661–670 of 1001 posts
It will make very little difference in the end. Australia's land tax system makes it effectively impossible for large corporations to own large chunks of residential property, but our real estate is amongst the world's most expensive and landlords are still awful - it's just that the landlords are hundreds of thousands of dentists and, yes, software engineers rather than corporate entities. If you want housing to be…
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In Australia we've treated the family home as an investment, a primary mechanism for wealth creation (rather than an essential for life) for far too long. I fully agree that supply is the #1 driver for housing affordability, but like many things it's mult-factorial. Tax incentives, market forces, town planning, land use regulation, etc. all play their role. I'm hopeful that successive governments over here show the c…
It's the same in New Zealand - property is the primary mechanism for wealth creation, and you have boomers with 10+ properties that they use for rental income for their retirement. The issue is exacerbated by the tax structures not incentivizing investments in other assets - e.g. in NZ if you invest over $50k in offshore equities, there is an annual FIF tax that must be paid, even for unrealized gains.
The fact that there is a housing crisis in most of the western world seems to prove this
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> Rich investors and companies effectively get to buy homes at a discount vs average joes. Suppose you had $100,000 in cash, and buy a house for $100,000. You'll not be paying 5% interest on a mortgage. But if you did not buy the house, you would be investing that $100,000 for a 5% return. So, you're either paying 5% on the mortgage, or foregoing 5% return for investing that money. The rich person is not getting a di…
This is a good point, and I was curious to see exact numbers on the invest vs be a landlord opportunity cost. The rich person gets to rent the house, while the "newly weds" are living in it. And most importantly - the house itself will appreciate in value at a rate near 5% Assuming they both buy a $500k house w/ a 20% down payment and a 5% loan. Realistically the young couple would get a worse rate but lets say they…
I'd be fine with a policy of "you can rent housing you build" for American corporations. If a corporation thinks there is demand in some city, goes and build housing for that demand and then rents that housing, that is good for the world. Would be a better policy than letting corporations use their access to capital markets to outcompete individuals trying to buy a house.
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This is basically a maximum wage for landlords, bound to start a secret society. IMO it's a crooked notion that landlords are rent seeking and nothing else - they do create supply and maintain housing. Issue is when they want to politically and artificially raise the value of their property by preventing more housing from being built, so, if you're going to ban something, ban artificial regulations on construction! N…
> IMO it's a crooked notion that landlords are rent seeking and nothing else - they do create supply and maintain housing. They don’t create supply in any way, the only ones who do that are builders. But sure they maintain houses. Although just the bare minimum, they will never fix it nicely - just enough to rent it out.
For a house to be available for me to rent, both things need to happen.
Someone had to build it, obviously. But just as necessary, someone needs to offer it up for a rental.
Interesting to see that he did not issue an executive order to ban this but called on congress to do so. This is just pandering to the base and election signaling and nothing else, at least for now.
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You're telling a just-so story, and you can tell because there isn't a simple schematic 1-2-3 story you can make from this about how these people exert control over home prices. Words mean things; wielding scarcity requires you to control enough inventory to manipulate scarcity, and REITs and corporate buyers empirically don't. I get why people like telling stories like this: it suggests there's a single boogeyman th…
About 2 miles from my house, a housing development recently went up. No homes for sale. Rent only. Stuff like that is becoming a big problem.
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Not unless we decide that personal mobility is evil, and start just assigning people to plots of land when they reach adulthood.
Eh? I'm not talking about investing in your own home, but buying them simply as profit vehicles with no intention of living in them.