7 ms·

Corporate rental housing should not be allowed. Free markets are not fair enough to make sure everyone is properly housed, and once enough of it is owned they w

by ehnto 4y ago

Corporate rental housing should not be allowed. Free markets are not fair enough to make sure everyone is properly housed, and once enough of it is owned they will price gouge. There are plenty of other places for companies to make money. In my opinion, housing is the final frontier for this. If housing is bought up by corporates and rented back, we are both feet into corporate dystopia. Land should be between citizens and the states that write the titles.

throwaway6734 4y ago
Why allow anyone to own multiple houses then? Providing rental properties is a valuable service
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  > Providing rental properties is a valuable service Carpenters and bricklayers provide a service. Plumbers and electricians provide a service. Simply holding a deed is not a service.
  - metadat 4y ago
    Maintaining the property is certainly a service.
    - crote 4y ago
      Landlords virtually always hire maintenance companies to maintain the property - and you're paying for it via your rent. You could hire the same maintenance companies if you owned it yourself.
    - the_gastropod 4y ago
      I have been a renter my entire adult life, and over the decades have plowed several hundred thousand dollars into the pockets of the various landlords I’ve rented from. The total maintenance done during all my tenancy is: 1. A broken seal on a washing machine was replaced 2. A leaky toilet was repaired 3. A broken kitchen drawer was replaced I don’t believe my case is particularly uncommon. In ~20 years of renting, ~$500k of rent paid, the total maintenance done on the units I’ve rented probably cost under $100. Toss in the most expensive paint and cleaning regimen after I’ve vacated, and let’s call it a cool $1,000. If the value landlords are providing is “maintaining properties”, their margins here are colossal.
      - metadat 4y ago
        Agree 100%, the margins tend to favor the owner. It varies by property, some are much higher maintenance. My point is simply that these things don't take care of themselves and need to be managed one way or another.
      - eulers_secret 4y ago
        Depends on how you rent. I went through and calculated my total housing expenses for the last 15 years- they’re about $120,000; in my area that’s a (minimal) down payment. It’s less than a year of salary. I’ve had all appliances replaced, a new roof (and a new ceiling when this leaked), the parking lot resurfaced twice, and a new water heater, endless bits and bobs (sink disposal, all new light switches, door knobs, fully new shower enclosure and faucets). Maintenance shovels snow, cleans up leaves, and de-ices. I have never mowed a lawn, shoveled snow nor done any physical labor at all- I’m still in good shape, there’s a gym and pool on premises. My apartment is small, that’s why it’s inexpensive. But I won’t have kids and don’t need >1 bedroom. Already married for the whole time as well. Depends on how one wants to live their life.
        spacemadness 4y ago
        I think we’re all just completely forgetting that rent price is a function of where you live. Just throwing out numbers like this isn’t helpful.
        the_gastropod 4y ago
        Yea, exactly. My $500k number was primarily for rent in NYC. $120k over 15 years averages $666/mo—an unlikely situation in NY, SF, etc.
      - quesera 4y ago
        Major expenses you're not including, though: - Property taxes - Hazard insurance - Debt service - Some utilities (water, trash, sometimes even electricity and HVAC, depending on your rental agreement) - Maintenance and repair of exterior and common spaces - Repairs and updates after you move out, and before you move in (assuming you have not been in the same apartment for 20 years) Yes of course you're paying for these things via rent. But the owner's margin is probably much smaller than your math would suggest. The value provided to you in the owner's margin includes: - Someone to call if *anything* goes wrong. (Oven broken? faucet dripping? window stuck? Disposal burned out? All problems have one simple solution: Call this number.) - Flexibility of movement. Want to move at the end of your lease? No problem. (Need to sell to move? That will be a long and/or exhausting process, and will cost you 6% of the property sale price!) - The security of knowing that you will never be hit by surprise maintenance costs. $30K for a new roof? $20K for a new furnace? $250K for a seismic retrofit? Never going to be your problem. - The ability to live where you want to! In many locations, there are no apartment-equivalent units for sale. Some property owners are terrible to do business with, and in some markets/neighborhoods only terrible owners are easily found (there's a reason for this! See also hiring, dating, etc). But as an exchange of cash for services, the equation is more balanced than you might realize.
  - erik_seaberg 4y ago
    If you don’t personally have $200K burning a hole in your pocket, or you might want to move out next year, getting underwritten and committing to a mortgage in your place is a valuable service.
- ehnto 4y ago
  I don't disagree. I think we would benefit from a survey that shows how many people actually want to be renting. Since property is so expensive, thanks to how lucrative of an investment property has become, individuals are struggling to buy since they are competing with deeper pockets. I argue this isn't a free market, it's a market slowly being cornered by investors. Not a problem for say, fancy watches. A big problem for a core living utility.
scarface74 4y ago
So what individual do you think can afford to build $1 billion in rental homes? The parent poster is incorrect about what JP Morgan is doing. This will increase supply not decrease it.
- Temporary_31337 4y ago
  Still JPMC assumes that it will make them money. So it won’t help with housing affordability and availability.
  - Brigand 4y ago
    You can both reduce unit price in comparison to the market and make tons of money. Happens all the time. The t-model is a prime example.
    - lowercased 4y ago
      model-t didn't require a lot of zoning/permits/etc. at least, at that time.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    How can it not help housing availability by increasing supply?
- ehnto 4y ago
  Traditional property developers don't usually hold onto the properties they build, they sell them off. Even skyscrapers sell off their apartments and commercial sections. Maybe some don't now, but I think that might reflect a shift from building being most profitable to renting being most profitable. In that case, eventually a renting-developer would lose incetive to build more as not to dilute their rental margins.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    And the people buying them also have profit incentives. Whether JPM is doing it to profit from rentals directly or with the expectation that some future buyer won’t make a difference. But it’s illogical by any standard economic model that any supplier will not build more units if they see it can bring in more money. Either they build more or someone else does.
FredPret 4y ago
Interfering in the market always makes the outcome worse because it increases costs for both buyers and sellers. Crazy real estate prices are caused by NIMBYs blocking new builds - heavy interfering. Check out this graph of new builds in the States. Zoom out to max. Note how it’s basically flat with some ups and downs. It should go up exponentially with the population. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/housing-starts https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/housing-starts Here’s a sheet from the gov that seems to show something similar: https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/xls/starts_cust.xls https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/xls/starts_cust.xls
- ehnto 4y ago
  I don't disagree with your point about nimbyism, but I don't think that proves allowing corporations to buy those same finite assets up would be any better. Then you just have the same asset bubble but instead controlled by a corporation with even less interest in affordability or maintaining a community.
  - FredPret 4y ago
    Corporations will deploy massed capital in pursuit of higher profit. If we stop all meddling in the housing market, this will result in much more new housing being built. We need millions of new units. The capital for that can come from individuals or corporations, but corporations are just a way to pool capital and seems like a quicker and more effective approach. No corporation in any industry has ever cared about community and affordability. And yet these things have emerged multiple times wherever sane, free markets exist.
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  A non-regulated market cannot be a free market on any decent time scale. Without ensuring fairness by government bad actors will capture the market, externalize costs, and work against the public interest. Are you saying that regulation (market interference) is universally bad?
mcculley 4y ago
I live in an apartment unit in a 25 story tower. I rent it from a corporation that owns it. Would that still be allowed in your plan? Would the restrictions on who can own housing only apply to single family homes?
- ehnto 4y ago
  Apartments are an interesting example, but ultimately no different to individual homes. The unit being inside a larger building only changes your agreements with fellow apartment owners. As a renter you aren't really concerned with any of that. When a developer builds a tower, they sell all the units to individuals or companies. In my variant, companies couldn't own them and so only individuals could buy the apartments. The dream would be that individual ownership is cheaper, but maybe if the prices were lower building towers wouldn't be lucrative to developers. I am sure there are a bunch of edge cases like that.
  - mcculley 4y ago
    One of the reasons that I currently rent an apartment instead of owning a single family home is that I want someone else to handle maintenance. Maintenance issues involve more than just "agreements with fellow apartment owners". There are common areas, common equipment such as elevators, trash chute, pool, gym, and common services such as security guards, maintenance staff, and concierge. In condos, this is managed by the homeowners association. Proposing that apartment buildings such not be owned by corporations, but instead that only condominiums should exist, with associated homeowners associations, is to propose a less liquid housing market. I have owned single family homes and condos and rented apartments and condos. There are good reasons for all of these choices. Those proposing to allow fewer choices are not convincing me that they have thought it through.
    - quartesixte 4y ago
      Perhaps that homeowners association stays as the developer, and we write laws and regulations that keep the developer beholden to certain standards of maintenance and safe living standards. Perhaps competition will arise between developers who advertise certain levels of amenities and service. The basic minimum can be run by a government housing corporation that sets the baseline standard of living for all other developers to measure themselves against. The possibilities here are endless. We don't have to keep living the way we do in the USA.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
It's not an issue right now though. I look around and I see thousands of apartments and condos for rent from different entities- many of them small renters. There are also tons of houses for sale. Why aren't they all corporate owned yet? I think a lot of renting is not profitable but if all you need is a place to live that's no problem. Perhaps I'm a bit ignorant here?
- ehnto 4y ago
  The worry is that during a recession, when real estate assets are cheap, corporations might buy up the assets in order to rent them back or sell them for profit. It is just a worry at this point, but this rumbling from JPM is not confidence inspiring.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    This happened in 2008 for instance (or at least in the aftermath of 2008)
knubie 4y ago
Corporate food production should not be allowed. Free markets are not fair enough to make sure everyone is properly fed, and once enough of it is owned they will price gouge. There are plenty of other places for companies to make money.
- ehnto 4y ago
  If you think there is no difference between the food industry and real estate, then I am afraid that is a failing of your own deductions. The issue I forsee is deep pockets cornering specific markets and dictating the price to people who haven't got as much flexibility. Corporate scale slum lords, in other words. It is already happening with private real estate investors. Anyone can ship in and sell potatoes, I can even buy them online. The market forces work because I have so much flexibility. Not everyone can move, nor should they have to move just because money moves in. People live in communities not investment potfolios.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >Anyone can ship in and sell potatoes, I can even buy them online. The market forces work because I have so much flexibility. Not everyone can move, nor should they have to move just because money moves in. But within a given city you have a choice of hundreds, or even thousands of landlords? Any specific building might only be owned by one landlord, but you don't exactly have to move to the other side of a city to get away from that landlord.
    - albertsondev 4y ago
      That's no guarantee either, especially with increasing consolidation of land under larger corporate umbrellas. I recently moved away from Columbus after getting on the bad side of an investment group that seems to own nearly all of the publicly-listed apartments in the area within my price bracket, and are still actively buying up more. Said bracket is fairly low, granted, but it's all I can afford on even a decent full-time income, especially with other expenses spiking as of late. Columbus has recently found itself to be the new largest city and center of economic growth in the state, and changed rapidly and radically over the past couple of decades. As a result, it's nowhere near as seasoned and well-established as many other major metros, and the massive influx of new monied interests into the area quickly cornered their respective markets. Moving back to the Cleveland area, which was quite the boom town a century ago but has infamously been in near-perpetual decline ever since (with many residents, like I had, migrating to Columbus), has much healthier competition in the rental market. Perhaps in a few decades as new assets are built and today's ones slosh around the economy, Columbus will have healthier, more diverse competition and see your point ring true. It's certainly healthy in other sectors—one of my favorite things about living there was the great wealth of hole-in-the-wall bodegas, ethnic grocers, restaurants, and food trucks around me that meant even on my last dime I could always try new cuisines—but at least for those of us for whom even a high five-figure income is a distant dream, options are very limited.
iso1631 4y ago
> In my opinion, housing is the final frontier for this. If housing is bought up by corporates and rented back, we are both feet into corporate dystopia. Land should be between citizens and the states that write the titles. All land should be owned by the public. To use it you would rent it for the market value, that money would be distributed to the citizens as a basic income. As the land becomes more valuable (society shifts to urbanization and cities become more valued), the cost of that land increases, but so does the basic income. That's what happens now, except the people benefiting from the cost of the land isn't the public, but the land owner. On the other hand, if a new power plant is opened up, land value reduces, and the land occupier pays less. Currently they just lose out, hence the NIMBY problem.
- naveen99 4y ago
  US property taxes are effectively rents.
  - iso1631 4y ago
    My understanding is US property taxes are higher if you build property on them. a vacant 1000 square foot lot will attract less tax than the neighbouring 1000 square foot plot with a house on. Is that not right?
    - naveen99 4y ago
      Land and improvement are taxed at the same rate, based on appraisal. There are certain exemptions for farmland, homestead etc.
      - iso1631 4y ago
        So improvements which shouldn't be taxed are taxed. The land owner of an empty acre pays far less tax than the land owner of an acre with 40 people living there. That's wrong.
        4y ago

by ehnto 4y ago

throwaway6734 4y ago

Why allow anyone to own multiple houses then? Providing rental properties is a valuable service

wildrhythms 4y ago
> Providing rental properties is a valuable service Carpenters and bricklayers provide a service. Plumbers and electricians provide a service. Simply holding a deed is not a service.
- metadat 4y ago
  Maintaining the property is certainly a service.
  - crote 4y ago
    Landlords virtually always hire maintenance companies to maintain the property - and you're paying for it via your rent. You could hire the same maintenance companies if you owned it yourself.
  - the_gastropod 4y ago
    I have been a renter my entire adult life, and over the decades have plowed several hundred thousand dollars into the pockets of the various landlords I’ve rented from. The total maintenance done during all my tenancy is: 1. A broken seal on a washing machine was replaced 2. A leaky toilet was repaired 3. A broken kitchen drawer was replaced I don’t believe my case is particularly uncommon. In ~20 years of renting, ~$500k of rent paid, the total maintenance done on the units I’ve rented probably cost under $100. Toss in the most expensive paint and cleaning regimen after I’ve vacated, and let’s call it a cool $1,000. If the value landlords are providing is “maintaining properties”, their margins here are colossal.
    - metadat 4y ago
      Agree 100%, the margins tend to favor the owner. It varies by property, some are much higher maintenance. My point is simply that these things don't take care of themselves and need to be managed one way or another.
    - eulers_secret 4y ago
      Depends on how you rent. I went through and calculated my total housing expenses for the last 15 years- they’re about $120,000; in my area that’s a (minimal) down payment. It’s less than a year of salary. I’ve had all appliances replaced, a new roof (and a new ceiling when this leaked), the parking lot resurfaced twice, and a new water heater, endless bits and bobs (sink disposal, all new light switches, door knobs, fully new shower enclosure and faucets). Maintenance shovels snow, cleans up leaves, and de-ices. I have never mowed a lawn, shoveled snow nor done any physical labor at all- I’m still in good shape, there’s a gym and pool on premises. My apartment is small, that’s why it’s inexpensive. But I won’t have kids and don’t need >1 bedroom. Already married for the whole time as well. Depends on how one wants to live their life.
      - spacemadness 4y ago
        I think we’re all just completely forgetting that rent price is a function of where you live. Just throwing out numbers like this isn’t helpful.
        the_gastropod 4y ago
        Yea, exactly. My $500k number was primarily for rent in NYC. $120k over 15 years averages $666/mo—an unlikely situation in NY, SF, etc.
    - quesera 4y ago
      Major expenses you're not including, though: - Property taxes - Hazard insurance - Debt service - Some utilities (water, trash, sometimes even electricity and HVAC, depending on your rental agreement) - Maintenance and repair of exterior and common spaces - Repairs and updates after you move out, and before you move in (assuming you have not been in the same apartment for 20 years) Yes of course you're paying for these things via rent. But the owner's margin is probably much smaller than your math would suggest. The value provided to you in the owner's margin includes: - Someone to call if *anything* goes wrong. (Oven broken? faucet dripping? window stuck? Disposal burned out? All problems have one simple solution: Call this number.) - Flexibility of movement. Want to move at the end of your lease? No problem. (Need to sell to move? That will be a long and/or exhausting process, and will cost you 6% of the property sale price!) - The security of knowing that you will never be hit by surprise maintenance costs. $30K for a new roof? $20K for a new furnace? $250K for a seismic retrofit? Never going to be your problem. - The ability to live where you want to! In many locations, there are no apartment-equivalent units for sale. Some property owners are terrible to do business with, and in some markets/neighborhoods only terrible owners are easily found (there's a reason for this! See also hiring, dating, etc). But as an exchange of cash for services, the equation is more balanced than you might realize.
- erik_seaberg 4y ago
  If you don’t personally have $200K burning a hole in your pocket, or you might want to move out next year, getting underwritten and committing to a mortgage in your place is a valuable service.
ehnto 4y ago
I don't disagree. I think we would benefit from a survey that shows how many people actually want to be renting. Since property is so expensive, thanks to how lucrative of an investment property has become, individuals are struggling to buy since they are competing with deeper pockets. I argue this isn't a free market, it's a market slowly being cornered by investors. Not a problem for say, fancy watches. A big problem for a core living utility.

scarface74 4y ago

So what individual do you think can afford to build $1 billion in rental homes? The parent poster is incorrect about what JP Morgan is doing. This will increase supply not decrease it.

Temporary_31337 4y ago
Still JPMC assumes that it will make them money. So it won’t help with housing affordability and availability.
- Brigand 4y ago
  You can both reduce unit price in comparison to the market and make tons of money. Happens all the time. The t-model is a prime example.
  - lowercased 4y ago
    model-t didn't require a lot of zoning/permits/etc. at least, at that time.
- scarface74 4y ago
  How can it not help housing availability by increasing supply?
ehnto 4y ago
Traditional property developers don't usually hold onto the properties they build, they sell them off. Even skyscrapers sell off their apartments and commercial sections. Maybe some don't now, but I think that might reflect a shift from building being most profitable to renting being most profitable. In that case, eventually a renting-developer would lose incetive to build more as not to dilute their rental margins.
- scarface74 4y ago
  And the people buying them also have profit incentives. Whether JPM is doing it to profit from rentals directly or with the expectation that some future buyer won’t make a difference. But it’s illogical by any standard economic model that any supplier will not build more units if they see it can bring in more money. Either they build more or someone else does.

FredPret 4y ago

Interfering in the market always makes the outcome worse because it increases costs for both buyers and sellers. Crazy real estate prices are caused by NIMBYs blocking new builds - heavy interfering. Check out this graph of new builds in the States. Zoom out to max. Note how it’s basically flat with some ups and downs. It should go up exponentially with the population. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/housing-starts https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/housing-starts Here’s a sheet from the gov that seems to show something similar: https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/xls/starts_cust.xls https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/xls/starts_cust.xls

ehnto 4y ago
I don't disagree with your point about nimbyism, but I don't think that proves allowing corporations to buy those same finite assets up would be any better. Then you just have the same asset bubble but instead controlled by a corporation with even less interest in affordability or maintaining a community.
- FredPret 4y ago
  Corporations will deploy massed capital in pursuit of higher profit. If we stop all meddling in the housing market, this will result in much more new housing being built. We need millions of new units. The capital for that can come from individuals or corporations, but corporations are just a way to pool capital and seems like a quicker and more effective approach. No corporation in any industry has ever cared about community and affordability. And yet these things have emerged multiple times wherever sane, free markets exist.
Eisenstein 4y ago
A non-regulated market cannot be a free market on any decent time scale. Without ensuring fairness by government bad actors will capture the market, externalize costs, and work against the public interest. Are you saying that regulation (market interference) is universally bad?

mcculley 4y ago

I live in an apartment unit in a 25 story tower. I rent it from a corporation that owns it. Would that still be allowed in your plan? Would the restrictions on who can own housing only apply to single family homes?

ehnto 4y ago
Apartments are an interesting example, but ultimately no different to individual homes. The unit being inside a larger building only changes your agreements with fellow apartment owners. As a renter you aren't really concerned with any of that. When a developer builds a tower, they sell all the units to individuals or companies. In my variant, companies couldn't own them and so only individuals could buy the apartments. The dream would be that individual ownership is cheaper, but maybe if the prices were lower building towers wouldn't be lucrative to developers. I am sure there are a bunch of edge cases like that.
- mcculley 4y ago
  One of the reasons that I currently rent an apartment instead of owning a single family home is that I want someone else to handle maintenance. Maintenance issues involve more than just "agreements with fellow apartment owners". There are common areas, common equipment such as elevators, trash chute, pool, gym, and common services such as security guards, maintenance staff, and concierge. In condos, this is managed by the homeowners association. Proposing that apartment buildings such not be owned by corporations, but instead that only condominiums should exist, with associated homeowners associations, is to propose a less liquid housing market. I have owned single family homes and condos and rented apartments and condos. There are good reasons for all of these choices. Those proposing to allow fewer choices are not convincing me that they have thought it through.
  - quartesixte 4y ago
    Perhaps that homeowners association stays as the developer, and we write laws and regulations that keep the developer beholden to certain standards of maintenance and safe living standards. Perhaps competition will arise between developers who advertise certain levels of amenities and service. The basic minimum can be run by a government housing corporation that sets the baseline standard of living for all other developers to measure themselves against. The possibilities here are endless. We don't have to keep living the way we do in the USA.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

It's not an issue right now though. I look around and I see thousands of apartments and condos for rent from different entities- many of them small renters. There are also tons of houses for sale. Why aren't they all corporate owned yet? I think a lot of renting is not profitable but if all you need is a place to live that's no problem. Perhaps I'm a bit ignorant here?

ehnto 4y ago
The worry is that during a recession, when real estate assets are cheap, corporations might buy up the assets in order to rent them back or sell them for profit. It is just a worry at this point, but this rumbling from JPM is not confidence inspiring.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  This happened in 2008 for instance (or at least in the aftermath of 2008)

knubie 4y ago

Corporate food production should not be allowed. Free markets are not fair enough to make sure everyone is properly fed, and once enough of it is owned they will price gouge. There are plenty of other places for companies to make money.

ehnto 4y ago
If you think there is no difference between the food industry and real estate, then I am afraid that is a failing of your own deductions. The issue I forsee is deep pockets cornering specific markets and dictating the price to people who haven't got as much flexibility. Corporate scale slum lords, in other words. It is already happening with private real estate investors. Anyone can ship in and sell potatoes, I can even buy them online. The market forces work because I have so much flexibility. Not everyone can move, nor should they have to move just because money moves in. People live in communities not investment potfolios.
- gruez 4y ago
  >Anyone can ship in and sell potatoes, I can even buy them online. The market forces work because I have so much flexibility. Not everyone can move, nor should they have to move just because money moves in. But within a given city you have a choice of hundreds, or even thousands of landlords? Any specific building might only be owned by one landlord, but you don't exactly have to move to the other side of a city to get away from that landlord.
  - albertsondev 4y ago
    That's no guarantee either, especially with increasing consolidation of land under larger corporate umbrellas. I recently moved away from Columbus after getting on the bad side of an investment group that seems to own nearly all of the publicly-listed apartments in the area within my price bracket, and are still actively buying up more. Said bracket is fairly low, granted, but it's all I can afford on even a decent full-time income, especially with other expenses spiking as of late. Columbus has recently found itself to be the new largest city and center of economic growth in the state, and changed rapidly and radically over the past couple of decades. As a result, it's nowhere near as seasoned and well-established as many other major metros, and the massive influx of new monied interests into the area quickly cornered their respective markets. Moving back to the Cleveland area, which was quite the boom town a century ago but has infamously been in near-perpetual decline ever since (with many residents, like I had, migrating to Columbus), has much healthier competition in the rental market. Perhaps in a few decades as new assets are built and today's ones slosh around the economy, Columbus will have healthier, more diverse competition and see your point ring true. It's certainly healthy in other sectors—one of my favorite things about living there was the great wealth of hole-in-the-wall bodegas, ethnic grocers, restaurants, and food trucks around me that meant even on my last dime I could always try new cuisines—but at least for those of us for whom even a high five-figure income is a distant dream, options are very limited.

iso1631 4y ago

> In my opinion, housing is the final frontier for this. If housing is bought up by corporates and rented back, we are both feet into corporate dystopia. Land should be between citizens and the states that write the titles. All land should be owned by the public. To use it you would rent it for the market value, that money would be distributed to the citizens as a basic income. As the land becomes more valuable (society shifts to urbanization and cities become more valued), the cost of that land increases, but so does the basic income. That's what happens now, except the people benefiting from the cost of the land isn't the public, but the land owner. On the other hand, if a new power plant is opened up, land value reduces, and the land occupier pays less. Currently they just lose out, hence the NIMBY problem.

naveen99 4y ago
US property taxes are effectively rents.
- iso1631 4y ago
  My understanding is US property taxes are higher if you build property on them. a vacant 1000 square foot lot will attract less tax than the neighbouring 1000 square foot plot with a house on. Is that not right?
  - naveen99 4y ago
    Land and improvement are taxed at the same rate, based on appraisal. There are certain exemptions for farmland, homestead etc.
    - iso1631 4y ago
      So improvements which shouldn't be taxed are taxed. The land owner of an empty acre pays far less tax than the land owner of an acre with 40 people living there. That's wrong.
      - 4y ago