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I'd be fine with a policy of "you can rent housing you build" for American corporations. If a corporation thinks there is demand in some city, goes and build h

I'd be fine with a policy of "you can rent housing you build" for American corporations. If a corporation thinks there is demand in some city, goes and build housing for that demand and then rents that housing, that is good for the world. Would be a better policy than letting corporations use their access to capital markets to outcompete individuals trying to buy a house.

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
> I'd be fine with a policy of "you can rent housing you build" for American corporations Builders are more concentrated than landlords in pretty much any geography. A concentration that scales with the amount of bureaucracy and bullshit required to get permits.
cush 10mo ago
You can rent a home after you’ve personally owned it and lived in it for 10 years? That would cap any individual to 3-4 rentals in a lifetime
- Seattle3503 10mo ago
  We need more rental units, and it isn't clear how that policy would help the situation.
  - atrevbot 10mo ago
    We need more houses for sales and this would incentive people to create it.
  - cush 10mo ago
    These things aren't mutually exclusive. There's a supply problem and it depends. You'd be right if there was only a demand for rentals, but people also want to buy homes to live in, and currently those people are completely priced out of the market by landlords because they've bought all the homes as investments. A landlord can buy a 10 bedroom sfh and split it up into student housing near a university (good), or they can buy a 2 bd bungalow and price a new family out of the market (bad). It just depends. It depends entirely on the market.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
KumaBear 10mo ago
Then it would be lucrative to buy up land and sit on it to hold a monopoly on the competition. Can’t build or rent what you can’t buy.
- pianopatrick 10mo ago
  I suppose that depends on the way the property tax system works. Paying 1-2% property tax each year on empty land does not seem like a path to riches.
  - wyre 10mo ago
    2% property tax is cheap compared to inflation and how quickly property values have been increasing.
mmooss 10mo ago
Maybe if it doesn't include property with existing homes that you tear down.
alistairSH 10mo ago
Need to think about this some... Would this end up being another way for MegaCorp to extract wealth from the rest of us (similar to student loans)? All new housing ends up rentals, and a generation+ of Americans are unable to use homes for storing/building wealth? We know using housing as an investment, at an individual level, is problematic (NIMBYism and failure to infill/redevelop/etc). Not sure how incentivizing MegaCorp to do the same on a massive scale fixes anything?
bombcar 10mo ago
Simply greatly reducing loans available to small investors for non-built rental properties would do that. The key is increasing supply, and we should directly target that issue (or decrease demand, but people don't like that side).
- pianopatrick 10mo ago
  "The key is increasing supply" assumes the goal of new housing laws should be to increase supply and bring house prices down. But a lot of people do not agree with that goal. Many people are homeowners who will get tens of thousands of dollars richer if there is less supply and prices rise. And in America at least, homeowners have more votes than renters or builders or landlords or the homeless or other groups. So new housing law tends to favor the goals of homeowners, not the goals of other groups who want more supply.
  - JoeAltmaier 10mo ago
    It's more complex than that. When I'm not looking to sell, I certainly don't want the assessed value of my house to increase. That just means, higher property tax bill for me. Also, houses get older every day. Tastes change - ranch, open-plan, multi-story, multi family get more or less valued as time goes on. Not just 'fewer houses means better resale value'. In fact, a shortage may not change housing prices at all - sometimes it just makes them sell faster. It's easy to take a complex picture, connect a dot or two and draw a line from someplace to some conclusion. But it's always a trickier picture than that. You gotta consider more dots and connect them all.
    - bombcar 10mo ago
      I think too many people jump to the easy-to-understand "owners want to get richer" conclusion without actually engaging with what people are saying and voting for. Often the results of the voting may be related to property staying somewhat scarce, but (in my experience) the vast majority of people don't really care about the value of their house as long as it doesn't go substantially down. Assessed value raises (and drops) shouldn't directly affect property tax assuming the whole area raises and falls (in most areas) because of how the tax is apportioned. The reality that people don't want to deal with is that it's personal and it is slow - there is no SimCity-style bulldozing and redeveloping without pouring in tremendous amounts of money, because people like living where they do and it's hard to get them to move involuntarily.

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago

> I'd be fine with a policy of "you can rent housing you build" for American corporations Builders are more concentrated than landlords in pretty much any geography. A concentration that scales with the amount of bureaucracy and bullshit required to get permits.

cush 10mo ago

You can rent a home after you’ve personally owned it and lived in it for 10 years? That would cap any individual to 3-4 rentals in a lifetime

Seattle3503 10mo ago
We need more rental units, and it isn't clear how that policy would help the situation.
- atrevbot 10mo ago
  We need more houses for sales and this would incentive people to create it.
- cush 10mo ago
  These things aren't mutually exclusive. There's a supply problem and it depends. You'd be right if there was only a demand for rentals, but people also want to buy homes to live in, and currently those people are completely priced out of the market by landlords because they've bought all the homes as investments. A landlord can buy a 10 bedroom sfh and split it up into student housing near a university (good), or they can buy a 2 bd bungalow and price a new family out of the market (bad). It just depends. It depends entirely on the market.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

KumaBear 10mo ago

Then it would be lucrative to buy up land and sit on it to hold a monopoly on the competition. Can’t build or rent what you can’t buy.

pianopatrick 10mo ago
I suppose that depends on the way the property tax system works. Paying 1-2% property tax each year on empty land does not seem like a path to riches.
- wyre 10mo ago
  2% property tax is cheap compared to inflation and how quickly property values have been increasing.

mmooss 10mo ago

Maybe if it doesn't include property with existing homes that you tear down.

alistairSH 10mo ago

Need to think about this some... Would this end up being another way for MegaCorp to extract wealth from the rest of us (similar to student loans)? All new housing ends up rentals, and a generation+ of Americans are unable to use homes for storing/building wealth? We know using housing as an investment, at an individual level, is problematic (NIMBYism and failure to infill/redevelop/etc). Not sure how incentivizing MegaCorp to do the same on a massive scale fixes anything?

bombcar 10mo ago

Simply greatly reducing loans available to small investors for non-built rental properties would do that. The key is increasing supply, and we should directly target that issue (or decrease demand, but people don't like that side).

pianopatrick 10mo ago
"The key is increasing supply" assumes the goal of new housing laws should be to increase supply and bring house prices down. But a lot of people do not agree with that goal. Many people are homeowners who will get tens of thousands of dollars richer if there is less supply and prices rise. And in America at least, homeowners have more votes than renters or builders or landlords or the homeless or other groups. So new housing law tends to favor the goals of homeowners, not the goals of other groups who want more supply.
- JoeAltmaier 10mo ago
  It's more complex than that. When I'm not looking to sell, I certainly don't want the assessed value of my house to increase. That just means, higher property tax bill for me. Also, houses get older every day. Tastes change - ranch, open-plan, multi-story, multi family get more or less valued as time goes on. Not just 'fewer houses means better resale value'. In fact, a shortage may not change housing prices at all - sometimes it just makes them sell faster. It's easy to take a complex picture, connect a dot or two and draw a line from someplace to some conclusion. But it's always a trickier picture than that. You gotta consider more dots and connect them all.
  - bombcar 10mo ago
    I think too many people jump to the easy-to-understand "owners want to get richer" conclusion without actually engaging with what people are saying and voting for. Often the results of the voting may be related to property staying somewhat scarce, but (in my experience) the vast majority of people don't really care about the value of their house as long as it doesn't go substantially down. Assessed value raises (and drops) shouldn't directly affect property tax assuming the whole area raises and falls (in most areas) because of how the tax is apportioned. The reality that people don't want to deal with is that it's personal and it is slow - there is no SimCity-style bulldozing and redeveloping without pouring in tremendous amounts of money, because people like living where they do and it's hard to get them to move involuntarily.