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Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

hamiltonnolan.com

51–60 of 149 posts

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the issue is the supply of rental (i.e. investment) properties is too low, do we want to encourage or discourage investment homes?

progressive property tax which will increase with amount of owned properties.

Outline the impact of that on supply and demand?

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#52
post #9

The problem isn't land owners it's landlords. Renting should be illegal and anyone caught accepting rent should lose his property to the renter. Owning a lot of land/houses isn't really the problem. It's when you're not using them that's the problem. You should just sell and not leech on society by renting.

This opinion is out of some kind of fantasy land. What if I want to live in a place for 1 year, or even 6 months, then go somewhere else? What am I supposed to do, buy a place (paying 6% in fees), and then sell it again after 6 months, paying 6% again? How idiotic.

There's a reason people rent, and it's not because they can't afford a house.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#53
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The last thing the world needs is more housing construction, especially with the insane CO2 footprint of anything involving concrete. That self imposed limit is exactly what keeps prices high. Every city has some run down areas that serve no purpose but are wasted space and could be turned into housing. Also, as some others already said it, living in urban areas reduces your footprint versus living far away in the c…

Cities also have vacant office space. It's likely more economical and greener to convert the existing building vs building new construction in the "wasted space". I like the idea of what you describe for remote work. I'm not sure how effective that would be in the US. It seems many people want very specific amenities or locations. Or like one friend, they wouldn't move back just because of "all the druggies". I think…

Office space is not good for apartments, because the floor plans are usually huge. WTC towers were (iirc) 63x63 meters large, if the rooms are 5x5 meters, you can only build usable rooms in the outer strip of the building, while the internal 53x53 square is usable only for storage, toilets and hallways, which don't require windows... and that's a huge waste of space

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#54
post #9

The problem isn't land owners it's landlords. Renting should be illegal and anyone caught accepting rent should lose his property to the renter. Owning a lot of land/houses isn't really the problem. It's when you're not using them that's the problem. You should just sell and not leech on society by renting.

Could you elaborate more about what you mean and how this would work? Where do young adults live? Where do new residents in a city live?

Not to mention the people that choose to rent. We can argue over how much landlords deserve, but they should generally be providing a service as well - maintaining the property and shielding the tenant from some of the risk.

I wonder if in this hypothetical "no renting" scenario we'd see complete home maintenance service companies take their place. It would be an improvement - you can fire them without moving, but I don't think we could expect them to be any less exploitative than landlords are now.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The last thing the world needs is more housing construction, especially with the insane CO2 footprint of anything involving concrete. That self imposed limit is exactly what keeps prices high. Every city has some run down areas that serve no purpose but are wasted space and could be turned into housing. Also, as some others already said it, living in urban areas reduces your footprint versus living far away in the c…

> It doesn't help anyone if those vacant units are not where the jobs and education is Why not move the jobs and education?

Build a university in a village with 20 inhabitants? Build a factory in a municipality with 360 inhabitants, where only ~30 are of working age (we have one of those in my country).

And even if you built it, all 6 empty houses would get rented out, there wouldn't be any more places for people to stay and housing prices would go up a lot.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#56

While I agree that landlords are vampires, that here is wrong: > But there is a stack of research a mile high that shows that the number one thing we need is a lot more housing supply There are millions of units vacant everywhere, be it the US [1] or Germany [2]. The last thing the world needs is more housing construction, especially with the insane CO2 footprint of anything involving concrete. The problem is that ru…

If what you care about is climate change, you should be in favor of cramming people into the smallest possible spaces in urban areas, not putting them in rural areas where they have to drive 20 minutes to get to the grocery store. The carbon footprint of your average city dweller is far lower.

Or provide better public transportation?

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the issue is the supply of rental (i.e. investment) properties is too low, do we want to encourage or discourage investment homes?

progressive property tax which will increase with amount of owned properties.

Quantity and value of properties. Which also means a wealth tax. To be clear I'm 100% in favour of this.

The current economic trickle-up system is starting to cause serious problems. Large sections of populations everywhere are increasingly shut out of the capitalist system because they do not have ANY access to capital.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#58

This story is being repeated across countries and cities. It really is high time there is some serious regulation around home ownership, especially as an investment vehicle. I would even say this is an existential issue for our current civilizational model - the unaffordability of housing is contributing to demographic decline globally.

If the issue is the supply of rental (i.e. investment) properties is too low, do we want to encourage or discourage investment homes?

Who wants to rent? I imagine most would opt to own instead. Rent is certainly far higher than a mortgage would be, which makes little sense if you're trying to encourage ownership (as often is the story about the american dream)

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#59
post #9

The problem isn't land owners it's landlords. Renting should be illegal and anyone caught accepting rent should lose his property to the renter. Owning a lot of land/houses isn't really the problem. It's when you're not using them that's the problem. You should just sell and not leech on society by renting.

Could you elaborate more about what you mean and how this would work? Where do young adults live? Where do new residents in a city live?

There could be a government mortage program like the student loan program.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The last thing the world needs is more housing construction, especially with the insane CO2 footprint of anything involving concrete. That self imposed limit is exactly what keeps prices high. Every city has some run down areas that serve no purpose but are wasted space and could be turned into housing. Also, as some others already said it, living in urban areas reduces your footprint versus living far away in the c…

> It doesn't help anyone if those vacant units are not where the jobs and education is Why not move the jobs and education?

It's a catch-22. Companies move where the existing skilled labor pool already is.

I've seen cases where international companies invested in small collage towns here in Europe with big dreams of expansion, but it didn't work their way because they had trouble recruiting enough candidates to move there, as all the skilled candidates wanted to live in big metro areas with multiple competing companies in the same domain, not limit themselves to a single employer in the area.

Then the company tried training a lot of their staff by taking in skilled people willing to do a career change, and guess what, after 1-2 years, those trained employees left to the big city to work for a competing company for more money. So the company just packed its bags and left because if it has to pay big-city money anyway, it might as well just move directly to the big city in the first palce and not bother with the hassle of expanding in small towns.

Our present day capitalist system doesn't reward investments in small towns and small players because the big players and big cities end up skimming the cream off the smaller ones so it's all go big or go home, so all the investments booth from the private sector and the public sector are happening in the capital city which is now causing the masiv housing issue.

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