81–90 of 312 posts
Rent is an amazingly effective means of redistributing wealth upwards. I have easily paid over £100k rent in my life, always to people substantially richer than I am. Always enjoyed this Churchill quote - from 1909! Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains -- and all the while the landlord sits s…
The problem is getting worse as new jobs are mainly created in cities. They also offer a more attractive infrastructure such as fast internet speeds and shorter commutes, than rural areas. There are of course many other advantages, but I think these are some of the most significant ones. This creates an unhealthy growth, which we see now manifests in the completely out-of-control rents worldwide. The only way this pr…
Rent is an amazingly effective means of redistributing wealth upwards. I have easily paid over £100k rent in my life, always to people substantially richer than I am. Always enjoyed this Churchill quote - from 1909! Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains -- and all the while the landlord sits s…
> He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived. The value landlords provide is the assumption of risk. The premium you pay to rent is in exchange for vastly limiting your exposure to said risk. This is why offloading the risk onto creditors (ie purchasing real estate with borrowed money under an LL…
Are there any risks that affect only the landlord, and not the renter, other than the possibility of losing ownership?
For example, if you rent a plot of land for farming, what risks does the owner of that land face that you do not?
If a low income individual is able to rent a house while working a full time job and just make it every month, at the end of their current lease when rent adjust upwards they will be forced out. Moving costs alone will cost them several hundred to a thousand dollars. On top of that they need to find another place to live which may not be possible due to the upwards pricing trend. With little in the way of increased income, what is that person to do, especially if they cannot afford to move and don't have a family able to assist them?
I have no solution for this issue and certainly don't want to curtail anyone's ability to purchase and profit from property but the future prospects of those on the lower spectrum of incomes does not look good.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To me, this is absurd. This is a human rights issue (homelessness is growing by a large amount). This is also a national security issue; this speculation cannot happen forever. Our economy will very likely crash when this speculation is no longer profitable. This is my biggest concern with wanting to dip my families toes into their first home purchase. We lived in Seattle last few years and the market is stupid, we…
Yep, your career really does take you where it takes you. I'm in the same boat. I've lived here for 5 years and have been saving, was getting pretty close to being able to afford a house, and the last year or so has seen such a huge increase in home prices and a decrease in availability that I've given up hope.
Either one seems equally possible to me.
Everybody on this thread should spend the next five minutes reading about Henry George, his historic work "Progress and Poverty" and the Single Tax: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty An except from his book: "Take now... some hard-headed business man, who has no theories, but knows how to make money. Say to him: "Here is a little village; in ten years it…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This comment doesn't stand up to scrutiny. There aren't a lot of available statistics on how wealthy landlords are, but for instance, according to a San Francisco property owners survey[1], median income for landlords is $90k, only 15% higher than the overall San Francisco median income ($77k). And of course a software engineer's median income in San Francisco is higher ($92k). Either way, there is little evidence th…
The point is that the landlord becomes wealthier through improvements to the area, for which s/he is not responsible. i.e. they are capturing public investment. Put concretely, my taxes go towards upgrading the Overground Line which improves the area I live in which increases my rent. I have paid for this improvement twice, my landlord, zero times (their get back their taxes through uplift in property value). Solutio…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived. The value landlords provide is the assumption of risk. The premium you pay to rent is in exchange for vastly limiting your exposure to said risk. This is why offloading the risk onto creditors (ie purchasing real estate with borrowed money under an LL…
> The value landlords provide is the assumption of risk. The premium you pay to rent is in exchange for vastly limiting your exposure to said risk. Are there any risks that affect only the landlord, and not the renter, other than the possibility of losing ownership? For example, if you rent a plot of land for farming, what risks does the owner of that land face that you do not?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what's your point? Do you want to eliminate rent? Should people who either can't afford to purchase a house, or who simply don't want to, be forced into homelessness? Personally I've paid over $115,000 in rent over the past 12 years, but I don't begrudge my landlord their money. I attained utility in exchange for the rent I paid, and have no problem with the arrangement. Not, of course, to say that I'm happy when…
Don't eliminate all rent, just tax away the rents derived from the land itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
1.) Tax on land value
2.) Tax on improvements (building, landscaping)
so Georgism already exists somewhat.
An land value tax increase would need to be phased over decades to account for the building lifetimes which can span 50 or more years. Developers use multi-decode economic models for their developments based on assumptions including worst case property tax scenarios. But if that can change at moment's notice.
It also would need to account for zoning restrictions. If some parcels get re-developed as ultra high density housing but NIMBY's block similar developments in neighboring parcels, that could lead to lawsuits against the county.