America’s housing crisis continues to worsen, renters are struggling more than homeowners, report says
America’s housing crisis continues to worsen, renters are struggling more than homeowners, report says
In America, home prices are at record highs while hundreds of thousands are homeless.
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There's always talk about tax breaks for home owners...
Never talks of raising taxes on landlords and empty units tho.
That's what would fix it. Tax them out of the housing market slowly and.prices will go down as they get out of the business.
At the very least, they should raise real estate taxes on empty units. This will penalize people for owning several vacation homes, as well as incentivize landlords to lower rates in order to fill the unit.
Difficult to enforce, but send a few people to jail for real estate tax fraud and the rest will fall in line.
Wouldn’t a tax hike only get passed through to the renter?
That's why you set it exponentially based on units owned by parent company, maybe break it down as a tax paid by shareholders for huge corporations landlords.
They could try to pass it on to consumers, but smaller landlords wouldn't have to pay it.
Making the biggest get out of the game first
They will just split the units owned on more companies then.
That’s why you set it exponentially based on units owned by parent company, maybe break it down as a tax paid by shareholders for huge corporations landlords.
That might not have been clear.
Set it at the parent company level so it's not easy.
If they have X amount invested in rental real estate, that can just be taxed then
Believe me, the tax code for the wealthy is already complicated, they can handle this
Then there is no parent company...? Just another random company. It does not need to be complicated and this is far from it. It needs to be such that they can not easily avoid the taxes.
Never talks of raising taxes on landlords and empty units tho.
Canada passed this law in 2022 addressing that:
Or you know, just build more houses?
We've got 15 million vacant homes in the US.
The issue with this figure is that it comes from the Census Bureau, and their definition is broad and simple that it doesn't into account for example. Here's the definition they use:
Vacant Housing Units. A housing unit is vacant if no one is living in it at the time of the interview, unless its occupants are only temporarily absent. In addition, a vacant unit may be one which is entirely occupied by persons who have a usual residence elsewhere. New units not yet occupied are classified as vacant housing units if construction has reached a point where all exterior windows and doors are installed and final usable floors are in place. Vacant units are excluded if they are exposed to the elements, that is, if the roof, walls, windows, or doors no longer protect the interior from the elements, or if there is positive evidence (such as a sign on the house or block) that the unit is to be demolished or is condemned. Also excluded are quarters being used entirely for nonresidential purposes, such as a store or an office, or quarters used for the storage of business supplies or inventory, machinery, or agricultural products. Vacant sleeping rooms in lodging houses, transient accommodations, barracks, and other quarters not defined as housing units are not included in the statistics in this report. (See section on "Housing Unit.")
https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/definitions.pdf
As you can see this definition doesn't really take into account a lot of genuine factors. For example, a lot of units are in really poor condition and require renovations in order to be livable again, but they're counted as vacant because they still have their exteriors in place. Same goes units. They're also counting units that are not entirely completed, units that are occupied but just temporarily like vacation homes, and mobile homes. We do have a lot of vacant units in this country, but it's not as much as this figure would lead you to believe. In reality, we need new units, we need a lot of them, and we need them ASAP.
There’s always talk about tax breaks for home owners…
Because governments want housing prices to stay sky high. The canadian prime minister openly said he doesn't want housing prices to drop because too many people are using their houses as a retirement strategy. That's why there are so many government programs that support buying a house but none that support renting.
Yeah, the first time I learned about our current vice president, she was trying to allegedly give renters similar tax breaks in California.
I don't know what happened to that, but I was an immediate fan. Seeing as it never happened, smeh... Not sure what to think. But it's a very popular idea amongst those of us who can't afford to buy (most people in California.)