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Iampossiblyatwork ,

We don’t need tax credits.

We need Private equity out of the housing market.

We need better safeguards for tenants.

Financial moves like tax credits and incentives always end up benefitting the haves.

SeattleRain ,

We actually need Mom and Pop landlords abolished. They own 80% of rentals.

Makhno ,

Imo owning a second property to rent out for some side cash is fine. It’s a problem when your only occupation is “landlord”

SleezyDizasta ,

That’s idiotic. There’s nothing wrong with owning rentals or being a landlord. It only becomes an issue when massive corporations with endless amount of money buy so much inventory that they start affecting the market

Moneo ,

It only becomes an issue when massive corporations with endless amount of money buy so much inventory that they start affecting the market

So you’re saying there’s something wrong with being a landlord?

SleezyDizasta ,

How did you reach that conclusion? There’s a big difference between uncle Bob have a 3 unit building where he lives out in one and rents out the others and Blackrock buying 1,000 units in a town to artificially constraint inventory and inflate prices. There’s also a big difference between a company buildings a condo tower with 200 new units to rent/sell and a company buying already existing single family homes to manipulate the market. Clearly The latter examples in both of these comparisons are unethical and deserve to be outlawed, while the former example are fine.

Iampossiblyatwork ,

sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R47332.pdf

Wow. 70% as of 2022.

Nurgle ,

Build. Social. Housing.

Its not a difficult concept. The “market” is not going to build anything that lowers the price. The market is not going to build anything fast enough. The market is absolutely not going to give a flying fuck about building to create communities.

Wanderer ,

The market will built it normally, the government doesn’t allow them to.

If you really want to incentive building then you need a land value tax.

SleezyDizasta ,

That’s stupid, we already tried social housing and it didn’t work. The market is the one and only thing that can reverse the situation, and it has done so before too, we just need to put in place the right incentives

sunzu ,

Other countries made it work... i wonder how lol

SleezyDizasta ,

Which countries? Unaffordable housing is a problem worldwide

sunzu ,

Singapore

SleezyDizasta ,

Singapore is an authoritarian city state. Their model can’t be replicated in any country that’s not an authoritarian city.

sunzu ,

Well there is your answer ;)

the regimes along with ruling elites collude for it not to happen but sure we can play "politics" circle jerk around it

SleezyDizasta ,

What are you on? There is no grand conspiracy. A city is much easier to manage than a big ass country and an authoritarian government has the power to carry out it’s plans while giving zero fucks about the people. People don’t realize that Singapore is one of the most authoritarian developed countries out there. In Singapore, all land is held by the state, people cannot own any property, they can only lease it from the government kind of like China. Neighborhoods have very strict ethnic quotas. For example, if you’re ethnically Chinese and want to live in a neighborhood that is already 85% Chinese? Well tough luck because you’re legally not allowed to buy there until that percentage comes down. Because everything is publicly owned, the government is in charge of maintenance, and a good chunk of the buildings aren’t well maintained. You can’t complain about it because Singapore is authoritarian. You also can’t complain about the location or the design of the buildings because the governments gets decide all of that. What’s more is that a lot of these projects are built on top Singaporean cultural and historical sites, which a lot of Singaporeans argue is an erasure of their culture. Despite all of these problems, their system works because their government is authoritarian, the city is small enough to be effectively managed, they’ve lucked out with a series of competent leaders. If any of three things isn’t present, you’ll have a recipe for disaster. Want an example? Just take a look at the Soviet Union.

sunzu ,

You are spending a lot afford here proving what is essentially... SG can only do it because they care to do it, in my country we fuck poor's due to our superior political and economic system.

Thank you for making my point for me about how shiti our regime is lol

Anyway who cares, I got decent housing.

Fuck poor, stupid and homeless!!! Prolly asked for it anyway. Should be thank full we allow them to exist under our great regime!

Freedom rheeeeeee

SleezyDizasta ,

This is such juvenile take. We’re not going to turn our country into an authoritarian technocracy to implement a solution that is almost guaranteed to fail anywhere outside of an authoritarian city state. Singapore is not a model for any country, they are the anomaly in the world. We can’t copy and paste. Other countries have tried the same idea and they all have failed. Romania, the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, China, etc. Our housing solution can’t be built on childish ideals, they have to be pragamtic and they have to take into account our political system, our culture, our strengths, and our problems. When we look into our own history, we can see that we already solved our housing crises multiple times before. When there’s a housing shortage, we have incentivize the market to flood the market with new units. This will drive down prices and increase inventory, which is exactly what we need. It’s a tried and true method. The adjustments we need to make are basic too, we just have update our zoning laws remove outdated restrictions that outlaw mixed zoning and multifamily housing, as well as give local and regional municipalities more power and flexibility to design towns and cities around more than just cars.

sunzu ,

we have incentivize the market to flood the market with new units. This will drive down prices and increase inventory, which is exactly what we need. It's a tried and true method. The adjustments we need to make are basic too, we just have update our zoning laws remove outdated restrictions that outlaw mixed zoning and multifamily housing, as well as give local and regional municipalities more power and flexibility to design towns and cities around more than just cars.

Nobody is disputing what the solution is... the issue that the regime will not allow any of this happen.

I don't see how that's a conspiracy since it it is happening before out eyes. Give some limp services about 5 "affordable" units in 1000 unit lux condo. That's where we are at now.

Fun fact: vast majority people in Romania own their property outright.

Also, you listed those countries, which clearly indicatives you don't know their history or housing situation. You are enumerating random shit to prove a point lol

SleezyDizasta ,

Nobody is disputing what the solution is… the issue that the regime will not allow any of this happen.

Change doesn’t happen over night, especially in democracies. The system is supposed to be slow and steady. Our zoning laws started taking place around 100 years ago and then we spent the next century building our towns, cities, and culture around them. We can’t reverse all of this overnight, this requires a long term national effort. The Suburban house became the American dream, it became an American icon, it became the standard. It was was and still is so desirable that it became the biggest asset for most families, and this led to it’s own wave of restrictive and discriminatory zoning laws. It took the housing crash in 2008 for us to revisit our zoning laws and look at them critically, and after a decade of criticism and effort, we’ve only started seeing reforms on local and state levels in the past 5 or so years. We’ve still got a long way to go to meaningful national change, but we’re heading in the right direction. You just have to vote for the candidates that will make the changes and tell people about the problems with out zoning laws, because most people don’t even know.

I don’t see how that’s a conspiracy since it it is happening before out eyes. Give some limp services about 5 “affordable” units in 1000 unit lux condo. That’s where we are at now.

Developers keep building these ultra luxury condo towers because they’re only ones our zoning laws allow to be economically viable. There’s a reason why this country only has two extremes between massive skyscrapers and single family homes, while most other countries have an in between.

Fun fact: vast majority people in Romania own their property outright.

Yeah now because they’ve made reforms to allow for ownership back in the 90s. During the communist era, people couldn’t own land.

sunzu ,

I guess we fundamentally agree where we are at, except you have more optimism about ability to change the system. Not gonna shit on that, I want that change but also, nothing is getting better and it is getting worse for most people.

I highly doubt anything will get better within our life time, maybe in 20-30 years, best case.

Boomers build this world for us, so this is what it is.

Best we can do, is build a better one for our kids.

SleezyDizasta ,

Maybe I’m an optimist, but I genuinely believe that big change isn’t that far into the future. Completely revamping the country to go back to dense cities and towns that aren’t dependent on cars is a long term thing, but seeing a housing boom is something that can happen within the next few years. I mean the hard part is just getting those laws updated. Once they are and developers are incentivized to build more homes, multifamily homes, and mixed zoned buildings they would get right to it. We’re getting to a point where we’re starting to see real change in a lot cities and even some states:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-family_zoning#Rezoni…

I mean California, the biggest state in the country effectively eliminated single family zoning statewide. We’re also seeing change in conservative and liberal states. I’m hoping these changes yield positive results that will lead to a wave that will eventually lead to changes at the national level. Kind of like how it happened with gay marriage recently or is happening right now with marijuana legalization and the minimum wage.

Nurgle ,

Vienna, among other places, has had a successful model for decades.

politico.eu/…/vienna-social-housing-architecture-…

SleezyDizasta ,

Vienna is an interesting case because it’s one of the few democratic countries where the majority of the country isn’t too opposed to subsidizing the housing of a single city without enjoying any of the benefits. I guess when the model can work when there’s more people putting money into it than people who can actually enjoy it. Speaking of which, this system still has it’s issues though. Everybody wants to live in these units, but not everybody can get one. In order to get one you have to apply and most likely be put on a waitlist. Some of these wait lists are brutal because there’s only 5000-7000 units available. It’s gotten bad to the point where people are turning more and more towards private housing. Even with the limited number of units, the city is actually struggling to maintain the system because of inflation and other factors.

blanketswithsmallpox ,

Not in my back yard! Think of all the poor and homeless. Crime rate always goes up around them! This is a nice neighborhood!

TubularTittyFrog ,

Where I live the people in the towns with 5 million dollar home think those of us in the 1 million dollar homes are a criminal element that will invade their town.

blanketswithsmallpox ,

LookingdownRiffraff.jpg

it_depends_man ,

The meritocratic, capitalist way, would be to to put a property tax on it and to increase that tax, until

  • rents increase so much that people can’t afford to live in cities anymore
  • cities lose essential employees
  • society shuts down
  • THEN property loses value
  • then it can be bought cheaply again
  • and also rented for a low price, because the tax on the low value property is also low

Let’s go people!

tacosanonymous ,

Why don’t they just buy homes? Are they stupid?

eran_morad ,

The sarcasm was lost on someone.

orcrist ,

The sarcasm might have been lost on the author. One can never be too sure these days. :-)

tacosanonymous ,

That or they just didn’t think it was an appropriate joke.

Feliskatos ,

I’ve never understood the need for a downpayment to purchase. If you can make the monthly payments that’s all that should matter.

cheese_greater ,

Its to keep us uppity poors on the down low

ThrowawayPermanente ,

In theory I guess it protects against the costs of dealing with defaults or having people walk away from underwater mortgages. But on the other hand, all of that stuff could be insured against.

partial_accumen ,

But on the other hand, all of that stuff could be insured against.

Thats exactly what PMI (Private mortgage insurance) covers. However if the insurance company doesn’t think you’re a good risk, then you might not be able to get that either. I have never looked at what criteria they use to grant or deny PMI. I’ve also never known anyone personally denied PMI.

ohlaph ,

Exactly. The entry is a hurdle for many when that money could be used for repairs.

homura1650 , (edited )

The downpayment requirements are much looser now then they used to be. Pretty much anyone in the US can get as low as 3 to 3.5% down, which means the down payment can easily be less than all the other home buying expenses (closing cost, inspection, title insurance, loan origination, moving, transfer taxes, …). You also typically have a month before you need to make your first principle repayment, which helps offset the down payment.

Veterans, active service members, and people buying in qualified rural areas can get 0 down mortgages.

Depending on where you live, there might be further assistance available. Around here, the county offers (means tested) down-payment assistance loans that cover 100% the minimum down payment, and has an interest rate that is at least 2% lower than that of the main loan. They also wave all transfer taxes for all first time buyers.

Lizardking13 ,

It’s risk mitigation for the banks. You don’t have to put 20% down, but generally you’ll have to pay an additional insurance (PMI) if you don’t.

sunzu ,

It is called credit risk lol

HootinNHollerin ,

My piece of total shit landlord just took 4 months to fix my bathroom then raised rent an absurd amount. I’m enraged.

ramble81 ,

I mean he had to pay for the repairs somehow /s

TwistyLex ,

This is something I’m currently struggling with. I rent a house and the roof is leaking in two different rooms. Problem is that last time I had the landlord do any repairs he increased my rent by $300 a month. I know that having a leaky roof is damaging his property, but it’s only a minor inconvenience for me at the moment.

I’m not about to spend an extra $6,000+ a year just to preserve his property when I can keep it from bothering me with a tack, some string, and a pitcher for the water to go into.

UltraGiGaGigantic ,

What are you going to do about it?

givesomefucks ,

There’s always talk about tax breaks for home owners…

Never talks of raising taxes on landlords and empty units tho.

That’s what would fix it. Tax them out of the housing market slowly and.prices will go down as they get out of the business.

henfredemars , (edited )

Indeed. Nothing about this addresses rental markets and general extreme cost of living. Rather, it finds new ways to prop up severely overvalued housing markets.

Housing costs are so high because it’s become an investment over a necessary place for a human to live. A correction is severely needed and long overdue, but the government works hard to keep values artificially high from zoning laws at the bottom to preventing corrections at the top.

givesomefucks ,

That and most people just do the standard deductions.

So tax breaks mostly help the wealthy in mansions.

It’s like how conservatives want to move income tax to sales tax. The wealthiest make a lot more than they spend. And when they spend it’s usually thru some shady shit where they don’t pay sales tax. Like claiming seven figure personal vehicles as a “company car” from a company they own.

henfredemars ,

It’s way of dressing up expenses to fit our criminally low corporate tax structure.

It’s a special kind of fucked up that the government is paid for by the poor to serve the interests of the wealthy.

sunzu ,

Is not that the standard tho?

Moneo ,

Like claiming seven figure personal vehicles as a “company car” from a company they own.

My parents did this kind of stuff. :/

Gas, restaurants, cars, insurance, etc. Probably so much stuff I don’t even know about. The company pays for it and they pocket the wages they pay themselves. All this while the people that work for them work part time with no benefits, and predictably have unstable financial situations.

But my parents view themselves as financially responsible and their workers as financially irresponsible. They worked hard to build their company but the rewards far exceed their work relative to their workers.

idk what I’m trying to say. I’m ashamed of the way my parents became successful but at the end of the day they played the game how it was meant to be played. Our society is fucked up on every level.

Brkdncr ,

Wouldn’t a tax hike only get passed through to the renter?

henfredemars ,

Not really, because the rental market does not behave like commodities do. Generally, you have to live within a reasonable distance of employment. For this and other reasons, renters are much more vulnerable and tend to get exploited far beyond the cost of the service.

Basically, if tenants had any more money to exploit, they would already take it. Rents are maximally high wherever possible to extract maximum money from people who need a place to live.

Consider the common joke that I pay this much in rent every month but the bank says I can’t afford a house where the mortgage would be substantially less.

ThrowawayPermanente ,

Agreed, and this would be solved by sufficiently high land value tax - if wasn’t profitable to be a landlord nobody would do it and the price of land would decline sharply. Henry George saw all of this coming a long time ago.

TrueMonoxidist ,

First time I’ve heard of the idea of a separate land value tax… Frankly it seems like an awesome idea, especially for cities.

I imagine it would make dense housing more profitable than McMansions, and punish the NIMBYs who keep standing in the way of affordable housing. Maybe we could make the tax increase significantly with the number of properties an individual owns and start it at the highest rate for things like shell corps and LLCs.

givesomefucks ,

That’s why you set it exponentially based on units owned by parent company, maybe break it down as a tax paid by shareholders for huge corporations landlords.

They could try to pass it on to consumers, but smaller landlords wouldn’t have to pay it.

Making the biggest get out of the game first

Eheran ,

They will just split the units owned on more companies then.

givesomefucks , (edited )

That’s why you set it exponentially based on units owned by parent company, maybe break it down as a tax paid by shareholders for huge corporations landlords.

That might not have been clear.

Set it at the parent company level so it’s not easy.

If they have X amount invested in rental real estate, that can just be taxed then

Believe me, the tax code for the wealthy is already complicated, they can handle this

Eheran ,

Then there is no parent company…? Just another random company. It does not need to be complicated and this is far from it. It needs to be such that they can not easily avoid the taxes.

KaiReeve ,

At the very least, they should raise real estate taxes on empty units. This will penalize people for owning several vacation homes, as well as incentivize landlords to lower rates in order to fill the unit.

Difficult to enforce, but send a few people to jail for real estate tax fraud and the rest will fall in line.

partial_accumen ,

Never talks of raising taxes on landlords and empty units tho.

Canada passed this law in 2022 addressing that:

Underused Housing Tax

Wanderer ,

Need a Land value tax and the ability to build medium/high density housing.

SleezyDizasta ,

Or you know, just build more houses?

Soggy ,

We’ve got 15 million vacant homes in the US.

SleezyDizasta ,

The issue with this figure is that it comes from the Census Bureau, and their definition is broad and simple that it doesn’t into account for example. Here’s the definition they use:

Vacant Housing Units. A housing unit is vacant if no one is living in it at the time of the interview, unless its occupants are only temporarily absent. In addition, a vacant unit may be one which is entirely occupied by persons who have a usual residence elsewhere. New units not yet occupied are classified as vacant housing units if construction has reached a point where all exterior windows and doors are installed and final usable floors are in place. Vacant units are excluded if they are exposed to the elements, that is, if the roof, walls, windows, or doors no longer protect the interior from the elements, or if there is positive evidence (such as a sign on the house or block) that the unit is to be demolished or is condemned. Also excluded are quarters being used entirely for nonresidential purposes, such as a store or an office, or quarters used for the storage of business supplies or inventory, machinery, or agricultural products. Vacant sleeping rooms in lodging houses, transient accommodations, barracks, and other quarters not defined as housing units are not included in the statistics in this report. (See section on “Housing Unit.”)

www.census.gov/housing/hvs/definitions.pdf

As you can see this definition doesn’t really take into account a lot of genuine factors. For example, a lot of units are in really poor condition and require renovations in order to be livable again, but they’re counted as vacant because they still have their exteriors in place. Same goes units. They’re also counting units that are not entirely completed, units that are occupied but just temporarily like vacation homes, and mobile homes. We do have a lot of vacant units in this country, but it’s not as much as this figure would lead you to believe. In reality, we need new units, we need a lot of them, and we need them ASAP.

Moneo ,

There’s always talk about tax breaks for home owners…

Because governments want housing prices to stay sky high. The canadian prime minister openly said he doesn’t want housing prices to drop because too many people are using their houses as a retirement strategy. That’s why there are so many government programs that support buying a house but none that support renting.

Lucidlethargy ,

Yeah, the first time I learned about our current vice president, she was trying to allegedly give renters similar tax breaks in California.

I don’t know what happened to that, but I was an immediate fan. Seeing as it never happened, smeh… Not sure what to think. But it’s a very popular idea amongst those of us who can’t afford to buy (most people in California.)

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