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

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

#81

Post by cableshaft »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #47
andyferris wrote: post #40

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.

People usually own multiple properties (outside of main home/vacation home, at least) to rent them to others. So they will just pass that cost to their renters, and make rent more expensive.

Although I guess there could be some number of properties where that becomes untenable as well.

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

#82

Post by wildrhythms »

raziel2p wrote: post #73
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the higher taxes are then transoformed into higher rents, while at the same time, you still need more housing units in many areas.

I do think we still need to build more (correctly sized) housing, counteract urbanization, provide social housing, and I'm in favor of rent control in general. So don't get me wrong, I don't think progressive tax will solve the problem on its own. That being said: Higher taxes could lead to higher rents, but that stops working once the supply of people willing to pay said higher rent is exhausted. At some point landl…

All that and no mention of rent control...

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

#83

Post by ajsnigrutin »

raziel2p wrote: post #73
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the higher taxes are then transoformed into higher rents, while at the same time, you still need more housing units in many areas.

I do think we still need to build more (correctly sized) housing, counteract urbanization, provide social housing, and I'm in favor of rent control in general. So don't get me wrong, I don't think progressive tax will solve the problem on its own. That being said: Higher taxes could lead to higher rents, but that stops working once the supply of people willing to pay said higher rent is exhausted. At some point landl…

...or just build enough housing, that whoever wants to buy it, can buy it at some normal percentage above construction costs, and enough rental properties exist, that landlords have to lower the prices of rent to get someone to live there.

If you're stuck at a "pay way too much for rent" or "commute for 3 hours every day" choice, and if you don't take the too expensive apartment, there are 10 other people interested in it, it's a pretty shitty situation to be in... and here in Ljubljana Slovenia this is happening just now (college starting soon, students looking for apartments).

Leaving apartments empty is not worth it, since you still have to pay for monthly costs (power, water, heating, even if empty), and the only way to be worth it is, if the price of the apartment rises higher than the monthly costs.. and that is only true if (almost) no new apartments are being built. If we built enough new apartments the prices of used one would go down, making apartments a bad investments for speculators.

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

#84

Post by FirmwareBurner »

rft wrote: post #65
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #6

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…

> Germany and other countries could bring life back to rural areas if it mandated employers allow 100% WFH whoever possible as that would get a lot of people moving back to their hometown closer to their family especially if their family could help out with raising kids. tl;dr: Germany needs to heavily improve its rural/suburbs/general internet connectivity to encourage WFH. It can be insanely frustrating getting any…

>It turned out 1) did not connect the fiber connection they could get (quite literally "I don't understand this and never needed it."

Older German rural people just don't care about anything resembling fast internet so the ISPs exploit that by gouging you. Especially since they do a lot of stuff by cash and snail-mail anyway.

Rural Switzerland or Scandinavia is way better digitized.

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

#85

Post by wildrhythms »

Ekaros wrote: post #76
praptak wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not leech on society by renting All income from capital is renting.

What really is difference between owning a stock and property? Or a bond... If we ban renting, why not ban other type of capitalism as well?

>What really is difference between owning a stock and property

Well one of those things is needed for human survival.

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

#86

Post by ajsnigrutin »

wildrhythms wrote: post #82
raziel2p wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think we still need to build more (correctly sized) housing, counteract urbanization, provide social housing, and I'm in favor of rent control in general. So don't get me wrong, I don't think progressive tax will solve the problem on its own. That being said: Higher taxes could lead to higher rents, but that stops working once the supply of people willing to pay said higher rent is exhausted. At some point landl…

All that and no mention of rent control...

If you have enough realestate, there's no need for rent control, because landlords will have to lower prices to get anyone to stay in their apartments, and empty apartments are still a huge cost to the owner. High costs of rent and (buying) houses is because there's not enough supply in the first place.

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

#87

Post by theonlybutlet »

andyferris wrote: post #40
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #13

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?

I think in the case of property, multiple supply/demand equilibriums are possible. Land is a finite resource and rents way exceed mortgage repayments. I think there is a way to encourage the supply of rental in a scenario where they hold less quantities of land.

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

#88

Post by fatfingerd »

fallingknife wrote: post #71
dee-bee wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Anybody who doesn't want to: - put up a ton of capital - take housing price risk - enter into a long term commitment - deal with maintenance and repairs - deal with selling my investment every time I move And that includes me. I want to rent. I want the landlord to take care of all that crap for me. And I'm tired of all these people complaining about it.

Yes, a nonprofit group running/developing a housing area and renting to its members is much nicer than having to own at least a condo and then dealing with a bunch of bank/lawyer/realtor nonsense every time you want to move.

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

#89

Post by wildrhythms »

cpursley wrote: post #29
xdennis wrote: 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?

Public/social housing. Vienna already does this.[1] Another example: in 2021 the city of Berlin acquired 15k units from corporate landlords bringing the total publicly-owned units to about 20% the total of rental units in the city.[2]

>Experts refer to Vienna’s Gemeindebauten as “social housing,” a phrase that captures how the city’s public housing and other limited-profit housing are a widely shared social benefit: The Gemeindebauten welcome the middle class, not just the poor. In Vienna, a whopping 80 percent of residents qualify for public housing, and once you have a contract, it never expires, even if you get richer. Housing experts believe that this approach leads to greater economic diversity within public housing — and better outcomes for the people living in it.

[1] https://archive.is/P2Vad

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-ho...

[1] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl...

[2] https://apnews.com/article/europe-business-elections-berlin-...

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

#90

Post by [deleted] »

jppittma wrote: post #59
cpursley wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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