31–40 of 158 posts
Have there been any studies examining the impact on the market of banning career landlords and REITs? What happens if you restrict residential housing to being owned by a single person who cannot own anything else in that area, rather than letting capital have the run of the place and treating homes as an investment plaything?
There has always been regional inequality of opportunity, but never to this degree.
A great way to see the problem is to look at where the top ten most popular early personal computers came from. You will see places like Philadelphia (C64), Miami/Boca Raton (IBM), Dallas (TI), and Albuquerque (Altair). These days it would be almost all the Bay Area and maybe one from Seattle, NYC, Boston, or LA metro.
Have there been any studies examining the impact on the market of banning career landlords and REITs? What happens if you restrict residential housing to being owned by a single person who cannot own anything else in that area, rather than letting capital have the run of the place and treating homes as an investment plaything?
> because developers mostly would build high-end units This is such a frustrating perspective.
It's frustrating because, as propaganda, it's been extremely effective. If you're an opponent of increased housing supply in California, you can roll out that talking point whenever threatened. It's tested, emotionally resonant, and most people don't have the time to be explained why it's wrong. Supporters of increased housing in CA need to come up with their own powerful rhetoric, rather than whining about the fact…
The wealthy are coming and they are going to take a house. If you build nice new condos, they’ll happily take them. But if you don’t, they’ll buy up run down duplexes, evict the tenants, and convert them into McMansions instead.
If more housing was the answer then NYC would not have a housing problem. The answer is not more housing.
Clearly NYC housing structure services 10x what SF does.
You can't just demand more housing. You have to make people want it. This is why I'm strongly in favor of taxing land by area. A ten story condo with 100 units takes up as much land as 8 houses with yards. By reducing everyone's taxes then making up the difference via a land tax, you effectively lower the taxes on people using high density land use homes. You make it a more desirable lifestyle. Demand from voters lea…
It's been proposed first in california in 1890, as a solution to homelessness and poverty. So Im not feeling confident that will happen.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is. In my city at least. And at the federal level for landlords as well. My local taxes depend on my land value + my house value. Larger land, (or more desirable) more taxes. In federal taxes, for a rental unit, you get a depreciation expense only on the value of the structure. Not on the land. So more valuable land vs. structure, less federal discount.
> My local taxes depend on my land value + my house value Are they separate line items? Or combined? The difference matters. My condo is taxed based on the whole value of the unit- which is something like 1/2 of the cost of a house in the same neighbourhood, which means I'm taxed about 1/2 of what they are. But I use 1/100th the amount of land they use. Meanwhile, the cost to the city in terms of infrastructure (pipe…
Some people argue Property taxes vs Land Value taxes thinking it is roughly the same, and that althought it might change tax structure it wouldnt change rent prices.
But thats true if you look at it statically: dynamically, you make poeple in single family homes want to abandon them and sell them to developers, so you naturally turn an enemy (nimby) into an ally (sell for developers).
You can't just demand more housing. You have to make people want it. This is why I'm strongly in favor of taxing land by area. A ten story condo with 100 units takes up as much land as 8 houses with yards. By reducing everyone's taxes then making up the difference via a land tax, you effectively lower the taxes on people using high density land use homes. You make it a more desirable lifestyle. Demand from voters lea…
It may be interesting to make land taxes progressive, rising exponentially based on the value of the land divided by the number of occupants. Three adults sharing a flat would pay next to nothing, but not even Bill Gates could afford to make an inner city skyscraper his home.
You can't just demand more housing. You have to make people want it. This is why I'm strongly in favor of taxing land by area. A ten story condo with 100 units takes up as much land as 8 houses with yards. By reducing everyone's taxes then making up the difference via a land tax, you effectively lower the taxes on people using high density land use homes. You make it a more desirable lifestyle. Demand from voters lea…
That would significantly increase the taxes on agricultural use. Is that your intent? To incentivize high density residential, while making it hard to grow food?
LVT long time proposal is that most of the value in land rent is due to government spending and another activities positive externality.
California has a ‘too many people problem’. Housing is less critical than transportation, infrastructure, fire safety, jobs for all demographic groups (as opposed to tech jobs for well born young white men), and so on. Building housing is like giving candy to calm a child’s tantrum.