The ownership of homes by wall st. was always a terrible idea.
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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yeah, fuck tax benefits, make it illegal
Property tax should be 100% for third houses (there are legit reasons to own 2 houses - especially when helping a family member finance a home or inheriting property) and for any houses not owned by an actual human.
Give developers building a house 3 months to sell after completion. If it doesn't sell in that time, it gets auctioned off to the highest bidder with no minimum price.
Also give a maximum construction time of like 2 years to keep them from leaving a door off or something and calling it unfinished until it sells for their inflated bullshit value.
Land zoned residential must be developed or sold to an individual human within X years. Empty land that's zoned residential should be platted with a maximum lot size appropriate to the area to keep them from developing 1 house on a thousand-acre tract and selling it to someone who is trying to sit on the land as an investment.
Essentially, developers need to be forced to build and sell houses at a fair market rate they're prohibited from manipulating.
also 100% rent tax for second rent and beyond.
you ask rent for one house, fine. maybe you invested in it, inherited it, whatever. maybe you have one house but don't want to live in it so you have renters in it while you rent another apartment yourself, cool, you do you. you're paid rent from one source, you pay regular rates. you put a second place for rent, sorry, all of it goes to subsidizing affordable (if not free) housing.
and because I'm a gracious and benevolent pretend lawmaker, you get to choose which single place you get to pay the regular rates for. all the rest of your places get 100%.
market rates can also be enforced with flexible tax rates:
if the market is 100 and you ask for 100, you pay X.
if you ask for 200, you pay X + 100.
if you ask for 300, you pay X + 250.
if you ask for 400, you pay X + 400. and so on.
the government can easily make sure you get not only zero benefit from inflating prices, but actually take losses. if the rich cunts can pay negative taxes, they can handle negative net gains.
My one question with this is, what do you do for multi-unit apartments and such that aren't condos? Yes, it's corporate-owned. Yes, that has its own slime that needs to be cleaned up. But it's also a reasonable way to increase housing density (meaning more housing and, if done correctly, less reliance on cars). Housing rentals do have their place in the world, especially when people only plan on living somewhere for a few years (college students, military, medium-term jobs)
How do you free up the housing market from landlords and investors while not screwing things up for people who would actually be better off renting?
simply decommodify housing, either by force or with aggressive taxation that makes it effectively poison to try to collect houses like these leeches do. once all the extra houses become poison, the government buys them for a reasonable price.
reasonable for the people, btw, not for the owners. then you provide affordable housing that pretty much acts as a rent, except instead of pouring money into the bank account of a random fuckwit you pay a little extra tax for it.
because it's super affordable and always available, losing your home is now no longer a big concern. imagine the kind of power this gives people in the workforce alone. let alone general public health and mental stability.
you could have it as rent-taxes as long as you stay, where you can move out whenever, move in to another government housing or maybe buy your own and move there. or you could have the option to rent-until-you-own, where you pay taxes to live in a house until you completely pay it off, and then it's yours, so long as you don't own another home. basically like mortgage/credit but without banks and much cheaper installments and overall price.
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150%.
100% still let's them sit on it and raise property rates.
I think this is maybe a tad extreme. There should definitely be diminishing returns for each additional single family home rented, but I propose something like an additional 20% per. So, 20% for the 2nd, 40% for the 3rd, 60% for the 4th, 80% for the 5th, etc. Nobody needs to own more than six single family properties.
My proposal, however, also includes that when we catch some asshat inevitably inventing shell corporations and LLC's attempting to evade this, as if we couldn't see that coming a mile off, we don't tax or fine them.
Instead, we put them in jail.
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Tax benefits for investors buying homes?!?!?!!??!
Who the FUCK DID THAT?!?!?
"housing market is really hard to fix guys"
Gives tax breaks to landlords
You won't believe it, but they are also invested in Congress, and Congress knows how to pleasure shareholders.
Guess
Ummm. The investors I would guess.
Depreciation of assets are tax write-offs, I think.
enforce fair housing laws
Hopefully this includes not kicking out people who can still pay rent, just so the landlord can have themselves a weekend vacation cabin or higher-priced rental. And there should be a law forcing landlords to offer a rent-to-own option. Also, how about recalculating inflation to account for every expense that has gone up, so that the percentage a landlord can raise rent each year isn't so damned high. While we're being fair, of course :|
I agree with everything you said except for this:
And there should be a law forcing landlords to offer a rent-to-own option.
I generally don't think there should be laws forcing individual citizens to sell anything they own. I could however be on board with government regulated and incentivized rent-to-own programs.
Owner Occupancy credit against property taxes. Sometimes called a "homestead exemption".
Basically, if you live in a house you own, you pay a vastly lower property tax rate. If you own a house you don't live in, you pay a vastly higher property tax rate on that house, because you can't claim the exemption.
When we establish this, "landlords" stop "renting" and become private mortgage lenders. They sell their homes to their former tenants, or issue "land contracts" (rent-to-own arrangements), and enjoy the lower tax rate on the property.
If they foreclose or evict, they pay the higher tax rate until they get a new "buyer".
I like the general idea but how does rent to own work for multi family properties, especially in larger apartment buildings? I know condos exist already but that requires an HOA or something similar to provide upkeep for the building/property. I also wouldn't want to completely deincentivize renting because there are situations where it's a better fit for people as long as they are not getting gouged or kicked out needlessly.
Maybe instead of a credit for occupying a property you own, add a tax on income from rental properties that is earmarked for the kind of infrastructure that an area needs to accommodate a growing population including mass transit. There would have to be some protections in place to prevent landlords from passing that cost directly to tenants but I'm not smart enough to know how to do that.
Alongside that, offer a tax credit for rent to own arrangements that starts small and gets larger as the tenant gets closer to owning the property. Successful transfer of ownership gets the original owner a credit equal to the difference between the taxes paid and credits received plus interest and the new owner gets a reduced property tax rate for their first year of ownership.
Is rent to own that common? Is it a viable option? I have heard of owner financing situations, but they are generally looked down upon (risky).
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I understand what you're saying and I did feel weird typing that since I know there must be a better alternative.
Something has to give, though. In late June I had to leave a place I rented for 19 years and I'm still stunned. Idk how much of the house's value we paid in rent, but it was a lot. And it wasn't even a large home, just a small cabin few people would wish to live in. But there was nothing stopping the landlord from kicking us to the curb.
Idk how much of the house’s value we paid in rent, but it was a lot.
Definitely 80-100% of it.
Almost 20 years of renting, if all of that including the (almost certain) increases had been applied to the original mortgage you'd likely own it by now.
They charge you everything they're charged plus add on a profit margin. That profit margin if applied to principle on a standard 30 year mortgage would've paid it off earlier.
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It's almost as if Harris knows how much Trump loves playing with his real estate
Her campaign so far has been a masterclass in trolling. Can't wait for the next Truth meltdown to drop.
Vice President Kamala Harris will call for the construction of 3 million new housing units in her first four years in office, as well as a new tax incentive for builders that construct properties for first-time home buyers,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The housing initiatives are part of Harris’s emerging economic plan, which she is expected to address in a speech in Raleigh, N.C., on Friday. Rising prices have become a point of intense debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump.”
This is what kills me among many things about Republicans. Trump's pitch is "BiDeN RuInEd EvErYtHiNg!" and his only policy is "deport everyone and give the heritage foundation whatever they want."
Democrats actually have plans to attempt to fix the issues we have, whether self inflicted or not. Whether they can actually accomplish those plans is something else, but at least there's a plan other than bitching "the other guy sucks so vote for me!"
Magoos act like we are the same with Trump, but that's because it's all fox news tells them and their feelings get hurt when we say how horrendous Trump actually is so they get defensive and rely on BoTh SiDeS!
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What protections for renters? They basically have none. Let’s see some implemented!
Lol read the article for answers to your question
It’s a rhetorical question. It’s meant to underline how I think the protections are grossly insufficient.
Why won't anyone think of the tax investors on wall st?!
THANK FUCK
It's not social housing, but it's certainly a step in the right direction
Maybe that helps, in general private equity or owners need a cap on purchasing rental housing units
Somehow it won't get done in her first term but vote her back in and she promises it will get done in her second term. How do I know? Because every single president does the same exact thing.
Because every single president does the same exact thing.
What are you talking about?
Biden got about as much as he could get through a Republican controlled House and a filibustering Senate: a major COVID relief bill, a major infrastructure bill, and a major environmental reform bill.
Trump did a shitload in his one term:
- Replaced 3 Supreme Court justices and a lot of lower court judges who went on to overturn Roe v. Wade and Chevron, deliver a shitload of conservative decisions, and block a bunch of Biden executive actions (including student loan forgiveness, all sorts of COVID policies, and a bunch of economic regulations).
- Major tax cuts in 2017 for corporations and high earners
- Withdrew from the Paris accords and rolled back a lot of Obama EPA regs
- Made shifts towards privatization of k-12 education, including towards religious private schools.
Obama signed a bunch of stuff into law his first two years:
- Obamacare
- Universal healthcare for children under S-CHIP
- Student loan reform, creating public service loan forgiveness and much better repayment plans while cutting out private lenders who took all the upside with none of the downside.
- Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
- Repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell
- Passed Dodd Frank, including the creation of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau
- School lunch reform
Bush campaigned on tax cuts and got them, and then got a bunch of other stuff in from his first term related to 9/11 and the aftermath: The Patriot Act, authorization for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, etc.
If anything, presidents are far less effective their second term than their first term.
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And yet this flawed process has still accomplished more than edgy cynicism ever has.
While you're probably right, there really isn't a better choice here. It is what it is.
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Don't protect "renters". The entire concept of "renting" needs to die in a fucking fire.
Instead, we need to jack up taxes on residential properties. Send them to the moon. $2000/yr? Fuck that: $2000/month.
But nobody actually pays these exorbitant rates, because we create an "Owner Occupancy Credit". The tax rate is only high if the owner doesn't live in the home.
What happens to renters? Do landlords jack up their prices to cover the increased property taxes? Or do they offer their tenants a private mortgage or a land contract, so they don't have to pay the hiked taxes?
When they can make more money as a lender than as a landlord, they aren't going to be renting anymore. Establish an owner occupancy credit, and "landlords" will be fighting tooth and nail to convert tenants into buyers.
(The actual tax rate should target an 85% owner occupancy rate. When more than 20% of the population is renting, the non-occupant tax rate is increased 1% per year. When less than 10% is renting, the non-occupant tax rate is dropped 1% per year. )
Nah, nonprofit state-run landlords (in countries which have them) are great, and strong protections for renters are good. I don't want to buy a house, I move around a lot, don't wanna deal with lawyers every time I move, don't wanna be responsible for maintenance, I just want some basic level of security and not to be completely ripped off.
Why is 85% the magic number? Just because you say so? I do agree that increased property taxes are important, but there's no reason not to also make rental contracts less exploitative.
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NY has this. What you have described is the STAR tax credit. This credit only applies to school taxes (2-3k a year)
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How would you handle apartment buildings?
Making them all Condo’s possible I suppose but, there’d be a lot of poorly maintained buildings no one would want to actually own part of
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