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Houses are for living, not for speculation

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Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#111

Post by kelipso »

empath75 wrote: post #63

People want to exempt housing from the laws of supply and demand. The reason real estate is expensive is that there is not enough housing available for everyone to own a house that wants a house. If we want inexpensive housing, we need a massive project in this country to build housing. There is no other way to fix it. There is no way to shuffle around ownership of existing housing stock that is going to magically ma…

Pretty sure there are plenty of houses sitting empty or as holiday rentals. Second homes, airbnbs, etc. Those could be simply banned or highly taxed and the shuffling of ownership would happen naturally.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#112

Post by bpt3 »

kelipso wrote: post #110
mothballed wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in USA, since pretty much the absolute beginning, anyone with any wealth tried to gobble up the absolute most amount of land they could. Both as a form of wealth and a productive input. This has been less so in the past century though as agriculture has become smaller part of the economy.

That should be highly discouraged since land is a scarce resource. Property should be taxed exponentially with respect to how much you already own.

Why?

Presumably you mean desirable land is scarce, which is true by definition, but land in the US is far from scarce.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#113

Post by scoofy »

If we wanted to do this, it would be trivial to introduce a 100% capital gains tax on the sale of real estate.

Instead, we give people an exemption for their real estate capital gains, so they can buy a bigger house without paying taxes at all. Then these same folks pull up the latter by voting in restrictive zoning to protect their property values.

There is one verifiably rigged game in finance, and it's residential real estate in affluent areas. It's the only industry where overt collusion and cartel-like behavior is completely legal. The result is generations of people who rationally load themselves up with way more debt than they probably should, because getting on the latter is the only way to stay above water within our lifetime.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#114

Post by scoofy »

xtracto wrote: post #3

I wholeheartedly agree with this. My opinion is that governments should tax 2nd, 3rd and further housing so as to prevent people from accumulating residential buildings. If you want to live of your rents, buy a commercial or industrial building, speculate with that. But residential construction should be protected to ensure each household is able to buy one with the average country salary.

Your logic misses the point. To make housing a non-investment, we need to tax the investment returns on houses. This mean taxing capital gains on all houses, not just 2nd and 3rd homes.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#115

Post by scoofy »

empath75 wrote: post #63

People want to exempt housing from the laws of supply and demand. The reason real estate is expensive is that there is not enough housing available for everyone to own a house that wants a house. If we want inexpensive housing, we need a massive project in this country to build housing. There is no other way to fix it. There is no way to shuffle around ownership of existing housing stock that is going to magically ma…

The point is when you have cartel-like behavior from homeowners in a democracy, then you aren't "exempting housing from the laws of supply and demand."

No, these homeowners know exactly what they are doing and they're intentionally creating a shortage to increase the value of their properties. The problem with the housing crisis is that it's entirely rational behavior. It's just that there should be some sort of human right that prevents this type of exploitation.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#116

Post by sn9 »

scoofy wrote: post #113

If we wanted to do this, it would be trivial to introduce a 100% capital gains tax on the sale of real estate. Instead, we give people an exemption for their real estate capital gains, so they can buy a bigger house without paying taxes at all. Then these same folks pull up the latter by voting in restrictive zoning to protect their property values. There is one verifiably rigged game in finance, and it's residential…

A land value tax makes way more sense.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#117

Post by mothballed »

mherkender wrote: post #109
mothballed wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Built my house for 60k (post-COVID dollars). A couple turns of 3" pipe into a tank. Up into a toilet. Not much more than that. It dumps into a big concrete tank and then from that the effluent goes out a couple pipes with holes drilled along it and into the soil. Quite clean and very cheap. I think the 'plumbing' for sewage took me 2 days and $300 in pipe. The septic system was maybe $2000 in materials, you could eas…

Personally I would wish for streamlined regulatory processes rather than being okay with any Tom/Dick/Harry creating health hazards next door because they overestimated their ability to dispose of their own poop.

I understand the reasoning here, though people of your persuasion have been run out of my county because they are scared shitless of what will happen with what will happen under such deregulation.

In reality what happened, was basically nothing. People that could afford decent sanitation continued to buy it, while the people shitting in the streets could now at least shit in a hole on a piece of land they could buy. We deregulated housing 20 years ago and eliminated inspections, and none of the apocalyptical worries by the nay-sayers came true.

The main results we saw was it's cheaper to build a house, and we ran bureaucratic bootlickers out of town because of their irrational fear of what turned out to be a nothing-burger (which might have been the more valuable of the two effects).

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#118

Post by scoofy »

sn9 wrote: post #116
scoofy wrote: post #113

If we wanted to do this, it would be trivial to introduce a 100% capital gains tax on the sale of real estate. Instead, we give people an exemption for their real estate capital gains, so they can buy a bigger house without paying taxes at all. Then these same folks pull up the latter by voting in restrictive zoning to protect their property values. There is one verifiably rigged game in finance, and it's residential…

A land value tax makes way more sense.

I actually think an land value tax is our best option, it's just that a land value tax still allows for housing as investment. To make housing not an investment you need to eliminate returns from housing altogether.

Yes, obviously I think that having a 100% capital gains tax on housing would be pretty absurd, and would not lead to the types of outcomes we actually want. We often do want developers betting housing, which incentivizes improvements and reselling the places. But my point here is that -- for those who truly want housing to not be for speculation -- you need to completely eliminate economic gains from buying housing. They way you do that is to tax the capital gains that come from the sale of housing to the point where they no longer exist.

A land value tax is probably the best option for what we want to happen which isn't "eliminating speculation" but is instead to prevent land hoarding. We actually want people to speculate on properties, but in doing so, to develop them in to efficient uses if that future value.

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#119

Post by kelipso »

bpt3 wrote: post #112
kelipso wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That should be highly discouraged since land is a scarce resource. Property should be taxed exponentially with respect to how much you already own.

Why? Presumably you mean desirable land is scarce, which is true by definition, but land in the US is far from scarce.

Put a few mile ring around any city center and yes the land there is scarce. You would not want one or a small number of individuals buying up all or a lot of that land because other people want to live there too. Therefore do exponential taxation based on land they already own. Why is this confusing to you?

Re: Houses are for living, not for speculation

#120

Post by bpt3 »

kelipso wrote: post #119
bpt3 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Presumably you mean desirable land is scarce, which is true by definition, but land in the US is far from scarce.

Put a few mile ring around any city center and yes the land there is scarce. You would not want one or a small number of individuals buying up all or a lot of that land because other people want to live there too. Therefore do exponential taxation based on land they already own. Why is this confusing to you?

For one, you're solving a non-problem in the US and creating new problems.

Why do you think people are hoarding land today that could be used for housing developments and leaving it empty?

What is "too much" land that would subject it to your exponential taxation?

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