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My extreme political opinion is that no one should be allowed to own more than one property in which they do not reside. Edit: To clarify - if you own two prop

My extreme political opinion is that no one should be allowed to own more than one property in which they do not reside. Edit: To clarify - if you own two properties, rent one, and live in the other, you own one property in which you reside and one property in which you do not reside.

HenryKissinger 5y ago
Here's where the lawyers will get you. What counts as "own"? What counts as "property"? What counts as "reside"?
- bena 5y ago
  It's even simpler than that. What about workspaces? What about shopping areas? Entertainment? There are lots of pieces of property that aren't residential that are owned.
  - shuntress 5y ago
    > What about workspaces? > What about shopping areas? > Entertainment? What about them? > There are lots of pieces of property that aren't residential that are owned. Agreed.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >What about them? who's going to own them? are they not property?
      - shuntress 5y ago
        They are property and people will own them. I don't think I understand the point of these questions unless you misread my original statement. I have edited it to add some clarification.
        bena 5y ago
        So you can't franchise now? The problem with your solution is that it's just a different problem. We essentially want to forbid "bad" ownership. But it's hard to define "bad" in a way that doesn't either trample over "good" or "benign" ownership or makes it so subjective, it's pointless.
        shuntress 5y ago
        Isn't that how franchising already works? It has nothing to do with "good" or "bad" ownership. It's about limiting the wealth-storage potential of real estate and promoting more decentralized/egalitarian access to property.
        bena 5y ago
        Franchising isn't just licensing out the brand. I can't own two Taco Bell locations unless I live in one. And forget a third. And once you get into trying to figure ways to allow for that, you've created loopholes for people to exploit. Wherein they'll be technically within the rules while violating the spirit. > It has nothing to do with "good" or "bad" ownership. It's about limiting the wealth-storage potential of real estate and promoting more decentralized/egalitarian access to property. In other words, using real estate solely to store wealth would be a type of bad ownership. You're trying to avoid making a value judgment so as to not have to defend the values. Or get into a discussion of whether or not we should be deciding these things on values. But it's turtles all the way down. I agree that more people should be able to acquire property to make a home. Home ownership should be within the reach of a lot more people. And I think real estate speculation for its own sake is bad. But I also know enough to know that the problem is bigger and more involved than I've given thought to. So any solution I toss around would be half-baked at best. Even if I consider everything I know. So, I recognize the problem. I agree something must be done. But I also think that limiting ownership of property to "two" is a bad solution.
        shuntress 5y ago
        > I can't own two Taco Bell locations unless I live in one. And forget a third. Yeah... that is the point. Someone else can own that other Taco Bell. "store wealth" doesn't mean to buy a Taco Bell, fill it with gold bars, then board it up. It just means buying property that makes money (like a fast food franchise, residential rental, office space, pool, etc).
- shuntress 5y ago
  Yeah. Of course the actual law would be several hundred pages long and reference large volumes of existing work. Like any law. And the degree to which you believe the letter and spirit of the law are each used to counter-act each other is a separate discussion. But, to answer your flippant questions: Legally possess. Land and buildings. Physical and temporal occupation of space and time on the "property" above some reasonable threshold.
jedberg 5y ago
There are lots of lower middle class people who rely on rental income for their retirement. They work their whole life and pay off the mortgage on their house that they raised their family in, and then rent it out while they move to a small 1 bedroom place and spend their days puttering around the rental house doing gardening and maintenance. I don't really see a problem with that.
- shuntress 5y ago
  Not to be rude but... I think you may have misread my statement. edit: Unless I'm misattributing an unintended tone of disagreement to > "I don't really see a problem with that."
  - jedberg 5y ago
    How so? You're saying that what I described should not be allowed aren't you?
    - shuntress 5y ago
      If you own two properties, rent one out, and live in the other you own one property in which you reside and one property in which you do not reside Owning one property in which you do not reside is completely reasonable when the rule is "you may not own more than one property in which you do not reside" I'll edit this clarification into my original post.
      - jedberg 5y ago
        Ah ok. That makes more sense. However I still disagree. I can definitely see a case where someone does that same thing multiple times in their life. My grandparents did that. They came to this country with nothing while fleeing the holocaust, and managed to own three houses before they retired by renting out their old house each time they moved to a new one.
        5y ago
spywaregorilla 5y ago
Ok, shell corp. Done.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  You are assuming that in the given scenario that companies will be allowed to rent houses rather than offering them for any agreement more complicated than outright sale.
  - shuntress 5y ago
    Yeah. This type of thing would obviously be up for debate and any real law would be complicated (I did say it is an extreme opinion). I would expect the starting point to be something along the lines of: Any ownership of a property must be associated back to an individual. Even that of a "company owned" property. Maybe companies would pay some kind of "property retainer" bonus to people with draconian contract terms that skirt the law and keep the property under the companies control despite some individual employee owning it on paper. Or maybe, companies would just rent whatever property they need.
iammisc 5y ago
People claim others are buying property and keeping it vacant, but this does not seem immediately clear to me. If this were the case, there ought to be multiple vacant properties, but I don't see many. Why am I being downvoted? Can someone link a study or systematic review that shows there are significant #s of vacant properties.
rsj_hn 5y ago
So I wonder if this is something you deeply investigated, considered the various ramifications of, or whether this was more of an emotional thing, like you see someone trip on the sidewalk and declare "No one should be allowed to wear high heels outside". If you have considered it a lot, what do you think the best case against this position is?
- shuntress 5y ago
  I've not studied law or research related to this type of thing. I would say it is more of an emotional thing but not as reactionary as your "high heels ban" example. I believe the core concept of essentially capping/limiting the wealth-storage potential of land ownership as a way to help "even the playing field" is fundamentally sound. I think think the best case against this position is to point out the difficulty of implementing/enforcing it in a way that is not flawed in some way that makes it more trouble than it is worth. What I mean by that is that I think existing interests and powers would most likely find a way to maintain the status quo and that that way wouldn't necessarily be a net gain for everyone. But that, to me, says more about the system overall than about this specific idea.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    I appreciate your honesty. Here are some negative effects of this: * Costs: If the wealthy people are allowed only one house and one other rental, they will build a huge house and rental in a really expensive area, and forego building rental stock in cheap areas. So that means that poorer people will be hurt as there will be less rental stock available to them. Now, you can say, let them buy condos! But a lot of people are not ready for owning their own condo the moment they move out of their parents house, or if they are just spending a summer somewhere, or they have an internship in a different city, etc. E.g. even though the U.S. has an insanely high homeownership rate (probably too high) there is still a good 30% of the population that needs shorter term housing than the commitment of buying a place, but longer term housing than a hotel. And now they wont have that option, or it will be much more expensive for them as the rental stock is large, expensive units in highly desirable areas, and there are fewer of them. * Ways to bypass it: Of course it's a bit impractical. Wealthy people in the US will just buy up apartments in Europe or Asia, and wealthy people there will buy up apartments here. So this just creates a class of really remote landlords, because you've made it illegal to be landlord in your own nation. Also, corporations will buy up apartments -- REITs. But maybe you will ban REITS, which means much of the drivers of more housing are taken off the picture and they focus on building offices only, exacerbating the imbalance between office space and housing. OK, we did the downsides. * Benefits: Well, someone who owns 2 apartment buildings, their own mansion, and 100 million in equities will now own 0 apartment buildings, 1 rental mansion, their own mansion, and 150 million in equities. How is this a better world? And here, I am assuming full compliance. Point being, I see the benefit as being purely symbolic. Like you have this law passed, and the existence of the law is its own reward. I don't think this is a good way of doing public policy. In fact, it's extremely disempowering to be even turning the legislative process into a LARP. It's a kind of learned helplessness to use the power of the state as therapy instead of to actually solve social problems. Banning plastic straws is one example of this. Now if you want to say, "Hell let's abolish private ownership of capital", then at least that is going to make a difference and not just be a symbolic thing. It is an honest attempt to get at the root of the issue. But I think people understand this specific attempt is a bad idea, so what they are doing is retreating to these weird little symbolic acts, instead of searching for the next big idea. And I'm not picking on you -- I see this a lot. Just ordinary conversation, and people say "We should ban X", and it's a little worrying how ready people are to ban random things as a form of satisfying some inner unease, due to feeling powerless to address the real, underlying things.
cherrycherry98 5y ago
I question whether such a law is really necessary. It's costly to hoard property and leave it unproductive. Even if it's owned outright, there's pressure to rent, sell, or otherwise use it productively due to property taxes, insurance, and maintenance costs, as well as opportunity costs of missed rental income or selling to divert capital towards something that actually yields return.
- totony 5y ago
  >It's costly to hoard property and leave it unproductive Not when property is a speculative/investment asset (and when you can leverage it to get credit).
chrismcb 5y ago
Why? How will it solve the problem?

HenryKissinger 5y ago

Here's where the lawyers will get you. What counts as "own"? What counts as "property"? What counts as "reside"?

bena 5y ago
It's even simpler than that. What about workspaces? What about shopping areas? Entertainment? There are lots of pieces of property that aren't residential that are owned.
- shuntress 5y ago
  > What about workspaces? > What about shopping areas? > Entertainment? What about them? > There are lots of pieces of property that aren't residential that are owned. Agreed.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >What about them? who's going to own them? are they not property?
    - shuntress 5y ago
      They are property and people will own them. I don't think I understand the point of these questions unless you misread my original statement. I have edited it to add some clarification.
      - bena 5y ago
        So you can't franchise now? The problem with your solution is that it's just a different problem. We essentially want to forbid "bad" ownership. But it's hard to define "bad" in a way that doesn't either trample over "good" or "benign" ownership or makes it so subjective, it's pointless.
        shuntress 5y ago
        Isn't that how franchising already works? It has nothing to do with "good" or "bad" ownership. It's about limiting the wealth-storage potential of real estate and promoting more decentralized/egalitarian access to property.
        bena 5y ago
        Franchising isn't just licensing out the brand. I can't own two Taco Bell locations unless I live in one. And forget a third. And once you get into trying to figure ways to allow for that, you've created loopholes for people to exploit. Wherein they'll be technically within the rules while violating the spirit. > It has nothing to do with "good" or "bad" ownership. It's about limiting the wealth-storage potential of real estate and promoting more decentralized/egalitarian access to property. In other words, using real estate solely to store wealth would be a type of bad ownership. You're trying to avoid making a value judgment so as to not have to defend the values. Or get into a discussion of whether or not we should be deciding these things on values. But it's turtles all the way down. I agree that more people should be able to acquire property to make a home. Home ownership should be within the reach of a lot more people. And I think real estate speculation for its own sake is bad. But I also know enough to know that the problem is bigger and more involved than I've given thought to. So any solution I toss around would be half-baked at best. Even if I consider everything I know. So, I recognize the problem. I agree something must be done. But I also think that limiting ownership of property to "two" is a bad solution.
        shuntress 5y ago
        > I can't own two Taco Bell locations unless I live in one. And forget a third. Yeah... that is the point. Someone else can own that other Taco Bell. "store wealth" doesn't mean to buy a Taco Bell, fill it with gold bars, then board it up. It just means buying property that makes money (like a fast food franchise, residential rental, office space, pool, etc).
shuntress 5y ago
Yeah. Of course the actual law would be several hundred pages long and reference large volumes of existing work. Like any law. And the degree to which you believe the letter and spirit of the law are each used to counter-act each other is a separate discussion. But, to answer your flippant questions: Legally possess. Land and buildings. Physical and temporal occupation of space and time on the "property" above some reasonable threshold.

jedberg 5y ago

There are lots of lower middle class people who rely on rental income for their retirement. They work their whole life and pay off the mortgage on their house that they raised their family in, and then rent it out while they move to a small 1 bedroom place and spend their days puttering around the rental house doing gardening and maintenance. I don't really see a problem with that.

shuntress 5y ago
Not to be rude but... I think you may have misread my statement. edit: Unless I'm misattributing an unintended tone of disagreement to > "I don't really see a problem with that."
- jedberg 5y ago
  How so? You're saying that what I described should not be allowed aren't you?
  - shuntress 5y ago
    If you own two properties, rent one out, and live in the other you own one property in which you reside and one property in which you do not reside Owning one property in which you do not reside is completely reasonable when the rule is "you may not own more than one property in which you do not reside" I'll edit this clarification into my original post.
    - jedberg 5y ago
      Ah ok. That makes more sense. However I still disagree. I can definitely see a case where someone does that same thing multiple times in their life. My grandparents did that. They came to this country with nothing while fleeing the holocaust, and managed to own three houses before they retired by renting out their old house each time they moved to a new one.
      - 5y ago

spywaregorilla 5y ago

Ok, shell corp. Done.

michaelmrose 5y ago
You are assuming that in the given scenario that companies will be allowed to rent houses rather than offering them for any agreement more complicated than outright sale.
- shuntress 5y ago
  Yeah. This type of thing would obviously be up for debate and any real law would be complicated (I did say it is an extreme opinion). I would expect the starting point to be something along the lines of: Any ownership of a property must be associated back to an individual. Even that of a "company owned" property. Maybe companies would pay some kind of "property retainer" bonus to people with draconian contract terms that skirt the law and keep the property under the companies control despite some individual employee owning it on paper. Or maybe, companies would just rent whatever property they need.

iammisc 5y ago

People claim others are buying property and keeping it vacant, but this does not seem immediately clear to me. If this were the case, there ought to be multiple vacant properties, but I don't see many. Why am I being downvoted? Can someone link a study or systematic review that shows there are significant #s of vacant properties.

rsj_hn 5y ago

So I wonder if this is something you deeply investigated, considered the various ramifications of, or whether this was more of an emotional thing, like you see someone trip on the sidewalk and declare "No one should be allowed to wear high heels outside". If you have considered it a lot, what do you think the best case against this position is?

shuntress 5y ago
I've not studied law or research related to this type of thing. I would say it is more of an emotional thing but not as reactionary as your "high heels ban" example. I believe the core concept of essentially capping/limiting the wealth-storage potential of land ownership as a way to help "even the playing field" is fundamentally sound. I think think the best case against this position is to point out the difficulty of implementing/enforcing it in a way that is not flawed in some way that makes it more trouble than it is worth. What I mean by that is that I think existing interests and powers would most likely find a way to maintain the status quo and that that way wouldn't necessarily be a net gain for everyone. But that, to me, says more about the system overall than about this specific idea.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  I appreciate your honesty. Here are some negative effects of this: * Costs: If the wealthy people are allowed only one house and one other rental, they will build a huge house and rental in a really expensive area, and forego building rental stock in cheap areas. So that means that poorer people will be hurt as there will be less rental stock available to them. Now, you can say, let them buy condos! But a lot of people are not ready for owning their own condo the moment they move out of their parents house, or if they are just spending a summer somewhere, or they have an internship in a different city, etc. E.g. even though the U.S. has an insanely high homeownership rate (probably too high) there is still a good 30% of the population that needs shorter term housing than the commitment of buying a place, but longer term housing than a hotel. And now they wont have that option, or it will be much more expensive for them as the rental stock is large, expensive units in highly desirable areas, and there are fewer of them. * Ways to bypass it: Of course it's a bit impractical. Wealthy people in the US will just buy up apartments in Europe or Asia, and wealthy people there will buy up apartments here. So this just creates a class of really remote landlords, because you've made it illegal to be landlord in your own nation. Also, corporations will buy up apartments -- REITs. But maybe you will ban REITS, which means much of the drivers of more housing are taken off the picture and they focus on building offices only, exacerbating the imbalance between office space and housing. OK, we did the downsides. * Benefits: Well, someone who owns 2 apartment buildings, their own mansion, and 100 million in equities will now own 0 apartment buildings, 1 rental mansion, their own mansion, and 150 million in equities. How is this a better world? And here, I am assuming full compliance. Point being, I see the benefit as being purely symbolic. Like you have this law passed, and the existence of the law is its own reward. I don't think this is a good way of doing public policy. In fact, it's extremely disempowering to be even turning the legislative process into a LARP. It's a kind of learned helplessness to use the power of the state as therapy instead of to actually solve social problems. Banning plastic straws is one example of this. Now if you want to say, "Hell let's abolish private ownership of capital", then at least that is going to make a difference and not just be a symbolic thing. It is an honest attempt to get at the root of the issue. But I think people understand this specific attempt is a bad idea, so what they are doing is retreating to these weird little symbolic acts, instead of searching for the next big idea. And I'm not picking on you -- I see this a lot. Just ordinary conversation, and people say "We should ban X", and it's a little worrying how ready people are to ban random things as a form of satisfying some inner unease, due to feeling powerless to address the real, underlying things.

cherrycherry98 5y ago

I question whether such a law is really necessary. It's costly to hoard property and leave it unproductive. Even if it's owned outright, there's pressure to rent, sell, or otherwise use it productively due to property taxes, insurance, and maintenance costs, as well as opportunity costs of missed rental income or selling to divert capital towards something that actually yields return.

totony 5y ago
>It's costly to hoard property and leave it unproductive Not when property is a speculative/investment asset (and when you can leverage it to get credit).

chrismcb 5y ago

Why? How will it solve the problem?