Landlords should pay 100% tax on their empty rentals.
You’ll see how fast they will accept any and all new tenants, at a much lower price.
Which would also flood the market with housing, lowering the prices even more until renting becomes an actual beneficial option compared to buying and paying off a loan.
Real estate would also not be seen as an investment anymore.
In this case landlords could just pay some money to fake tenants to make their rentals appear occupied (at a ridiculously low price). Rental prices could even rise because of free rentals number reduction and necessity to cover additional expenses.
Real estate should be considered an investment. It’s one of the few things people invest in that is actually valuable. It’s the speculative and labrynthine financial markets that are the problem in that regard.
The only reason mega-renters like Blackrock and Vanguard are able to monolithically buy property in the first place is because of dubious speculative earnings and government bailouts.
It’s not surprising that home ownership was actually a lot higher 60 years ago.
Why should it be anything but a personal investment?
What do mean? I don’t see how what I said negates that.
Isn’t it better for everyone to decommodify housing?
Not really no. Commodfication is why things used to be cheap. High [insert item here] prices are directly related to money printing, corporate welfare and regulations that are designed to raise the barrier of entry for normal people.
People should still be able to own land for their own personal use. Land used to extract wealth on the other hand should be more tightly controlled. We should ideally implement georgism to free up the land that the rich own and to increase land use efficiency. After that ownership should look pretty much identical.
So you’re okay with some rich person owning acreage as long as it’s for their own enjoyment but not for a normal dude who has an investment property and is holding out for a renter that will adequately cover his costs and generate some profit?
Yup. I’m ok with some kinds, just not the kind that fucks over the creation/distribution of basic necessities.
So you’re okay with some rich person owning acreage as long as it’s for their own enjoyment
Yeah that’s bullshit too and shouldn’t be allowed. Even for personal use/enjoyment there should be a hard limit.
but not for a normal dude who has an investment property and is holding out for a renter that will adequately cover his costs and generate some profit?
I’m okay with some kinds (of making money with land)
Like what? There are infinite ways to make money with land that are more useless and exploitative to society than renting a house.
Yeah that’s bullshit too (in regard to rich people owning acreage for enjoyment)
I’m glad you changed your mind.
Yeah that’s bullshit too (in regard to a normal dude owning an investment property)
Why?! What’s so morally reprehensible about someone working hard and being fiscally responsible to provide a service that people actually need as opposed to an ice cream shop or whatever? Do you realize someone has to actually build/maintain/renovate houses? Usually at great financial risk to themselves? The primary reason most houses exist is because someone took a personal risk in the hopes of coming out ahead from where they were originally. They can only charge what the market will bear after all.
They can only charge what the market will bear after all.
When what you’re selling is a limited resource necessary for survival, “what the market will bear” easily becomes “all the money you make”. Otherwise you end up homeless and won’t be making any money.
A thriving business selling stuff people don’t need for them to buy with excess capital they no longer have.
This is just a whataboutism fallacy.
No you’re just ignoring a hole in your argument. I could profitably buy a plot of land and use it to store pig feces which happens in North Carolina.
Landlords do no more to provide housing than ticket scalpers do to provide concert tickets.
This analogy doesn’t track. They aren’t selling something the person could otherwise afford or even want to buy.
Landlords don’t work hard. Owning is not a job that provides for society.
Massive overgeneralization. I know contractors that built houses and eventually built one and rented it out for additional income. This means they worked to make the money to buy the land and the materials and invested their own time in building it which saved them a ton on labor costs. Somebody moved into it and lived there (e.g. value). Somebody should report them to the secret police!
I sure am aware. And I’m always aware that the people who do those things aren’t landlords. They’re construction workers and maintenance workers.
Again. Sometimes that’s the case. Sometimes it’s a dude taking care of everything himself on the weekend.
The landlords take no such risk because the demand for housing is so high that any vacancies can be filled as quick as they like.
You’ve never had to clean up a house destroyed by drug addicts. Believe me they can do a ton of damage. There’s plenty of risk. No one in this thread understands that though.
Funny how “what the market can bare” equates to entire generations being priced out of owning a home.
I wonder if the macroeconomic factors could play into that? You know? Stagnating wages, a falling dollar, endless wars, cronyism, endless immigration, enriching Blackrock during the 2008 bank crisis so that it can single handedly buy more single-family homes than any other entity in American history. Nope it’s Jim from work that rents a condo.
That’s not true because housing is not the only form of wealth.
I could profitably buy a plot of land and use it to store pig feces which happens in North Carolina.
And did I say I approve of that? No. That’s why it is a whataboutism fallacy. The topic is housing. Pointing out other horrible ways to use land doesn’t change the fact that the current housing situation is bullshit.
They aren’t selling something the person could otherwise afford or even want to buy.
More people could afford to own their house if not for landlords hoarding the supply.
I know contractors that built houses and eventually built one and rented it out for additional income.
You’ve never had to clean up a house destroyed by drug addicts. Believe me they can do a ton of damage. There’s plenty of risk. No one in this thread understands that though.
This is again a rare case.
I wonder if the macroeconomic factors could play into that? You know? Stagnating wages, a falling dollar, endless wars, cronyism, endless immigration, enriching Blackrock during the 2008 bank crisis so that it can single handedly buy more single-family homes than any other entity in American history. Nope it’s Jim from work that rents a condo.
It’s all of the above. Landlords are a part of the problem, and I never once said they are the sole problem.
Yeah because they just plucked the property off of a tree… people often work years and years to get enough for a property investment and it can take 30 years to pay it off. Throughout all that time they are responsible for maintenance, insurance and a litany of other things to keep it from falling into disrepair.
It can take 30 years for the tenants to pay it off. Landlords aren’t paying for that out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s instead ultimately the tenants.
Throughout all that time they are responsible for maintenance, insurance and a litany of other things to keep it from falling into disrepair.
They hire people to do that, they don’t do it themselves.
This is why you don’t get it. I spent my childhood cutting grass and repairing shit at a property owned by an elderly family member on a fixed income. We didn’t have money to hire someone to do it and tons of people are in the same boat. We did it for free because it was the best thing for everyone involved including tenants who often stayed for years because it was a nice place to live. No one got rich off of that property believe me.
They managed it as long as they could. Have you ever had a family before? You’re supposed to help each other. It’s what people have done for all of time.
What do you think “passive” means in the term “passive income”? I don’t care if it becomes harder to earn “passive income”, especially if it’s coming from people just doing what is necessary to survive.
At the individual level drugs are a HUGE reaaon, mental illness, poor care for veterans etc Although there is SOME government housing and charitable housing for people that need it.
At a macro level there is money printing, endless war, corporate welfare, cronyism etc
Let’s face it though we could probably house everyone in Europe within South Dakota alone. Not to mention most homeless people are in extremely expensive areas like LA, Austin, Seattle and New York.
Passing an ill-conceived law that will have unintended consequences should be way, way low on the list of ways to lower housing prices. Especially since it’s highly likely it won’t be enforced properly.
Its interesting that you say drugs and mental illness are the problems. Isn’t the fact that housing is commodified and costs money the HUGE problem? They can’t afford it, is the reason they’re homeless. The way you’re making it look is that the problem is just them, which is an extremely dehumanizing starement, especially when you are ignoring the obvious answer that’s its because some people are allowed to profit off of others need for shelter.
Are you a libertarian? The way you bring up printing money, cronyism, ill-conceived laws etc. sounds like you might be
I’m not a libertarian. Printing money, endless wars, corporate welfare, cronyism, ill-conceived laws and poor enforcement are very real MACRO (not individual) causes and you’ve not refuted them at all. These affect the price of EVERYTHING.
At the individual level homelessness can be fueled by all the things I mentioned. Some of those things are self inflicted and some are out of the control of the person. Either way there’s nothing dehumanizing about stating facts.
I get the feeling in this thread that everyone thinks housing should be free which is… ridiculous… Nothing is free because everything has a cost. I agree, however, with the overall issue of corruption and exploitative wealth – wealth that is often derived by anticompetitive, preferential treatment etc The average dude renting a house doesn’t want to screw poor people they just want an alternative to a 401k so they can retire.
You’re getting that feeling because people in this thread do think that housing should be decommodified. We don’t think anyone should be able to profit off of human needs. Housing should be a right. Our needs shouldn’t be exploited so some “average dude” can use us to fund the retirement we aren’t going to get.
The reason you think this is ridiculous is because you’re a bootlicker
You think if you invest smart then you’ll get to wear the boot, but there’s a crisis in profitablity. They’re going to be all out of boots, no matter what you do.
And when you say “there’s more than enough housing for everyone” and then say there’s homeless people because they’re addicts and mentally ill, that’s not just facts, its a pretty fucked up dehumanizing perspective
You’ve resorted to name-calling in a way that is not only innaccurate but indicative of how hard you’ve thought about your argument.
I have no illusions about “wearing the boot” in fact I’ve already talked about the actual injustice that’s causing pricing issues across the board. (e.g. avoidable macroeconomic factors) You’re not proposing some revolutionary idea. ‘Everyone should have a house man…’ Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. You can disagree with me but don’t bother unless you’re going to explain yourself.
“Housing is a human right!”
Now what? Do you plant a house seed and grow a house? You can demand whatever you want but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get it. Even in a world of minimal scarcity the one thing that will always be at a premium is people’s time and they usually they don’t hustle unless there is something in it for them especially if they are tacking on a roof in the middle of July.
The reality is this non-renter economy idea is just going to move the cost elsewhere and those with the means are going to abuse it in even worse ways that you haven’t thought of yet.
We know that housing can be decommodified and that everyone can have a home because socialist nations have already done that.
The concept has been thought through. Theres a nearly 200 year long intellectual tradition of thinking this through. You’re just really into the idea of exploiting other people because you and people like you feel entitled to passive income.
100% on their rental value, which for many landlords is directly tied to massive loans they’re underwater on. That’s why they’d rather have unoccupied rentals with nominally high values than reduce the rental price to match the market and have their loans called in.
No, the rental value is the nominal price of the rental. This is extremely simple, a child could understand this. The landlords have gotten loans based on the assumed rental income, which is not $0.
Seriously? OK, you must not really have thought about this before. They are listing their properties for rent but nobody is renting them. They’re listing those properties at the nominal rental value. So the tax would be on that nominal rental cost. This is like, babytown frolics level simple to connect the dots on even if you don’t agree with it - understanding this should have clicked like two replies back.
I literally just tried to explain the idea that you were feigning misunderstanding, I have not endorsed anything. You’re typical of the “HEXBEAR IS RUINING THE LEMMYVERSE” chud - making up ideas in your head and getting mad about them. Reading comprehension and your big feelings really get in the way of your engagement with the lemmyverse.
The best part of this is the person whose idea I was trying to explain to you - and never once endorsed - isn’t a Hexbear user. You’re just full-on making up shit when all I was trying to do was explain the concept a user from a completely different instance suggested. Congrats on being too dumb to both a) get the idea and b) attribute the idea to the correct instance.
This is all entirely too perfect, I hope you don’t delete your replies because they are a perfect encapsulation of the liberal anti-hexbear derangement.
One more reply, since I expect you haven’t got the testicular fortitude to keep up - I, and probably all hexbears, think landlords shouldn’t exist at all. Your idea that some liberal plan to tax them differently is indicative of hexbear is a fundamental ignorance of our actual politics.
I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, comrade. I think u/Zuberi really is anti-landlord and hasn’t said anything to suggest otherwise. And their comment about hexbear’s reputation on other instances wasn’t anything having to do with the OP, it was about how you were insulting them.
if that’s the case it’s weird that they decided to be a pedant and pretend not to understand the extremely plain and simple original statement. It’s plain they disagreed with it but didn’t want to just say that.
Weird, maybe, but the argument wasn’t an ideological one from what I can tell, it was one about the wording not making sense that I honestly didn’t understand either. I admit to being stupid about economic things, but I didn’t know that “nominal income” meant something different than just income. shrug-outta-hecks
Like, you’re going off with “You’re typical of the “HEXBEAR IS RUINING THE LEMMYVERSE” chud” when glancing at their history, it doesn’t look like they’re a chud at all and were actually defending Hexbear when lemmy.world did the preemptive defederation shit.
They got mad about my 9/11 user banner image, beyond just intentionally pretending to misunderstand instead of stating their objection. I think my chud detector is in good working order tbh
For real, nat—take a chill pill. I say this with all the good faith love I share with all my comrades. Somebody being a pedant doesn’t automatically make them a chud. @Zuberi reads like a fellow traveler still working out their brainworms. Cut them a little slack.
Hear me out, FUCK landlords. But I shouldn’t have to say that to get respect out of the leftist crowd.
In the event we’re keeping capitalism here, an empty-home tax would make more sense than an income tax on empty homes. But that would still NOT be an “income” tax. Just let me be pedantic and shit on an article title without throwing me in w/ the lemmy.world crowd :(
They got mad about my 9/11 user banner image, beyond just intentionally pretending to misunderstand instead of stating their objection. I think my chud detector is in good working order tbh
Any outsider observing this interaction and taking your side is an idiot. You behaved like a petulant child, repeating your one point no matter how many times the actual situation was explained to you. And then getting up on your soapbox acting haughty when someone with more patience for you than you deserved gives up. Reddit tier troll.