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Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty

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Re: Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty

#181

Post by cycrutchfield »

TomMckenny wrote: post #177
cycrutchfield wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the properties were foreclosed on. Not sure what else you would expect.

If the leasor finds the business too difficult to do within the law then they should change businesses. That's how a healthy market works. In a normal, healthy industry, they would simply go bankrupt selling to those who can. But in this case, it's possible to sit on land with out utilizing it and actually gain wealth solely because of flaws in that market were land price raises due to other forces than their product…

If the law is written in such a way that it disincentivizes people from conducting business (to the point where they would prefer instead to cease conducting business and lose money), then perhaps the law should be reconsidered because it's a bad law?

Tenants rights laws in a lot of Europe are just plain ridiculous, and I can fully sympathize with property owners that would prefer to leave their property vacant instead of leasing it to a tenant-squatter.

Re: Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty

#182

Post by conanbatt »

refurb wrote: post #176
conanbatt wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But its the exact opposite. Rental is generally profitable. You can bet on land while also renting and making extra money. You can't argue that they are greedy for buying land but not greedy enough to squeeze more money out of it. The answer is somewhere else.

In places with rent control, having a tenant reduces the value of the home. Sometime substantially if their rent is locked at a low rate. It’s not unusual to buy tenants out in SF before putting the home on the market. Spend $50k to get them to leave and the value of the home goes up $200k. If you know you’re going to sell in a few years, basically the value of the rent (adjusting for buyout) is way less than the inc…

Then the problem is rent control, and the solution is not to tax empty homes.

Re: Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty

#183

Post by dehrmann »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #130
bradleybuda wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Land in a developed area is in very limited supply, it's necessary to make the economy function, and most of the owners are speculating on the price going up. Kitchenware doesn't work that way. Almost nothing else works that way. 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 hol…

> Land in a developed area is in very limited supply

Because of high rises and land reclamation, this is a lot less true than you'd think.

Re: Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty

#184

Post by djakjxnanjak »

amarte wrote: post #179

I'm surprised no one has mentioned China here. I was recently able to travel to China for the first time and was fascinated to learn about their housing market. Apparently the Chinese government doesn't have a property tax. For men in China, owning a home is already incredibly important. It's practically a requirement for getting married, to the point where a woman's family would almost certainly disapprove of a marr…

I wouldn’t underestimate citizen confidence in the government as a means of propping up housing prices. Investing in property is the main way people give their vote of confidence in the current global plutocracy.

Re: Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty

#185

Post by forkLding »

jonfw wrote: post #93
forkLding wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably makes more sense for these companies to reduce supply and rent for a higher price than have to rent or provide a lower price to renters. Speaks more to the market structure and power of both sides here.

I really doubt that landlords have conspired like this. Not sure what monopoly legislation looks like in Europe but I doubt this behavior would be legal. The real reason is to economically disencentive land speculators holding uninhabitable land, who were planning on flipping it without developing it after several years.

Don't think it's collusion, it is probably just the reality of things. I've noted that my original comment made it sound like this was insidious collusion but what I mean is that it is likely just the stark reality.

Re: Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty

#186

Post by Scoundreller »

nradov wrote: post #167
Scoundreller wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other methods. Utility bills for example. Is the electricity utilization random enough or a little too constant? What about water? Natural gas? Pay the garbage collectors to rat out homes that never leave anything out. Are the windows always left open even on the hottest days and no A/C? Is the keyfob for entry never used? Ultimately, every tax can be evaded. Income, sales, corporate. This one won’t be any…

Some electric utilities already report customers with abnormally high electrical consumption as possible indoor marijuana farms.

True, but LEDs are a lot more efficient than the sodium bulbs.

The real tell will be the every 5 minute reports that smart meters can generate on usage: much harder to fake with timers.

Re: Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty

#187

Post by Dylan16807 »

eli wrote: post #70

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.

How long does flipping take? The tax is only 3.3 percent per year for a vacant property. And while you're making improvements you can get exemptions. For 'blight' you need to make sure the outside of the building is intact; that shouldn't take particularly long.

Re: Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty

#188

Post by Dylan16807 »

dehrmann wrote: post #183
Dylan16807 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land in a developed area is in very limited supply, it's necessary to make the economy function, and most of the owners are speculating on the price going up. Kitchenware doesn't work that way. Almost nothing else works that way. 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 hol…

> Land in a developed area is in very limited supply Because of high rises and land reclamation, this is a lot less true than you'd think.

The zoning has to allow for building up before that counts.

Re: Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty

#189

Post by acomjean »

akulbe wrote: post #127

It doesn't make sense to me why they'd WANT to leave them empty?? If I were a landlord, I'd be doing my best to keep the rentals occupied as much as possible.

I suspect some of it is tax liability. (I am not an accountant) but I think you can deduct the “loss” of rental income you didn’t get against other properties you may own. If the ammount of the loss is “rent you could have gotten but didn’t” instead of “market rate”, you’ll just keep the rent high.

I’m in Cambridge MA and the Harvard square movie theater sits empty 5+ years and i can’t think why excepting financial shenanigans. (Though apparently there is finally a plan to redo the building)

Re: Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty

#190

Post by Consultant32452 »

parthdesai wrote: post #171
l4yao wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's reasonable to assume Airbnb reduces supply. I don't see how you can conclude the 30% rent increase you experienced was largely driven by Airbnb. Lets say anyone renting out their unit for less than half a year wouldn't have put the unit on the rental market anyways. If you download and dive into the data, you'll see that there are ~9550 "Entire home/apt" listings, of which 5992 are available for less tha…

First of all, appreciate the level headed discussion and some very sound points that you bring. I dug through insideairbnb more and it's actually 12,374 (65%) units that are listed as entire unit in Toronto. That absolutely is a very significant amount of units. Only about 7k of the listings are either shared room/private room. Data: http://insideairbnb.com/toronto/?neighbourhood=&filterEntire... > Lets say anyone re…

Just to throw some additional context on these numbers, Toronto has over a million housing units. At the upper bound of 12k AirBnB units, that's about 1% of all units.

Source: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2015/pg/bgrd/backgroundf...

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