment.
      - mcv 8y ago
        TFA disagrees with you: "Amsterdam’s proposed laws wouldn’t stop new rental housing from being built—according to the city’s proposal, that housing would simply have to be proposed and approved as rental property in the first place."

Kalium 8y ago

How do you feel about companies that buy land and build housing on it, hoping to sell? By most definitions that would be speculation and investment...

x38iq84n 8y ago
I am grateful they exist and provide housing development. As developers should naturally do.
Tiktaalik 8y ago
The problem is that in Vancouver they're selling it... in Hong Kong, setting up real estate offices and recruiting foreign real estate agents sell the product outside the city. There's no local demand for the housing at the prices that they want to get, so they have to go outside the city. This of course inflates demand and buyers with incomes beyond local Vancouver incomes crowd out locals.

Macross8299 8y ago

Restricting home ownership as investment while not restricting apartment property investment or commercial property investment doesn't make things more fair. It just puts property investment out of reach of the average middle class person and restricts social mobility. e.g. a high-school drop-out plumber can afford to buy a house and rent it out based on just wages/credit, but he likely can't afford to do that with an apartment building.

ricardobeat 8y ago
“Homes” includes apartments. Commercial properties are, well, commercial, and don’t need any regulation of this kind since the goal is to ensure that people have access to housing.
- Macross8299 8y ago
  This Amsterdam law only applies to houses (single family dwellings), as far as I can tell.

lupire 8y ago

Some people can't afford the transaction costs associated with buying and selling real estate every year or few. Clamping down on rentals hurts the economically weak. Your xenophobia is showing, blaming "foreigners". Absentee landowners with vacant properties are a problem. Landlords are a valuable service provider in an economy.

sametmax 8y ago
I didn't read any xenophobia in the parent, only anger at speculative investment. It happens that investment firms from china and the middle east are very active.
- eru 8y ago
  What's wrong with them? They are people too.
  - orasis 8y ago
    Firms are not people.
  - ahoy 8y ago
    The folks that live down the block from me are people. A multinational investment firm is not people.

Tsubasachan 8y ago

Yeah a bit of context on Dutch society: people here truly believe in equality. Amsterdam, no matter how crazy hip it is, must remain open to all levels of society. The government is given a mandate by the People to do whatever it takes to make sure Amsterdam doesn't turn into a millionaire playground. If that means violating capitalism and property rights they will do so without hesitation.

eru 8y ago

Nah, just introduce a land value tax, and then welcome the foreign investors and speculators etc who came in and pay taxes for your local community.

mruts 8y ago

Are you saying it should be illegal to rent property? Moreover, have you considered who is going to benefit from the Amsterdam law? Existing landlords! It’s rentseeking (literally) on the part of landlords who don’t want competition!

conanbatt 8y ago

Do you believe that is true even if places where speculation and investment have better housing conditions that those that don't?

sintaxi 8y ago

Yeah but it gets housing built - which is the only thing that ultimately help affordability in the long run. Vancouver is building rapidly and developing rough neighbourhoods into pleasant ones. Sure, that is difficult on those who have had cheap rent in slum areas but that is the cost of improvement. I'm a long time Vancouver downtown resident who got "priced out" of the market. As far as I can tell policies that encourages construction at all prices of the market improve a city the most.

throwaway34241 8y ago

The three problems I see with prohibiting renting are: 1) It doesn't solve the problem of affordable housing. 2) If the owner leaves the property vacant instead of renting, it makes the problem worse. 3) The less well off usually rent instead of buying, so prohibiting it disadvantages them. While it's presently the trend to blame foreigners and/or investors for economic problems, I don't think this will end anywhere good. If you have 8 households who want to live in 5 houses, there is no way to make them affordable to all 8. Full stop. Not with paying all 8 more. Not with rent controls. Not by making everyone own, or everyone rent. It's totally impossible. The trend now seems to be that affordable housing will be allocated to a lucky few who win a government lottery. Whether this is a politically superior outcome to building more (and allowing the character of the neighborhood to change) is subjective.

opportune 8y ago
Prohibiting renting will create downward pressure on property prices and make them more affordable. If you can't rent a property, then it is worthless to you other than as a straight-up investment. If Amsterdam paired this with an unoccupied-residence tax then it would probably drive prices low enough for all housing to be owned by occupants (since housing would be worthless otherwise). If Amsterdam went even further and subsidized/required lenders to approve 0% down home ownership then they could likely fully solve the problem.
- throwaway34241 8y ago
  How can it make it affordable? For rents, if 8 people want 5 units, the rent will be high enough that 3 people are priced out. For owning, if 8 people want 5 units, the mortgage payment will be high enough that 3 people are priced out. I fail to see any difference. I do think that discouraging unoccupied properties is a good idea though.
  - opportune 8y ago
    Yes, some people would still be priced out, but the equilibrium price under ideal circumstances would result in all units being owner-occupied (almost certainly at a lower monthly payment than renting would entail - there is less demand on the buy side since landlording and speculation are discouraged, and with 0% down financing nobody would be priced out of ownership due to lack of capital).

gregcrv 8y ago

And look at Toronto as well. A similar scheme has probably been used everywhere... https://wolfstreet.com/2019/03/21/billions-in-toronto-real-estate-bought-anonymously-with-funds-of-unknown-origin/ https://wolfstreet.com/2019/03/21/billions-in-toronto-real-e...