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The issues you describe could all be nullified by making a simple change - The price the person can purchase your property for must be X% greater than the fair

The issues you describe could all be nullified by making a simple change - The price the person can purchase your property for must be X% greater than the fair value you declare. If you set X at 10% then there is no chance for property investors in your example to flip if the price increases by 10% during the year. You could even make X dependent on market conditions - If all the housing market moves up in your area, X is increased for everyone by that amount. I could see X being quite high. What we really want to avoid is just those situations where someone will not take any price to move, and therefore an entire railroad has to be diverted miles around because the path in one spot is blocked.

devonbleak 3y ago
And as the housing market moves 20%+ in a year in some places all you've done is kick the can down the road to figuring out a value of X that is high enough that no forced turnover of property happens so you're not violating the principles of property ownership. But also low enough that there's still a threat of exactly that happening. Ultimately all this does is accelerate the accumulation of wealth for folks that already have the capital to profit off this system while forcing people out of their property. No thank you.
- ReactiveJelly 3y ago
  So there might need to be time lag where you can refuse a sale by agreeing to pay extra tax? Then it's vulnerable to malicious buyers putting in fake bids. There is probably a good reason this hasn't been implemented.
  - hellojesus 3y ago
    It still seems like a bad idea to me. Anyone under the current market can make a bid for an off-market property, but it's not their property. They cannot force an owner to sell. Tbey can only entice them with lucrative offers. Under the proposal, lucrative offers can still lure buyers into selling, but the security of private property is removed. You have to live under constant threat of a whale, e.g. Blackrock, swooping in and offering marginally above (market + e), forcing you to sell. But you still need somewhere to live. And now you have (market + e) dollars, but the market just got redefined by Blackrock and you cannot afford to buy your neighbors house because it is now priced at (market2 + e) where market < market2. Blackrock does this sequentially and can manage to legally steal private property from entire cities, just because they had more starting capital.
    - thinkharderdev 3y ago
      > You have to live under constant threat of a whale, e.g. Blackrock, swooping in and offering marginally above (market + e), forcing you to sell They can't force you to sell, you have the option of just updating the declared value to the new market price. But I brought this up initially in the context of patents because I don't think this would actually be a practical or politically palatable way to handle property taxes on owner-occupied housing. But when we're talking about intangible corporate assets like patents most of these problems go away (IMO).
      - hellojesus 3y ago
        > They can't force you to sell, you have the option of just updating the declared value to the new market price. This isn't implicationless. What if you can't afford the taxes on the newly declared price? A whale could conceivably force people out by offering a price above their ability to afford the taxes. If they don't sell, they get evicted due to tax nonpayment. If they do sell, they get the money but now need to find a new place to live in an appreciated market. Their autonomy is removed by force.
        thinkharderdev 3y ago
        To be honest, I wish the authors hadn't framed their idea on property taxes because there are a lot of obvious practical and political issues with doing it. And I don't personally think this would be a good way to do property taxes on owner-occupied housing. I only brought it up originally because I think a lot of issues with it are irrelevant when applied in the domain of intangible economic assets like patents. In that particular domain I think the overriding principle of intellectual property law should be to maximize economic efficiency.
  - thinkharderdev 3y ago
    > Then it's vulnerable to malicious buyers putting in fake bids TBH that seems like the easiest issue to solve. For instance, to make an unsolicited bid you have to escrow %20 of the price. If the owner chooses to updated the declared value, you get that back. But if they choose to sell and you walk away (or don't actually have the other %80 to complete the sale) then you forfeit that to the owner. Or you can even disincentivize "malicious" offers more by saying that if the owner chooses to update the declared value then you still forfeit the escrowed cash but it goes to offsetting the increased tax bill for the current owner.
- oatmeal1 3y ago
  > And as the housing market moves 20%+ in a year in some places all you've done is kick the can down the road to figuring out a value of X Again, X can move with the market.
- imtringued 3y ago
  >Ultimately all this does is accelerate the accumulation of wealth for folks that already have the capital to profit off How does it do that? Sure the system causes frequent changes of ownership which are undesired but you are forgetting that the "accumulators" are getting taxed based on how much they accumulated which in the long run slows them down. Yes they can bully you in the short term, which is why this isn't done, but in the long run the house will achieve the optimal tax policy and the abuse potential of housing disappears. If the government decides to lower taxes on income, then in the long run "accumulators" would be the ones losing out from this.
ReactiveJelly 3y ago
Isn't that equivalent to setting the tax rate X% lower? The only problem I see otherwise is that it's not a progressive tax - 5% of a trailer is much more of a poor person's income than 5% of a mansion is of a rich person's. But for that you can use UBI or something to make any flat tax net-progressive.

devonbleak 3y ago

And as the housing market moves 20%+ in a year in some places all you've done is kick the can down the road to figuring out a value of X that is high enough that no forced turnover of property happens so you're not violating the principles of property ownership. But also low enough that there's still a threat of exactly that happening. Ultimately all this does is accelerate the accumulation of wealth for folks that already have the capital to profit off this system while forcing people out of their property. No thank you.

ReactiveJelly 3y ago
So there might need to be time lag where you can refuse a sale by agreeing to pay extra tax? Then it's vulnerable to malicious buyers putting in fake bids. There is probably a good reason this hasn't been implemented.
- hellojesus 3y ago
  It still seems like a bad idea to me. Anyone under the current market can make a bid for an off-market property, but it's not their property. They cannot force an owner to sell. Tbey can only entice them with lucrative offers. Under the proposal, lucrative offers can still lure buyers into selling, but the security of private property is removed. You have to live under constant threat of a whale, e.g. Blackrock, swooping in and offering marginally above (market + e), forcing you to sell. But you still need somewhere to live. And now you have (market + e) dollars, but the market just got redefined by Blackrock and you cannot afford to buy your neighbors house because it is now priced at (market2 + e) where market < market2. Blackrock does this sequentially and can manage to legally steal private property from entire cities, just because they had more starting capital.
  - thinkharderdev 3y ago
    > You have to live under constant threat of a whale, e.g. Blackrock, swooping in and offering marginally above (market + e), forcing you to sell They can't force you to sell, you have the option of just updating the declared value to the new market price. But I brought this up initially in the context of patents because I don't think this would actually be a practical or politically palatable way to handle property taxes on owner-occupied housing. But when we're talking about intangible corporate assets like patents most of these problems go away (IMO).
    - hellojesus 3y ago
      > They can't force you to sell, you have the option of just updating the declared value to the new market price. This isn't implicationless. What if you can't afford the taxes on the newly declared price? A whale could conceivably force people out by offering a price above their ability to afford the taxes. If they don't sell, they get evicted due to tax nonpayment. If they do sell, they get the money but now need to find a new place to live in an appreciated market. Their autonomy is removed by force.
      - thinkharderdev 3y ago
        To be honest, I wish the authors hadn't framed their idea on property taxes because there are a lot of obvious practical and political issues with doing it. And I don't personally think this would be a good way to do property taxes on owner-occupied housing. I only brought it up originally because I think a lot of issues with it are irrelevant when applied in the domain of intangible economic assets like patents. In that particular domain I think the overriding principle of intellectual property law should be to maximize economic efficiency.
- thinkharderdev 3y ago
  > Then it's vulnerable to malicious buyers putting in fake bids TBH that seems like the easiest issue to solve. For instance, to make an unsolicited bid you have to escrow %20 of the price. If the owner chooses to updated the declared value, you get that back. But if they choose to sell and you walk away (or don't actually have the other %80 to complete the sale) then you forfeit that to the owner. Or you can even disincentivize "malicious" offers more by saying that if the owner chooses to update the declared value then you still forfeit the escrowed cash but it goes to offsetting the increased tax bill for the current owner.
oatmeal1 3y ago
> And as the housing market moves 20%+ in a year in some places all you've done is kick the can down the road to figuring out a value of X Again, X can move with the market.
imtringued 3y ago
>Ultimately all this does is accelerate the accumulation of wealth for folks that already have the capital to profit off How does it do that? Sure the system causes frequent changes of ownership which are undesired but you are forgetting that the "accumulators" are getting taxed based on how much they accumulated which in the long run slows them down. Yes they can bully you in the short term, which is why this isn't done, but in the long run the house will achieve the optimal tax policy and the abuse potential of housing disappears. If the government decides to lower taxes on income, then in the long run "accumulators" would be the ones losing out from this.

ReactiveJelly 3y ago

Isn't that equivalent to setting the tax rate X% lower? The only problem I see otherwise is that it's not a progressive tax - 5% of a trailer is much more of a poor person's income than 5% of a mansion is of a rich person's. But for that you can use UBI or something to make any flat tax net-progressive.