I think I'd love for where I live to outlaw ownership of small-unit-count buildings by someone who doesn't live in the building.
Where is the social justice in letting investors outbid people who want to own their own bit of shelter?
(Existing homeowners might appreciate the gains to property values from investor bidding up, but I'd say the needs of another person to also become a homeowner trumps the needs of an existing homeowner to make greater profit on the investment aspect.)
How would you enforce this? By having a list of all homeowners and checking that they live in the property they own? If they do not, then what? What if they own two homes?
Now there would be no middle-ground. Either you own 1 (one) building under four units, in one of which you live. If you want to move, you must find another individual who would take your place. They'd also have to give up their single building and move into yours, for which they must find another individual... Either that, or you're a multi-millionaire investor owning condominiums and living in a private mansion, banned from ever owning small-unit-count buildings.
I'd say, this would lead to the owner of the building on paper still owning a unit there, but putting their least socially protected tenants in it. Tell them that either they have an arrangement where they are not legally renting, but they still pay you money – and if law enforcement asks then tell that you're landlord's friends who are staying over long-term. Or they can go live in a cardboard box.
That sounds like a better approach. Taxes are used to encourage some behaviors and discourage others.
If you want to have families own their detached homes, make it so that their self-declared primary residence is taxed very little. You can own as many houses as you wish – but the more you own, the higher the tax rate on all the extra ones which are considered “small”. Then families can have a house or two, or maybe even three – whatever you consider a “reasonable” amount. Then businesses can own as many 50-unit condominiums and office complexes as they want, without any diminishing returns. However, it could be economically impractical to own more than, say, two “small” homes – if you have to pay yearly homeownership tax on each “small” home that is not your primary residence, of 20% of the property value for each one that you own. You own five – you pay 100% of value of each of them every year. You own one extra house – you sponsor a new house for a new family once every five years.
But that would require some political will to screw over the rich people. And those are the people who are building the houses in the first place, so you'd also need to ensure that families can build a home for themselves if the businesses are not willing to build property they can't profit off by renting it out instead of selling.
For example in Australia there is CGT on an investment property apportioned to the time it acted as such (as apposed to principle place of residence).
CGT is fairly lame in Australia with both a 50% discount and perhaps you need not pay it for 1000 years if you keep passing the property down through family.
Land tax and vacant property tax would help motivate thought!
NYC doesn’t allow you to lease a rent-stabilized apartment unless you live in it. There have certainly been cases of fraud, but on the whole it seems to be enforced well enough.
You're joking, but actually, one thing I think people miss is that New York is significantly more affordable than San Francisco, Paris, Hong Kong, and other cities of its class. I think our housing policies deserve credit for that. There's tons of room for improvement, but we do some things right and you can see the results!
No it’s not? Rents are higher in New York than Paris or San Francisco. It’s hard to make the exact comparison because incomes are lower in Paris and San Francisco is a worse city, but New York’s affordable housing policy is 100% just the subway and Jersey City. Everything else should not be emulated at any cost.
By "landlordism" do you mean owning a home and renting it out? Would you also include sub-letting and apartments in that prohibition? Or renting out U-haul trucks?
Renting is not a great long-term strategy but can certainly helpful when you're poor, or don't want to shell out $100K to buy a box truck for the weekend.
Are you suggesting public ownership of all land? How do you intend to police this and overcome the political economy of realtors, Biggerpockets, etc.? How would private single unit landowners improve upon modern building costs which are $800k+ a unit in expensive metros?
There are a lot of advantages to renting. You don’t need to secure a loan, you aren’t responsible when something breaks, and you don’t have to find a buyer when you leave. If you only plan to stay somewhere for a couple of years, renting is great.
How that makes you entitled to cheaply renting a single-family home? Go rent a condo, it would be easier to move in a couple of years too. Or if you insist on living in a single-family home, temporarily taking a place of a family who wants to own the property long-term, then you'd pay premium rent to the owner which they'd have to pay out in taxes.
I somewhat doubt your assumptions about what homeowners think.
The busybodies I observe definitely and loudly put their own needs first, but they predict the opposite effect of rental units from you - lower property values. Therefore, they would probably welcome outlawing investment properties, just as you desire.
This dislike of renters seems mixed up with class or race consciousness. I think it's pretty widespread.
I don't think it's possible to avoid the fact that people who can purchase a home are generally more privileged than renters, and so being against investment properties is not a simple matter of social justice.
How is this good? It does not even cover scenarios such as folks buying properties before they can move in (e.g., parents waiting for their kids to finish their school year before they can move; buying for parents who are retiring in a few months), people living in properties for a few months of the year and leaving them vacant, people pooling their money and buying as a corporation or partnership (small-scale investors who will only own a few properties at any given time, or people who want some sort of de-facto rent-control on shared rooms in the property), or people buying vacation homes that they will occupy for a few months in the year? Is it socially just to stop all these classes of property buyer?
At my institution (regional college in Western MA) we are having trouble hiring, except locally. People won't come, they cannot afford the cost of housing. It's that bad. Let them sell up. Homeowners have had it good the last 40 years, a policy change is needed because things that can't go on won't.
We can't afford higher salaries, and then there's the demographic cliff in 2025, because couples stopped having children in 2008, they couldn't afford it. (The upside is that our slim budget prevents us from getting into debt by engaging in stupid construction projects to attract students, we can award scholarships instead.) And we can still fill vacancies with locals who are living with roommates or their parents.
You can't fix a stuff shortage by throwing money at it, no matter what economists tell you. The housing shortage is the real-world equivalent of stock buybacks - in theory the increased stock price boosts investment and thus innovation, but in practice we get Boeing and Intel. Same with housing. The higher prices should in theory draw more suppliers in, but in practice the only supply that grows is the supply of NIMBYS wanting to "preserve home values" to profit from the intolerable status quo.
It sounds like you’re frustrated that the environment is becoming inhospitable for small colleges without a lot of money. That’s understandable, but are you perhaps saying that you all need to be looking at cutting down and getting lean, rather than hiring up?
From those NIMBYs’ points of view, as frustrating as I find them, they probably feel like they scrimped and sacrificed to get their little piece, so now they’re desperate to not let anyone mess it up, because they want to be able to get out the massive amount they put in. I’m guessing it’s more often loss aversion than trying to profit by cornering the market.
> I think I'd love for where I live to outlaw ownership of small-unit-count buildings by someone who doesn't live in the building.
Economics will ultimately do this for you. As the economy deteriorates, the rate of return on rental properties will plunge, forcing sales by over-leveraged "investors."
Anyways, OP proposed “I think I'd love for where I live to outlaw ownership of small-unit-count buildings by someone who doesn't live in the building.”
Would you ban the construction of a home unless the builder lives in the home? Why not? And why wouldnt that apply to the first person that buys the home from the builder that doesn't build in it? And the second person in that chain?
Where is the social justice in letting investors outbid people who want to own their own bit of shelter?
(Existing homeowners might appreciate the gains to property values from investor bidding up, but I'd say the needs of another person to also become a homeowner trumps the needs of an existing homeowner to make greater profit on the investment aspect.)