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Its not impossible. That's not the point What i mean is real estate taxes as they are today are not a factor to seriously dent foreign or corporate wealth from

Its not impossible. That's not the point What i mean is real estate taxes as they are today are not a factor to seriously dent foreign or corporate wealth from vacuuming all properties available. 10k year in property tax is a pittance to a Sheik, a shenzen factory owner, an indian tech entrepreneur, your average venezuelan govt bureaucrat, or a REIT. 10k is not peanuts to the average wage earner in the US. The former all buy in USA to keep their wealth safe from confiscation and leverage the US justice system and FDIC. Because back in their home countries they are 1 election away from communism or a bank collapse. We have no adequate means to raise the cost of entry for them, and mentioning change to favor local purchases, is almost taboo. Meanwhile, we say "tax the rich" here. Yet foreigners keep loading up on real estate and US citizens end up renting forever..

ericd 4y ago
That’s what happens when we live well beyond our means for decades and trade dollars for real goods - those dollars come back to buy up assets.
yellowapple 4y ago
> real estate taxes as they are today are not a factor to seriously dent foreign or corporate wealth from vacuuming all properties available That can be fixed - namely, via land value taxation, at a rate as close to 100% as possible.
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
  Great. Now retired grandma , who happened to buy a house in a forgotten part of town that suddenly became a bohemian mecca, is stuck with high taxes. She can't move because she doesnt know how to drive and can't take a bus in the suburbs...now must pay half her retired in come due to land value taxation. This literally describes 2 people I know. Grandma didn't do anything to you or me. Why would you punish granma who just want to live out her retirement ? Why not just go after the foreign demand to hide cash, making housing expensive for everyone else ?
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > This literally describes 2 people I know. For every "retired grandma who happened to buy a house in a forgotten part of town that suddenly became a bohemian mecca", I can show you dozens if not hundreds of grandmas who already got pushed out of town because of skyrocketing rents - thanks in no small part to your homeowning grandmas stubbornly insisting on living in a single-family home in the middle of Downtown, on a lot that could and should be housing dozens or hundreds of households. And I haven't even begun to dig into the socioeconomic safety nets like citizens' dividends that a land value tax could readily fund, thus producing a negative tax burden for all renters and the vast majority of homeowners. Why would you punish those hundreds of grammas who just want to live out their retirements? Not to mention the thousands of working Americans who just want a place to live that doesn't entail multi-hour-long commutes? > She can't move because she doesnt know how to drive and can't take a bus in the suburbs There are these things called "moving companies" which would be happy to move her and her stuff into an apartment nearby. With the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars in equity she's accumulated due to her property appreciating in value, she can almost certainly afford to hire such a company to move her and her stuff. With LVT motivating the construction of said apartments to amortize said LVT across as many tenants as possible, she will have no trouble finding a new home - and the denser urbanization would mean that the grocer and pharmacist and GP and such would be right around the corner instead of involving a half-hour bus ride through sprawling suburbia. > Why not just go after the foreign demand to hide cash, making housing expensive for everyone else ? Because that is far from the only cause of housing shortages. You could play whack-a-mole with ad hoc taxes specifically targeting foreign investors and domestic investors and property management companies and Old Money billionaires and wannabe AirBNB moguls and agricultural conglomerates and commercial/industrial landlords and everyone else directly profiting on the very land speculation driving costs of living through the roof... or you could just tax land value, and thus address all that in one fell swoop with a tiny fraction of the bureaucratic overhead and with countless social and economic benefits on top of that.
imtringued 4y ago
This is a pretty shallow argument. Americans should be glad that foreign citizens are funding housing because it means they can build more housing with that money. It is Americans who get to choose whether to build more or not and they have decided to instead block new housing.
- bill_joy_fanboy 4y ago
  Nah. If it weren't for foreign "investment" in real estate, there would still be housing in the U.S. It would just be cheaper. Real estate is a finite resource. More people showing up and bidding just drives the price up for the people who were already at the auction. No reason for me to be happy about it.
Eisenstein 4y ago
> What i mean is real estate taxes as they are today are not a factor Right. Which is why the person you replied to specifically mentioned supporting efforts to change those policies.

ericd 4y ago

That’s what happens when we live well beyond our means for decades and trade dollars for real goods - those dollars come back to buy up assets.

yellowapple 4y ago

> real estate taxes as they are today are not a factor to seriously dent foreign or corporate wealth from vacuuming all properties available That can be fixed - namely, via land value taxation, at a rate as close to 100% as possible.

IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
Great. Now retired grandma , who happened to buy a house in a forgotten part of town that suddenly became a bohemian mecca, is stuck with high taxes. She can't move because she doesnt know how to drive and can't take a bus in the suburbs...now must pay half her retired in come due to land value taxation. This literally describes 2 people I know. Grandma didn't do anything to you or me. Why would you punish granma who just want to live out her retirement ? Why not just go after the foreign demand to hide cash, making housing expensive for everyone else ?
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > This literally describes 2 people I know. For every "retired grandma who happened to buy a house in a forgotten part of town that suddenly became a bohemian mecca", I can show you dozens if not hundreds of grandmas who already got pushed out of town because of skyrocketing rents - thanks in no small part to your homeowning grandmas stubbornly insisting on living in a single-family home in the middle of Downtown, on a lot that could and should be housing dozens or hundreds of households. And I haven't even begun to dig into the socioeconomic safety nets like citizens' dividends that a land value tax could readily fund, thus producing a negative tax burden for all renters and the vast majority of homeowners. Why would you punish those hundreds of grammas who just want to live out their retirements? Not to mention the thousands of working Americans who just want a place to live that doesn't entail multi-hour-long commutes? > She can't move because she doesnt know how to drive and can't take a bus in the suburbs There are these things called "moving companies" which would be happy to move her and her stuff into an apartment nearby. With the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars in equity she's accumulated due to her property appreciating in value, she can almost certainly afford to hire such a company to move her and her stuff. With LVT motivating the construction of said apartments to amortize said LVT across as many tenants as possible, she will have no trouble finding a new home - and the denser urbanization would mean that the grocer and pharmacist and GP and such would be right around the corner instead of involving a half-hour bus ride through sprawling suburbia. > Why not just go after the foreign demand to hide cash, making housing expensive for everyone else ? Because that is far from the only cause of housing shortages. You could play whack-a-mole with ad hoc taxes specifically targeting foreign investors and domestic investors and property management companies and Old Money billionaires and wannabe AirBNB moguls and agricultural conglomerates and commercial/industrial landlords and everyone else directly profiting on the very land speculation driving costs of living through the roof... or you could just tax land value, and thus address all that in one fell swoop with a tiny fraction of the bureaucratic overhead and with countless social and economic benefits on top of that.

imtringued 4y ago

This is a pretty shallow argument. Americans should be glad that foreign citizens are funding housing because it means they can build more housing with that money. It is Americans who get to choose whether to build more or not and they have decided to instead block new housing.

bill_joy_fanboy 4y ago
Nah. If it weren't for foreign "investment" in real estate, there would still be housing in the U.S. It would just be cheaper. Real estate is a finite resource. More people showing up and bidding just drives the price up for the people who were already at the auction. No reason for me to be happy about it.

Eisenstein 4y ago

> What i mean is real estate taxes as they are today are not a factor Right. Which is why the person you replied to specifically mentioned supporting efforts to change those policies.