No war but class war.
This is what drives me crazy every time I hear people talking about needing to build more housing. The first thing we need to do is correct this problem. My suggestion is an increasing property tax premium on vacant homes. I’d suggest doubling the tax rate for each consecutive year a property is vacant for more than 185 days-just over half a year.
This has the side benefit of making Airbnb landlording less feasible as a small time investment strategy.
True, but it is not just about that there are X million houses emtpy and Y million people homeless. It is also about location of those empty houses. That might not overlap with location of the homeless, and I guess we are not talking about forced relocation here. There is probably still a good overlap of locations of empty houses and homeless and that part needs fixing.
See: the Bay Area and most of LA absolutely suffocated by suburban sprawl. You could build higher density residential dwellings, but first you need to tear down a few existing homes, plus get it past all the NIMBYS whose property values might go down if there's not hyperinflated demand.
This is what drives me crazy every time I hear people talking about needing to build more housing.
There are regional housing shortages. The classic example is in Northern California (particularly around San Fransisco and San Jose) where you've got these huge tracks of ranch-style homes and barely any vertical development. A lot of that is due to the seismic activity in the region, making taller buildings more expensive to construct. But more is due to the historical development practices of throwing up a thousand cheepo ticky-tacky units on real estate they acquired dirt-cheap from the state and flipped as fast as possible. Now the land is developed as this low-traffic sprawl, and people are obsessed with propping up their land-value to justify the seven figure notes their carrying. So building denser housing is politically and logistically prohibitive.
Basically, the problem isn't a housing shortage so much as a shit job of urban planning. Yes, houses exist, but they're hours away from job sites with no quality mass transit to move people between residence and work. No, you can't just pile people into these low-occupancy (often badly maintained) units if they don't have the kind of money to afford their own cars, pay for childcare, afford the utilities, cover maintenance of the units, etc, etc. That's a recipe for slums.
At some level, you need to actually plan your residential economy. That's a harder kind of work that politicians and bureaucrats elected based on their cool Tweets and Instagram feeds don't really want to do.
Agreed, but the problem is that the 'we' in this scenario votes for this every two years. When both ruling parties tell us they're capitalist, we need to believe them.
How does this jive with all the talk of a housing crisis. Where's that invisible hand of the market making things affordable. I hate capitalism
https://www.commondreams.org/news/wall-street-buying-houses
Emphasis is mine."The real estate industry would like you to believe the problem is entirely one based on supply and demand," and that regulations need to be changed to allow for the construction of more affordable housing, reads the report. But with 16 million vacant homes across the U.S.—28 for every unhoused person—"the reality is that the owners of concentrated wealth... are playing a more pronounced role in residential housing, thereby creating price inflation, distortions, and inefficiencies in the market."
Take it easy! Balance will trickle down any day now. We just have to trust them to regulate themselves a little longer. They wouldn't deliberately sabotage the market for profit, now would they?
I'd like to see a breakdown by zip code, or at the very least by county, of home values and vacancy rates. I have a suspicion that the problem is a local supply and demand problem rather than a national one. It makes no difference to the insane silicon valley housing market that there are thousands vacant homes in Michigan. This is why the build housing first plan is critical. We need housing where people need to live.
A vacant property tax would help with this.
Exponential increase for each and every additional unit (house or apartment) vacant for more than 3 months (without undergoing active, actual remodel with a set end date for the work) in a given year.
Oh no, not enough people for every unit to be filled? Bummer, better divest starting with single family structures!
Edit: actually, now that I think more about it, I see absolutely no reason we shouldn’t just hard cap the number of housing buildings any one company or individual (no shell companies and whatever bullshit loopholes) can own if they didn’t originally build them. Let’s say 200 multi-family (apartment) buildings or 10 single family buildings. Anything more than that must be sold for whatever the market is willing to pay. Too bad, so sad if you lose money on it, that’s the risk landlords are always telling us they take.
Nobody needs more than that, at all, because housing shouldn’t be a commodity to profit from, and if they want more buildings to profit from, they can build them instead of just buying it as a
leechinvestment. Fuck companies who treat everyone like shit for profit.
Maybe it would help to massively increase property taxes on all houses that aren't the primary residence of their owners, and use the proceeds to build more houses
What is this doing to the housing market?
I am 40 and single. I make 90k a year, I have 130k in total proceeds from the sale of my previous house I owned for 17 years which will go towards the down payment and initial repairs/upgrades with hopefully 10k to savings, and I have very good credit.
I cannot find a house I can afford. If it's less than 350k, it's either a complete disaster on the inside requiring 50k or more to make decent, it's under 1500 sq feet and very claustrophobic inside, it's a cheaply built house in a cookie cutter neighborhood that's already showing it's quality, or it has less than 2 full baths and a 1 car garage. Or the taxes in the area are over 7k a year.
And a LOT of the houses have the same gray vinyl flooring that's as ugly as it is cheap.
Your comment shows American relationship with space of their homes. I live in <1500 sq feet home with my girlfriend and I wouldn't call it claustrophobic.
It's really dependant on how the layout is. Generally 1500sqft isn't a problem however if it has 5 rooms squeezed into the house it begins feeling cramped especially if you have a large family. I have 1800sqft and the first floor has plenty of space but upstairs has a low ceiling (6.5ft) and about a 2ft wide hallway leading to 2 full bedrooms, a full sized bath, and a small guest room that's only slightly bigger than a broom closet. There isn't a way to have rooms downstairs so I consider my upstairs cramped but my overall living conditions fine. Now imagine a single floor utilizing that space needing just as many bedrooms and it begins getting cramped with the kitchen, living room, dining room.
Mass market single family housing is a disease that the developers have perfected. Using the cheapest materials, in the cheapest way, with the laziest inspectors.
It's even worse when you get outside of the cities into the county. At least here in Texas, that means there are no building inspections. You just have to trust that the builder made it right.
And don't depend on the warranty to save you. The common 10-year warranty is a lie. It's 1-year cosmetic (there are no visible cracks in the wall), 2-year functional (there are cracks, but everything still works), and 10-year structural (the doors no longer close, the wiring is failing, and the foundation is more like gravel now, but the building hasn't actually been condemned - which it won't be because there are no inspectors).
I work in the development department of a city that's and enclave for the ultra-rich. Literally every household in the city is millionaires or better.
Every house in the city is unique. Every build site requires civil and structural engineering. Every home has an architect designing it to be a unique structure. The average new build here is 8-10 million dollars, with the big ones being 50 million+.
We're talking tennis pavilions on the roof, indoor arboretums and galleries, the works.
And they're all built cheaply and fall apart within a decade.
They're shitty houses, but when people are dropping 8-figures on them, they can afford to drop a couple million more on a remodel every 5-10 years.
You can't buy a quality house anymore.
Where are you looking?
NW ohio, no more than an hour from work.
That's actually fewer homes that Blackstone owns than I would have thought.
Not that it makes things any better, I just would have expected the number of homes Blackstone owns to be in the millions by now. Maybe they have subsidiaries that are buying up homes under different names.
Obviously, there are plenty of other corporations that own thousands of homes so it doesn't make much of a difference.
A more functioning government would have immediately dropped the hammer on said business practices.
We live in a Corporate bordello.
Add in other corps:
20% of all property purchases are for investments: 65% of those properties purchases are by people who own 10 or more properties.
This makes the housing market sound similar to Diamond marketing.
I wonder if the board of Blackstone have names and addresses...
Sounds like it's time to start burning shit down
Or just start squatting in the vacant properties.
I don't understand. How much higher can rents go?
rent_target = your_income - beans - tent
There is one very important aspect that shouldn't be ignored about the fact at the end. Although it may be technically correct, it is almost certainly not geographically correct. If filling those homes requires a mass movement of people requiring even something as little a a couple of hour drive, is it really relevant?
Don't get me wrong, I hate corporate ownership of residential property, and I also think empty homes, especially if it's a second, third, fourth, etc., should result in some kind of tax penalty. I don't think using easily discounted facts is ultimately in our best interest when pushing for change to address these issues.
This shit is going to turn me into a maoist
Spread the joyful message that squatting is an option!
Nationalize it.
Sure, and we can develop plans for where people must live and what jobs they must have. Maybe a new national plan every five years.
….. we know how well that’s worked in the past
Hmm what's gonna happen to these rich landowners?
This is what squatting was invented for, isn't it?
It can take like 20 years though
