7 ms·

Prevent corporations, non-citizens, from buying up realestate could be a start. Heavily taxing the third piece of realeste one adult buys. (A guy buys a home,

Prevent corporations, non-citizens, from buying up realestate could be a start. Heavily taxing the third piece of realeste one adult buys. (A guy buys a home, and a getaway pad, fine. Tax the third property a lot to avoid homes being being accumulated.) Put a unoccupied tax on vacant realestate too.

MattGaiser 5y ago
This makes home ownership more affordable. Anyone want to rent? Well, your market just got a lot smaller.
- kennywinker 5y ago
  Landlords don't provide housing, construction workers do. Build houses, let people own them. For every 1 person who buys a vacation property, there'll likely be 10 who buy a second rental income property anyway, so I doubt that this would actually make renting that difficult.
  - Guzba 5y ago
    Hm, I get your point but you've never wanted to live somewhere for just a few years? Renting is great for many circumstances. Huge transaction fees and risks related to owning are not great if you're not looking to settle down longer-term. The idea this need is covered by a bunch of people owning just one property seems stretched. What is truly wrong with meeting a need more efficiently?
    - kennywinker 5y ago
      I feel pretty confidant that the ability to move somewhere for a couple years would be safe. Rental markets can be handled by multi-tenant housing (suites and laneway houses), shared living spaces, socialized student housing, and private second home rentals, and of course just buying a house for a couple years... > Huge transaction fees and risks related to owning When houses cost millions, yes this is true. But if we got house prices down to an actually affordable level, this would not be such a concern. If I decided today to move to winnipeg for a couple years, houses are so cheap (at least compared to what I'm used to) that I'd strongly consider just buying a house or a condo for the time I was there.
- libertine 5y ago
  Well I guess the question should be: how many people are being forced to rent when they'd prefer to buy an house?
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Quite a few, I'd guess.
civilized 5y ago
You seem to believe that vacancy rates are high enough that we could make a dent in the problem by trying to lower them. Is there any evidence of that? None that I know of. These suggestions seem unlikely to accomplish much, and they seem driven by a assumption that inequality and greed of the wealthy is the problem rather than local government red tape and NIMBYs holding back construction. More supply reduces prices. Econ 101. It is strange how many people seem to think Econ 101 somehow doesn't apply to housing.
- kennywinker 5y ago
  In my city, Vancouver, there were something like 100,000 empty homes maybe 5 years ago. More than enough vacant homes to house the entire homeless population a few times over. Now, do market forces work well enough that filling those homes pushes the cost of housing down low enough that those people can afford a home? Idk. We put in an empty home tax a couple years ago, but I don't think the dust has settled on if it has succeeded in filling those homes. If it has, it certainly hasn't resulted in noticeably lower housing costs for anyone yet.
  - civilized 5y ago
    Vancouver isn't trying nearly hard enough. Housing is much more affordable in places where supply is allowed to grow without government interference. Unfortunately there are very few such places, but states that are more free to build in, like Texas, are much more affordable and people have been migrating for the low prices. Speculative hoarding of the scarce resource of housing can lead to houses sitting empty, but speculation would be pointless if the resource weren't artificially constrained to be scarce.
    - kennywinker 5y ago
      > Housing is much more affordable in places where supply is allowed to grow without government interference I just don't believe this. I'm sorry. The difference between texas (which part, for one thing) and vancouver isn't down to real estate regulation. There are plenty of places in BC where you can buy a home for texas prices, and real estate regulation isn't that different city to city.
sgregnt 5y ago
Has this worked anywhere in the world? As far as I know, it never works. The problem is not solved by restricting demand (there is always a way around restrictions), but it is solved by adding supply.
asiachick 5y ago
> Prevent corporations, ..., from buying up realestate could be a start. What does that mean? That no apartment complexes can ever be built? Just checking I'm understanding you're suggestion.
- megablast 5y ago
  They can build, but still be banned from buying. Can you see the difference?? Can only buy if they are going to knock down and build bigger. Application needs to be approved.
tomohawk 5y ago
These appear at odds with one another. A large percentage of landlords own a very small number of units each. Many get into this to finance retirement, etc. Taxing this way of life would likely just make less units available for rent, and reduce the number of people in the market for properties, which would reduce the effective demand for housing. Banning corporations? The smart thing to do when buying a house is to set up a corporation to own the property. The very wealthy will always be able to achieve the sorts of protections this provides - why keep others from it?
zip1234 5y ago
None of those fix the root causes of the problem. Root causes: - zoning restrictions - parking minimums (also perhaps a subcategory of zoning)
jimbob45 5y ago
This is definitely the solution but you’ll get downvoted to hell for saying it out loud. We’re allowing people to snatch up houses for the sole purpose of profit. They’re not improving the houses in any material way - they’re just rent-seekers. The left would have you believe that lifting zoning restrictions would end the problem but that’s just silly - why would we destroy the environment even further by building more houses just to protect some rent-seeking landlord? We’re wasting real productivity and land and providing no value to the economy by protecting these blood-sucking landlords by building more houses. Renting should be explicitly limited to apartments due to their space efficiency. Short-term rentals should be limited to hotels for the same reason. Downvote me as you will but at least provide a justification for the destruction of the environment solely to shift some bank-account numbers. This seems just as bad as crypto apologists.
- dang 5y ago
  Would you please not break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes like this? As they say, it does no good and makes for boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
yellowapple 5y ago
Or just institute a land value tax, which would automatically penalize all those housing-cost-driving behaviors plus a bunch more (like owning a single-family home or a parking lot in the middle of Downtown) without needing a bunch of loophole-prone narrow ad-hoc taxes on each individual situation.

MattGaiser 5y ago

This makes home ownership more affordable. Anyone want to rent? Well, your market just got a lot smaller.

kennywinker 5y ago
Landlords don't provide housing, construction workers do. Build houses, let people own them. For every 1 person who buys a vacation property, there'll likely be 10 who buy a second rental income property anyway, so I doubt that this would actually make renting that difficult.
- Guzba 5y ago
  Hm, I get your point but you've never wanted to live somewhere for just a few years? Renting is great for many circumstances. Huge transaction fees and risks related to owning are not great if you're not looking to settle down longer-term. The idea this need is covered by a bunch of people owning just one property seems stretched. What is truly wrong with meeting a need more efficiently?
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    I feel pretty confidant that the ability to move somewhere for a couple years would be safe. Rental markets can be handled by multi-tenant housing (suites and laneway houses), shared living spaces, socialized student housing, and private second home rentals, and of course just buying a house for a couple years... > Huge transaction fees and risks related to owning When houses cost millions, yes this is true. But if we got house prices down to an actually affordable level, this would not be such a concern. If I decided today to move to winnipeg for a couple years, houses are so cheap (at least compared to what I'm used to) that I'd strongly consider just buying a house or a condo for the time I was there.
libertine 5y ago
Well I guess the question should be: how many people are being forced to rent when they'd prefer to buy an house?
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Quite a few, I'd guess.

civilized 5y ago

You seem to believe that vacancy rates are high enough that we could make a dent in the problem by trying to lower them. Is there any evidence of that? None that I know of. These suggestions seem unlikely to accomplish much, and they seem driven by a assumption that inequality and greed of the wealthy is the problem rather than local government red tape and NIMBYs holding back construction. More supply reduces prices. Econ 101. It is strange how many people seem to think Econ 101 somehow doesn't apply to housing.

kennywinker 5y ago
In my city, Vancouver, there were something like 100,000 empty homes maybe 5 years ago. More than enough vacant homes to house the entire homeless population a few times over. Now, do market forces work well enough that filling those homes pushes the cost of housing down low enough that those people can afford a home? Idk. We put in an empty home tax a couple years ago, but I don't think the dust has settled on if it has succeeded in filling those homes. If it has, it certainly hasn't resulted in noticeably lower housing costs for anyone yet.
- civilized 5y ago
  Vancouver isn't trying nearly hard enough. Housing is much more affordable in places where supply is allowed to grow without government interference. Unfortunately there are very few such places, but states that are more free to build in, like Texas, are much more affordable and people have been migrating for the low prices. Speculative hoarding of the scarce resource of housing can lead to houses sitting empty, but speculation would be pointless if the resource weren't artificially constrained to be scarce.
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    > Housing is much more affordable in places where supply is allowed to grow without government interference I just don't believe this. I'm sorry. The difference between texas (which part, for one thing) and vancouver isn't down to real estate regulation. There are plenty of places in BC where you can buy a home for texas prices, and real estate regulation isn't that different city to city.

sgregnt 5y ago

Has this worked anywhere in the world? As far as I know, it never works. The problem is not solved by restricting demand (there is always a way around restrictions), but it is solved by adding supply.

asiachick 5y ago

> Prevent corporations, ..., from buying up realestate could be a start. What does that mean? That no apartment complexes can ever be built? Just checking I'm understanding you're suggestion.

megablast 5y ago
They can build, but still be banned from buying. Can you see the difference?? Can only buy if they are going to knock down and build bigger. Application needs to be approved.

tomohawk 5y ago

These appear at odds with one another. A large percentage of landlords own a very small number of units each. Many get into this to finance retirement, etc. Taxing this way of life would likely just make less units available for rent, and reduce the number of people in the market for properties, which would reduce the effective demand for housing. Banning corporations? The smart thing to do when buying a house is to set up a corporation to own the property. The very wealthy will always be able to achieve the sorts of protections this provides - why keep others from it?

zip1234 5y ago

None of those fix the root causes of the problem. Root causes: - zoning restrictions - parking minimums (also perhaps a subcategory of zoning)

jimbob45 5y ago

This is definitely the solution but you’ll get downvoted to hell for saying it out loud. We’re allowing people to snatch up houses for the sole purpose of profit. They’re not improving the houses in any material way - they’re just rent-seekers. The left would have you believe that lifting zoning restrictions would end the problem but that’s just silly - why would we destroy the environment even further by building more houses just to protect some rent-seeking landlord? We’re wasting real productivity and land and providing no value to the economy by protecting these blood-sucking landlords by building more houses. Renting should be explicitly limited to apartments due to their space efficiency. Short-term rentals should be limited to hotels for the same reason. Downvote me as you will but at least provide a justification for the destruction of the environment solely to shift some bank-account numbers. This seems just as bad as crypto apologists.

dang 5y ago
Would you please not break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes like this? As they say, it does no good and makes for boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

yellowapple 5y ago

Or just institute a land value tax, which would automatically penalize all those housing-cost-driving behaviors plus a bunch more (like owning a single-family home or a parking lot in the middle of Downtown) without needing a bunch of loophole-prone narrow ad-hoc taxes on each individual situation.