121–130 of 332 posts
People should be able to do whatever they want with their properties
Or you can just pay to make up for the economic damage your wasted space causes. You're not going to get jailed.
DC has a punitive property tax rate for vacant (and even more so for “blighted”) properties. Seems like it works ok, though there are loopholes and questions about how well it’s implemented. Also means that a developer who actually wants to clean up a blighted property and flip it now has to go through extra steps, since they surely don’t want to pay steep taxes in the meantime.
It sounds nice, but the real question is why are people letting these building sit empty. There is probably a good reason for it. Maybe some renter protection laws that went too far?
Therefore, the owners have little imperative to offer the properties for rent, with all the associated hassles, to meet their limited expenses. The properties are often poorly maintained for this reason.
They can instead treat them as stores of value, which they might even be able to leverage into cash flows via other financial instruments.
I think this is more the case for commercial properties than residential, but the problem exists to a degree in the residential market also.
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Why does it matter what sort of entity owns a piece of property? They pay property taxes, they should get to do what they want with their property.
Unconstrained property ownership has consequences. As a society you have to understand and decide how much you want to regulate how markets and limited resources can benefit some and harm others. There is clear social harm to have cities filled with empty homes while there are people who want homes and can't afford to buy any on the market or are forced to commute long distances. Using real estate to store money and…
At night, you walk through that place, its quiet like abandon for very long time, and there won't be any retail stores / business nearby since only ghosts and wondering dogs/cats will be there.
But I also wondering, if the city mayor decided to make this bill work, he need the local city council pass the bill, will this make him lose in next year's election?
Sounds similar to UK's former “squatters' rights”―where squatting was legal after the WW2, so that someone looked after buildings and neighborhoods.
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No, they shouldn't. There are externalities that effect others, and the free market. For example, you don't want people doing things that poison groundwater for the neighbors, right? Anyway, letting property sit idle benefits the landowner but causes issues for neighbors, local government and the free market. It means businesses in those locations get less customers, and local governments less sales tax. If the prope…
"letting property sit idle benefits the landowner" Can you help me understand this? I've never understood why any property sits idle -- the property would need to increase in value fast enough to counteract property taxes, just for the owner to break even. And that's ignoring the opportunity cost of not filling the property with tenants. To me, it seems that it would always make more financial sense to try and hit 10…
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/11/property-tax-dark-sto...
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Yeah let's just get rid of income taxes and have an empty-building based economy that makes a lot of sense
While we are at it, lets tax the vacant hours of the unemployed - those evil speculators who are consipiring to restrict the supply of labor. That will encourage them to work and thereby be able to afford all that brand new housing!
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The claim I was responding to was that people should be able to do "whatever they want" with their properties, which encompasses a lot more than just leaving them vacant. But to answer your specific question, the most obvious negative externality is increased rents for other people, because an apartment that could be being rented out (increasing supply) isn't being rented out. Having lots of vacant residences also po…
Are you currently selling your unused possessions on Craigslist? That camping gear or extra set of kitchenware? By not selling your things, you are making those things more expensive for everyone else. Therefore, you are creating a negative externality by not selling your things, and storing unused property in your garage and basement should be illegal. What you are describing is not an “externality” in the way that…
Owning central land and not using it means that millions of people have to go further to get to their destinations. It also means that construction effort and money is going into a black hole and not turning into supply. Enough of this together makes a powerful negative externality.