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Let them buy overpriced useless houses, if they buy too many we'll vote them out or we'll take the homes back by force. Everything is a balance and the only wa

Let them buy overpriced useless houses, if they buy too many we'll vote them out or we'll take the homes back by force. Everything is a balance and the only way to make money long term is to be undeniably useful to a majority of people. Anything below that bar will die down in shame, infamy or violence.

sokoloff 5y ago
What does “vote them out” mean in this context?
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > What does “vote them out” mean in this context? I suppose it could mean voting in people to write a law that makes it exceedingly unattractive for institutional investors to buy single family homes. You could probably even do such a thing "neutrally" since people really only need one home and if you own more than two you're almost certainly investing in some way. Apply some onerous tax on each unit owned above 100, and all these investors will flee the market. Edit: IIRC, the companies that buy up all these single family homes are large corporations. I'm pretty sure you could write a law like I described that they wouldn't try to use some cheeky corporate shell game to try to bypass (e.g. in their tax filings require them to declare how many single family homes they're the beneficiary owner of, regardless of any intermediary shell companies/special purpose entities, and tax them for that). Require the auditors to sign off of on the number. If they lie, everyone's subject to even more onerous civil and criminal penalties (e.g. blow them up like Enron). Large corporations will stretch the law as far as they can, but it's rare for them to deliberately venture into fraud and other kinds of illegality (for the pedants out there, note I said rare not never). The systemic issues can be solved if they're made to comply, even if some relatively small fish still don't
  - darig 5y ago
    I suppose all the billionaire investors would just retire and not start 70 shell companies to own 100 units each. /s
wonderwonder 5y ago
"we'll take the ... back by force" Why are so many people so quick to suggest that a nationwide situation will be resolved by force. No one is going to take back hundreds of homes by force. That amount of force would be absolutely crushed by state sanctioned violence. Even if you could, what are you going to do with the thousands of homes you have now claimed? Who decides who gets to live there? What about the renters already living there? America is in an awkward position right now and the constant larping of using force to resolve issues is not helping.

sokoloff 5y ago

What does “vote them out” mean in this context?

tablespoon 5y ago
> What does “vote them out” mean in this context? I suppose it could mean voting in people to write a law that makes it exceedingly unattractive for institutional investors to buy single family homes. You could probably even do such a thing "neutrally" since people really only need one home and if you own more than two you're almost certainly investing in some way. Apply some onerous tax on each unit owned above 100, and all these investors will flee the market. Edit: IIRC, the companies that buy up all these single family homes are large corporations. I'm pretty sure you could write a law like I described that they wouldn't try to use some cheeky corporate shell game to try to bypass (e.g. in their tax filings require them to declare how many single family homes they're the beneficiary owner of, regardless of any intermediary shell companies/special purpose entities, and tax them for that). Require the auditors to sign off of on the number. If they lie, everyone's subject to even more onerous civil and criminal penalties (e.g. blow them up like Enron). Large corporations will stretch the law as far as they can, but it's rare for them to deliberately venture into fraud and other kinds of illegality (for the pedants out there, note I said rare not never). The systemic issues can be solved if they're made to comply, even if some relatively small fish still don't
- darig 5y ago
  I suppose all the billionaire investors would just retire and not start 70 shell companies to own 100 units each. /s

wonderwonder 5y ago

"we'll take the ... back by force" Why are so many people so quick to suggest that a nationwide situation will be resolved by force. No one is going to take back hundreds of homes by force. That amount of force would be absolutely crushed by state sanctioned violence. Even if you could, what are you going to do with the thousands of homes you have now claimed? Who decides who gets to live there? What about the renters already living there? America is in an awkward position right now and the constant larping of using force to resolve issues is not helping.