Investors are making up the highest share of homebuyers in 5 years

Solution: A tax on residential property that isn't someone's primary residence for more than half of the year, that scales up exponentially with the number of such properties the owner owns, regardless of whether the owner is an individual or a corporation.

Take the money this generates and put it towards helping the homeless and low-income families.

Make it cheaper to put someone - anyone - in a home (even for free) than to keep it unoccupied.

That scale should be very steep. I've always advocated for a limit around 3 independent homes. That gives you a primary, a vacation home and a potential rental. Beyond that, you would need to operate as a business.
And even that would be limited to something like 5, across all related businesses, no loophole by creating a ton of shell companies under a parent company to operate them. You want to be a larger scale landlord? You're doing that with higher density apartments, not single family homes. Single family homes should be owned by families. Not hedge funds.
Likewise, empty residences should be taxed higher as well. None of this bullshit where there are a bunch of empty places operating as capital holdings for big business. Sometimes even intentionally creating housing scarcity in large cities to jack up rental prices across the board. Your rental isn't going at the price you want? You're priced too high, lower the price until they do. If that rental is fit for habitation, and unfilled after say a year on the market, then it gets taxed at an extremely high rate.
Disincentivize businesses sitting on housing as a means of cash storage with no intention of it being used.
Canada has a good chunk of this law in place, but it doesn't cover all owners you're listing.
Underused Housing Tax:
The Underused Housing Tax (UHT) is an annual federal 1% tax on the ownership of vacant or underused housing in Canada that took effect on January 1, 2022. The UHT generally applies to foreign national owners of housing in Canada. However, in some situations, the UHT also applies to some Canadian owners (such as certain partners, trustees, and corporations).
source
Its got some big carve-outs, but its still better than we have in the States. One big carve-out is that publicly traded Canadian corporations are exempt. However, private corporations are subject to it. So its better than nothing.
- One big carve-out is that publicly traded Canadian corporations are exempt.
  Of course they are. Gotta keep the sHaReHoLdErS happy 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
I would be much more aggressive. Any home or residentially zoned property that isn’t someone’s primary residence is either surrendered, sold, or taxed at 100% of the property value per year. That would include high density housing. Homes should be owned by their occupants, not abused by the rich to exploit the poor. Landlords need to be abolished with intense prejudice. Corporate landlords, independent landlords, it doesn’t matter. Real estate as a lease or rental investment is unethical in the extreme and should not be tolerated by society.
- Agreed. Even Adam Smith decried rent-seeking behavior as the bane of Capitalism. Abolish landlords, encourage more co-op housing, and renting rooms from your primary residence out, with just enough association / State provided housing to fill in the gaps.
- What's your solution for folks who need short-term housing (for example someone relocating for work for a year, or someone going to college who doesn't want to stay in dorms)?
- You seem to forget that some people actually prefer to rent than own. I know people who have sold their houses and moved into apartments because they were sick of the hassle, risk, and expense of home ownership.
I like this idea. It would be good if two was a very slight increase because of buying and then having to sell. Also long ago having a vacation home was something obtainable by relatively common folk. Would like to see that again but wealth disparity would have to come way down for that to happen.
- In my magical Christmasland hypothetical scenario, it would be something like $10 ^ [number of qualifying properties] per year, for each property.
  Mom and pop have a vacation home, or a property on the market? $10 / year. No problem. Got 5 vacant homes? That'll be an extra $500,000 per year. Get a tenant or sell.
  Would need some sort of limit such that the tax ceased when homelessness reached, say, 0.01% of the population or less, because right now there's about 26 vacant homes in the US per homeless person; the point is to reduce homelessness, not to bankrupt everyone, of course.
I don't think this will work simply. Probably, they'd just have a individualized RIT (Real estate Investment Trust) for each house, and then have investors buy shares (up to 100%) of the individualized RITs or a "master RIT" that doesn't own any property directly, but just all the shares of the indivudalized RITs that aren't sold to an investor.
Disclaimer: I do make the problem slightly worse buy investing through https://arrived.com/ (Slightly because I don't have that much money to invest, and only a portion of it is invested there.)
- Seems like the sort of loophole that, once identified, would be pretty easy to close if the legislators actually desired to do so.
Real estate taxes are usually done at the town level.
Who gets the money? Where does it go to?
I'm on board...don't get me wrong...but I think shouldn't be prohibitively expensive for the upper middle class to have a cabin in the woods or some such.
I think it should also have a bit to do with the market of the area where the home(s) are located.
If the market is hot because people want to live there, then yeah, they shouldn't be letting it sit vacant, and shouldn't be making a living off landlording (supplemental income I could forgive...there needs to be private leasing of homes/apartments at some level...not every body wants or needs to buy a house, and the alternative would be corporate landlords which brings us right back to square one).
But if you've got a cabin in BFE Utah? Go you. Get out of here and enjoy some quiet time.
- The cabin thing can be fixed by proper zoning and regulations. Zone for "recreational use", meaning it can't be your primary residence (totaling an absolute maximum usage of, say, 6 months out of the calendar year). Enforce it with regulations and regular audits for such things as propane/electricity, mail activity (some have mail service), and maybe even vehicle permit activity.
  This could grant lower taxes than the hypothetical you replied to, but proof of compliance would be required. Wealthy people should be able to facilitate that without a problem.
  Get a third property? Tax it heavily. Register it to an LLC? Tax it heavily. No residence should ever be under an LLC, that is an obvious tax loophole that needs to be closed up. Trusts need to be audited as well.
  Fourth property? 100% tax. End of the story, no loopholes, no exceptions, no further questions your honor.
  Since I'm on this tangent, the same should apply to cars. Work vehicles should be subject to far higher scrutiny as far as compliance goes, and no, Kyle, your brand new Dodge 3500 on 22" wheels and 12" lift with pristine bedliner and a shitty smoke tune does not count as a work vehicle just because you haphazardly slapped a shitty magnetic company logo on the door.
- You completely ignored the public housing approach. Did you realize that? It kinda undercuts the second half of your comment.

In this country money WINS and people LOSE. Where have you been?

Trying to live in America's most populous state, Denial.

to the surprise of … nobody.

They want your shelter, your air, your warmth and your food, then comes the boot on the throat.

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat
If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet
Taxman!

Well, that's going exactly according to their plan.

Put the squeeze on working people, then those with ready cash can buy them out cheap.

Three things would be great for this.

Residential property can only be owned by individuals or a family. No businesses, LLCs, or loopholes.
Insane tax on any additional houses that makes renting not profitable and owning not feasible. Tax scales exponentially with additional properties.
Must be an domestic citizen to own property.

I'd be okay with slightly elevated taxes on one additional property. There's room for some luxuries and if the rest of the above happened, there would be plenty of houses available for purchase to those interested and pricing would normalize. There needs to be something carved out for multi family homes or whatever for rent options.

Surely there will be no consequences to these events!

Look to Australia, there is possibly no more fucked up housing market thats celebrated as a good thing by its mortgage and rent slaves..
- Canada.

sighs...system working exactly as intended

No way?! You don't say. I wonder if that's why housing prices have skyrocketed as "people" bought and sold properties like a commodities exchange?

The economy would collapse if housing stopped being a commodity.

God I wish. That kind of economy is not valuable for the general public, and to hell with the real estate speculators and absentee landlords.