378
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
378 points (96.3% liked)
politics
19096 readers
1900 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Even this won’t work, because we already have more houses than people. The issue is that corporations bought up all the houses, and are intentionally letting them sit vacant. The end goal is artificially reducing the supply, so they can sell fewer homes at exorbitant rates.
Basically, imagine there are 1000 homes, for 1000 people. Each home goes for an even $100k at fair market value. Big Corporation buys 250 of them, (for a grand total of $25M) and lets 200 sit vacant. Now the remaining vacant homes are going for more than $100k, because the supply has been artificially reduced. Now when they sell those 50 homes, they can do so at $300k each, making a total of $10M (that’s $15M from their 50 sales, minus the $5M they paid for the 50 originally) off of just 50 houses. If they just bought and flipped all the houses, they’d only be making small profits per house. But by sitting on a bunch of them, they’re able to make more per house.
In short, they made absolute bank on those 50 houses, and can now buy more houses to repeat the process. They haven’t made all of their money back (yet) but they don’t care about the short term because they can just repeat the process again and continue driving rates up.
So when they eventually sell those 200 homes they’ve been sitting on, they can do so at those exorbitant prices that the market has come to expect. And when it causes the market to crash (because they’re no longer letting houses sit vacant) it’s the homeowners who are all underwater on their mortgages. So the company is able to get away scot-free by ditching their supply, while the homeowners get fucked.
Landlords are also doing the same thing, where they’ll own 1000 units but only rent 200 of them, so they can charge higher rent on those 200, while the rest sit empty.
What they need to do is implement a scaling tax for vacant homes. The more vacant homes you own, the higher the property tax is on each one. So the upper-middle class people can still own a summer and winter home without getting fucked. But make it unprofitable to buy and sit on hundreds of vacant properties, just to artificially reduce the supply. If a home or apartment is vacant for more than one calendar month in the year, it counts towards your vacant property tax. Incentivize the sale and rental of homes, instead of allowing them to quietly buy up and sit on properties.
I would like to see a tax on third properties and above that sit vacant for more than 6 months a year then 10% of the property value as a fine which would go to a ministry supporting unhoused people.
There would probably have to be some provision that if the property is rented out then for tax purposes the rent must be considered at the market rate -15% at the time the agreement was made. Eg a corpo couldn't rent a bunch of units to a subsidiarity and call them occupied since they are rented arrive they would have to pay income tax on the income.