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How about.. increasing the property tax rate exponentially with the number of properties held. Few people are arguing that a mom-pop rental business needs to be

How about.. increasing the property tax rate exponentially with the number of properties held. Few people are arguing that a mom-pop rental business needs to be shut down. These conglomerates with > 10,000 properties are the serious problem, even the data from the article points this out clearly.

jimbob45 4y ago
I really like your idea but I don't know how you'd reconcile it with organizations simply forming a shell over many smaller companies with a few properties each.
- Jochim 4y ago
  I mean the simplest solution would be to tax the holding company as well.
- djohnston 4y ago
  FTC, IRS, and the whoop whoop sound of da police
beebmam 4y ago
Or just increase property tax across the board. An increase in property tax will drive housing prices downwards.
- djohnston 4y ago
  I don't want it to be harder for someone to buy their first house (I also want to buy my first house haha). I want it to be harder for some thing to buy it's 10,001st house.
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    Homestead exemptions can keep property taxes low on one house per person, allowing property taxes on investment properties to skyrocket without any effect on first-time buyers, or really any homeowners. In theory.
  - mywittyname 4y ago
    Not sure this is feasible. A) People can hide how many houses they "own" rather easily. B) People with 10,000 houses have 10,000 times the economic incentive to run for office and/or press elected officials to make things easier on them. The best approach is to press for over-development of housing. It doesn't matter if someone owns 1 house, or 1000 houses, so long as there is more than enough homes for everyone. Idea: have a property tax line item that's based on the ratio of population / housing units. The higher that ratio, the higher the tax. The tax revenue is used to cover the costs of constructing more housing units, which lowers the tax.
- al_mandi 4y ago
  So you're basically now paying rent to the government. Want to really address the problem (and many other problem with today's economic system)? Prohibit interest bearing loans.
  - analognoise 4y ago
    How do you handle the risk of defaults? If you never charged interest wouldn't anyone who offered loans just go out of business? I do think credit scores are a scam (as are overdraft fees) and that rates should be reasonable, but no interest would make nobody lend money. I like having a car loan - I was able to buy a car with current safety features. Without it I'd have to buy some unsafe (or unreliable) clunker in cash.
    - al_mandi 4y ago
      By prohibiting interest bearing loans, loans become relegated to purely an act of charity, and as you point out, there will no longer be businesses that are built only or mostly to lend money and profit off of usury. And that's a good thing. There's no reason why the car manufacturers won't be able to offer 0% interest on moderate term loans (a few years long). They already do today when they want to sell cars. This will drive prices down actually. You can also have longer term leases without interest, effectively paying for depreciation and the company can profit from leasing the car.
acomjean 4y ago
Where I live, they lop off a large value for tax purposes if you live in your property: "shifts the tax burden within the residential class from owners of moderately valued residential properties to the owners of vacation homes, higher valued homes and residential properties not occupied by the owner, including apartments and vacant lands." https://www.mass.gov/doc/living-with-the-residential-exemption/download https://www.mass.gov/doc/living-with-the-residential-exempti... It hasn't seemed to help, but maybe it has a little.....
hemloc_io 4y ago
I want to agree, but at the end of the day the corps doing this are taking crappy properties and renovating them. They want to fix it up and resell it or charge higher rents than the current owners. That's how they make their profits. Usually they have a maintenance staff that takes care of the property as well or add additional services. Mom and pop landlords don't do any of that usually, and just hand someone a key w/ a call to the occasional contractor to fix something instead of an actual company. Most need a warm body to pay off their mortgage so they can sell it in the future and pocket the cash. We need to fix the supply side, if the corp takes the properties that are broken down and fixes them that's a good thing. The problem comes when people who are around there now cannot afford the new rents they either become homeless or leave. How far they have to leave depends on the supply of housing in the surrounding area, which b/c of the shortage is pretty low. With a huge supply of housing, it's possible to move next door or down the street and not much changes. If we build more rents will go down, regardless of who the owners are. Prices to buy homes too for normal people. Getting people to build more is the problem, high construction costs, zoning/permiting, local opposition etc.
- MrRiddle 4y ago
  > but at the end of the day the corps doing this are taking crappy properties and renovating them. They want to fix it up and resell it or charge higher rents than the current owners. Could it be the reason that those properties are too expensive for a regular Joe to fix up because of investors in the first place.

jimbob45 4y ago

I really like your idea but I don't know how you'd reconcile it with organizations simply forming a shell over many smaller companies with a few properties each.

Jochim 4y ago
I mean the simplest solution would be to tax the holding company as well.
djohnston 4y ago
FTC, IRS, and the whoop whoop sound of da police

beebmam 4y ago

Or just increase property tax across the board. An increase in property tax will drive housing prices downwards.

djohnston 4y ago
I don't want it to be harder for someone to buy their first house (I also want to buy my first house haha). I want it to be harder for some thing to buy it's 10,001st house.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  Homestead exemptions can keep property taxes low on one house per person, allowing property taxes on investment properties to skyrocket without any effect on first-time buyers, or really any homeowners. In theory.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  Not sure this is feasible. A) People can hide how many houses they "own" rather easily. B) People with 10,000 houses have 10,000 times the economic incentive to run for office and/or press elected officials to make things easier on them. The best approach is to press for over-development of housing. It doesn't matter if someone owns 1 house, or 1000 houses, so long as there is more than enough homes for everyone. Idea: have a property tax line item that's based on the ratio of population / housing units. The higher that ratio, the higher the tax. The tax revenue is used to cover the costs of constructing more housing units, which lowers the tax.
al_mandi 4y ago
So you're basically now paying rent to the government. Want to really address the problem (and many other problem with today's economic system)? Prohibit interest bearing loans.
- analognoise 4y ago
  How do you handle the risk of defaults? If you never charged interest wouldn't anyone who offered loans just go out of business? I do think credit scores are a scam (as are overdraft fees) and that rates should be reasonable, but no interest would make nobody lend money. I like having a car loan - I was able to buy a car with current safety features. Without it I'd have to buy some unsafe (or unreliable) clunker in cash.
  - al_mandi 4y ago
    By prohibiting interest bearing loans, loans become relegated to purely an act of charity, and as you point out, there will no longer be businesses that are built only or mostly to lend money and profit off of usury. And that's a good thing. There's no reason why the car manufacturers won't be able to offer 0% interest on moderate term loans (a few years long). They already do today when they want to sell cars. This will drive prices down actually. You can also have longer term leases without interest, effectively paying for depreciation and the company can profit from leasing the car.

acomjean 4y ago

Where I live, they lop off a large value for tax purposes if you live in your property: "shifts the tax burden within the residential class from owners of moderately valued residential properties to the owners of vacation homes, higher valued homes and residential properties not occupied by the owner, including apartments and vacant lands." https://www.mass.gov/doc/living-with-the-residential-exemption/download https://www.mass.gov/doc/living-with-the-residential-exempti... It hasn't seemed to help, but maybe it has a little.....

hemloc_io 4y ago

I want to agree, but at the end of the day the corps doing this are taking crappy properties and renovating them. They want to fix it up and resell it or charge higher rents than the current owners. That's how they make their profits. Usually they have a maintenance staff that takes care of the property as well or add additional services. Mom and pop landlords don't do any of that usually, and just hand someone a key w/ a call to the occasional contractor to fix something instead of an actual company. Most need a warm body to pay off their mortgage so they can sell it in the future and pocket the cash. We need to fix the supply side, if the corp takes the properties that are broken down and fixes them that's a good thing. The problem comes when people who are around there now cannot afford the new rents they either become homeless or leave. How far they have to leave depends on the supply of housing in the surrounding area, which b/c of the shortage is pretty low. With a huge supply of housing, it's possible to move next door or down the street and not much changes. If we build more rents will go down, regardless of who the owners are. Prices to buy homes too for normal people. Getting people to build more is the problem, high construction costs, zoning/permiting, local opposition etc.

MrRiddle 4y ago
> but at the end of the day the corps doing this are taking crappy properties and renovating them. They want to fix it up and resell it or charge higher rents than the current owners. Could it be the reason that those properties are too expensive for a regular Joe to fix up because of investors in the first place.