5 ms·

I've always thought the solution to this was exponentialy increasing property taxes beyond the first property you (or whatever legal entity you create to horde

I've always thought the solution to this was exponentialy increasing property taxes beyond the first property you (or whatever legal entity you create to horde properties) own. I'm dumb, so I'm sure there are reasons this won't work, but it seems like it should.

sbierwagen 5y ago
LLCs are cheap. It's not uncommon to form separate holding companies for each property. Not impossible to write a law that pierces the corporate veil for taxation purposes, of course.
- MrMetlHed 5y ago
  Sure, I figured that there'd be lots of clever tricks around that. I figure you just make the law trace it up to the person at the top and have them as "owner" for exponential purposes.
- yuliyp 5y ago
  Doing it in reverse (give a credit / deduction against real estate taxes for an individual who owns and lives in their own home) works fine.
  - MrMetlHed 5y ago
    Wouldn't the corporation just factor in the credit loss as a cost of doing business and adjust the rent accordingly? Seems better to stop them from owning more than a few properties to begin with, but I suppose both would be cool with me.
    - jeromegv 5y ago
      Rent price is determined by supply and demand. You can only increase rent if the market can support it. And to do that, you can do it regardless if your expenses went up or not. Goes the other way as well
    - yuliyp 5y ago
      Sure they can factor it in to the prices they charge, but it'll serve to make buying more attractive as an option on a relative basis, which will make it harder to make money buying and renting housing out.
novok 5y ago
Well apartment buildings is one. Is rented out real estate really ‘hoarded’?
- MrMetlHed 5y ago
  It seems like if it's zoned as a single-family home or residential or whatever and you're not a single family it's hording. I'm willing to be talked out of that. Seems wrong to have to compete with a corporation to buy a house.
  - kaibee 5y ago
    The incentives for homeowners to prevent new construction would cause the same issue regardless of corporations getting in on it. The lack of new construction (in areas where people want to live) is the driving cause.
    - MrMetlHed 5y ago
      Oh I totally agree the lack of housing is a problem. I lived in New York City long enough to figure that one out. Death to NIMBYs. If I were in charge of the world I'd force every apartment building in New York to magically add a couple of floors to help with that. But I don't think it's the ONLY factor, and if we keep building out other problems pop up (like less wealthy people that can't afford to live in the city proper losing hours of their lives every day to get to work, etc.)
m_ke 5y ago
I had a similar conversation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28595027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28595027
carom 5y ago
This would just get passed on to the renters.
- MrMetlHed 5y ago
  Eventually an exponential-style tax would be too prohibitive for them to buy the nth house and they'd have to tap out, no? Can't pass off those costs forever, eventually it's too much for even the most well-off renter.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    Look at all the discretionary spending out there that can still be sucked into rent though: restaurants, clothing, movies, all food other than rice and beans, etc. Yes of course it's easy to call this hyperbolic, worst case scenario fear mongering, but then look at a long term chart for Canadian housing prices, and also the political response to it: essentially nothing, other than a bit of standard political rhetoric during the last election, which will be ignored just as Trudeau's electoral reform promises were ignored, and no one will get too excited because everyone seems to have subconsciously accepted that politics is essentially pure theatre - about the only thing most people seem to care much about now is not electing Nazis. It's easy (and fun!) for people to dismiss this blogger's concerns, but I think his numbers are fairly workable, and he's not even taking into account the possibility that rent starts to suck in the entire economy. Of course, this is "impossible"...except, maybe it actually isn't. As for myself, I think the situation is even worse than he says. His proposed solution seems to be various political policy reforms, which is the proper traditional approach. But my intuition tells me that this cannot work, even though my logical mind disagrees. I have this feeling that there are various sorts of emergent phenomena now in play, forces that we cannot detect, and maybe couldn't even understand if we could detect them. And you know what they say about things that can't be detected: they do not exist, as logic and critical thinking (the new and improved versions) tell us, of course. For starters, I don't think a party could even get elected on a platform of reform. And even if they did, I don't think they would be able to reform anything. I think we have lost control not only of the (financial, political, etc) system, but also of our minds. It seems like we are all riding along on this massive, complex machine, that nobody designed, nobody knows how to operate, and maybe most importantly: no one seems to realize that they do not know how to operate it, or even that we are riding on it in the first place. So far, printing money whenever we get ourselves into a pinch has always saved our asses, but at some point I think we're going to try this option and it won't work, and that is when the chickens will come home to roost, the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the sons, etc etc etc. Obviously, this is wild, illogical speculation, and parts of it are "surely" wrong. But that doesn't mean it is incorrect in the aggregate. Complex systems are complex, emergence is a genuine phenomenon, things have been getting weirder and weirder for quite some time now, and the mood of the public in general and toward each other is "not great". I think we have all the makings needed for a debacle of historic proportions, including the necessary mindset.
brigandish 5y ago
I'm with the Georgists on this one, which is probably why I hated Monopoly even as a child. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
- mbg721 5y ago
  The most American thing about Monopoly is that the rules get changed so that the most profitable single action is parking.
muzz 5y ago
This basically exists in many places in the form of the Homestead Exemption. It's not exactly the first property owned, but the property that the owner lives in.

sbierwagen 5y ago

LLCs are cheap. It's not uncommon to form separate holding companies for each property. Not impossible to write a law that pierces the corporate veil for taxation purposes, of course.

MrMetlHed 5y ago
Sure, I figured that there'd be lots of clever tricks around that. I figure you just make the law trace it up to the person at the top and have them as "owner" for exponential purposes.
yuliyp 5y ago
Doing it in reverse (give a credit / deduction against real estate taxes for an individual who owns and lives in their own home) works fine.
- MrMetlHed 5y ago
  Wouldn't the corporation just factor in the credit loss as a cost of doing business and adjust the rent accordingly? Seems better to stop them from owning more than a few properties to begin with, but I suppose both would be cool with me.
  - jeromegv 5y ago
    Rent price is determined by supply and demand. You can only increase rent if the market can support it. And to do that, you can do it regardless if your expenses went up or not. Goes the other way as well
  - yuliyp 5y ago
    Sure they can factor it in to the prices they charge, but it'll serve to make buying more attractive as an option on a relative basis, which will make it harder to make money buying and renting housing out.

novok 5y ago

Well apartment buildings is one. Is rented out real estate really ‘hoarded’?

MrMetlHed 5y ago
It seems like if it's zoned as a single-family home or residential or whatever and you're not a single family it's hording. I'm willing to be talked out of that. Seems wrong to have to compete with a corporation to buy a house.
- kaibee 5y ago
  The incentives for homeowners to prevent new construction would cause the same issue regardless of corporations getting in on it. The lack of new construction (in areas where people want to live) is the driving cause.
  - MrMetlHed 5y ago
    Oh I totally agree the lack of housing is a problem. I lived in New York City long enough to figure that one out. Death to NIMBYs. If I were in charge of the world I'd force every apartment building in New York to magically add a couple of floors to help with that. But I don't think it's the ONLY factor, and if we keep building out other problems pop up (like less wealthy people that can't afford to live in the city proper losing hours of their lives every day to get to work, etc.)

m_ke 5y ago

I had a similar conversation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28595027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28595027

carom 5y ago

This would just get passed on to the renters.

MrMetlHed 5y ago
Eventually an exponential-style tax would be too prohibitive for them to buy the nth house and they'd have to tap out, no? Can't pass off those costs forever, eventually it's too much for even the most well-off renter.
- mistermann 5y ago
  Look at all the discretionary spending out there that can still be sucked into rent though: restaurants, clothing, movies, all food other than rice and beans, etc. Yes of course it's easy to call this hyperbolic, worst case scenario fear mongering, but then look at a long term chart for Canadian housing prices, and also the political response to it: essentially nothing, other than a bit of standard political rhetoric during the last election, which will be ignored just as Trudeau's electoral reform promises were ignored, and no one will get too excited because everyone seems to have subconsciously accepted that politics is essentially pure theatre - about the only thing most people seem to care much about now is not electing Nazis. It's easy (and fun!) for people to dismiss this blogger's concerns, but I think his numbers are fairly workable, and he's not even taking into account the possibility that rent starts to suck in the entire economy. Of course, this is "impossible"...except, maybe it actually isn't. As for myself, I think the situation is even worse than he says. His proposed solution seems to be various political policy reforms, which is the proper traditional approach. But my intuition tells me that this cannot work, even though my logical mind disagrees. I have this feeling that there are various sorts of emergent phenomena now in play, forces that we cannot detect, and maybe couldn't even understand if we could detect them. And you know what they say about things that can't be detected: they do not exist, as logic and critical thinking (the new and improved versions) tell us, of course. For starters, I don't think a party could even get elected on a platform of reform. And even if they did, I don't think they would be able to reform anything. I think we have lost control not only of the (financial, political, etc) system, but also of our minds. It seems like we are all riding along on this massive, complex machine, that nobody designed, nobody knows how to operate, and maybe most importantly: no one seems to realize that they do not know how to operate it, or even that we are riding on it in the first place. So far, printing money whenever we get ourselves into a pinch has always saved our asses, but at some point I think we're going to try this option and it won't work, and that is when the chickens will come home to roost, the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the sons, etc etc etc. Obviously, this is wild, illogical speculation, and parts of it are "surely" wrong. But that doesn't mean it is incorrect in the aggregate. Complex systems are complex, emergence is a genuine phenomenon, things have been getting weirder and weirder for quite some time now, and the mood of the public in general and toward each other is "not great". I think we have all the makings needed for a debacle of historic proportions, including the necessary mindset.

brigandish 5y ago

I'm with the Georgists on this one, which is probably why I hated Monopoly even as a child. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

mbg721 5y ago
The most American thing about Monopoly is that the rules get changed so that the most profitable single action is parking.

muzz 5y ago

This basically exists in many places in the form of the Homestead Exemption. It's not exactly the first property owned, but the property that the owner lives in.