Of course there’s the best option which is an non-occupancy tax that goes up exponentially for each additional property you’re sitting on for speculation.
That right there would be a hard counter to wallstreet hoovering in the housing market.
It’s like you’re not even considering the feelings of the millionaires and billionaires with 72 houses each and I for one just won’t stand for it.
I can’t wait for the “rational” peoples argument against taxing the rich. Will it be something like a slippery slope fallacy? Maybe it will be “it’s unfair to thoses that only just recently got rich.” I’m thinking though they will go with, “it’s not going to make a meaningful difference” then try and sell us trickle down in some new way.
They’re working 1 000 000 000 000 times harder.
tweets racist shit all day
That on top of a tax that is highly progressive after x number of properties, regardless of occupancies.
I was thinking more non-occupancy just meaning “that you don’t live in yourself”, so that would mean filling your rentals with tenants doesn’t save you from the tax.
Ah, then we are on the same page. I thought you were referring to:
According to the Census Bureau, there were approximately 15.1 million vacant homes nationwide in 2022. These vacant homes, which include rentals, represent 10.5% of the country’s total housing inventory. -source
which is just another fucking gut punch.
If a landlord who actually takes their job as servant to their tenants seriously gets some efficiency of scale - say enough units to justify a full time maintenance person who is available on call to support tenant issues - I don’t want to punish them for that. Surely we can develop metrics to identify predatory landlords that are more accurate than number of properties.
Nah, number of properties is a pretty fucking good metric.
Being a “bad” landlord isn’t the issue, the issue is taking properties off the housing market for rent collection, and driving up prices for everyone else in the process.
There are more empty units in this country than unhoused people to fill them, this housing crisis is one built entirely out of artificial scarcity created by letting speculators buy up supply basically for the purpose of scalping them to poor people who can’t say no to the product.
It’s the same kind of “market efficiency” that has ballooned medical costs, who can afford to compare costs on a kidney transplant? Nobody. Who can afford to shop around and wait on houses? Unless you’re very lucky in today’s economy, also nobody.
Housing does not abide the same market rules as designer T-shirts. Necessity goods will inherently have a hostage effect on the customers where you could in theory charge any price and just make the disinfortuned eat shit for it.
When “landlords” own 10k+ properties, it’s 100% a numbers game.
“Kill 3 kids and bulldoze the neighboring nature reserve (it won’t give us more chairs, but it’ll feel good)”
its called a nature reserve because its a piece of nature thats reserved to be used as a golf course in the future
Neither choice is great. One is evil.
That 25k quickly becomes “oh, everyone had 25k more so we can charge 25k more”.
Don’t give rich house builders tax breaks, they’re the ones causing the problem by deliberately not building enough. You’re the fucking government. Build houses yourselves. Rent them through social housing programs.
dont allow corporations and billionaires to buy thousands of flats
Yeah, that too.
The precious “free markets” have had their crack at it, and have shown that they’re not to be trusted to either own or build them. Prices have soared and that’s 100% intentional on their part.
25k is for first time home buyers, not everyone. You can’t have separate prices for first time buyers and the rest of the public, and a seller won’t know how you are financed until after the house is listed anyways.
This absolutely will help, because if you’d just ask anyone trying to get a home, the down payment is the hardest part to satisfy.
The only way a house cartel can form like this is for those that own the homes. The builders don’t own the homes, corporations do. Those corporations collude and price fix to create a cartel. Focus on that.
The UK had a similar scheme for first time buyers and it’s often cited by economists as one of the biggest things fueling their housing crisis.
Its hard to take that at face value. The UK and the US have a lot of anti consumer perspectives.
Do you have anything that describes the mechanism?
Its sort of a similar arguement to food stamps raising food prices right?
In either case its on the groups abusing a rule that are the problem, not the rule. There can be well worded regulations that minimize abuse, and we can also audit things.
Sure, here’s a paper which explores the effects.
Essentially, housing prices have hugely inflated (in much of the developed world) because demand is much higher than supply. Prices in the real-estate market are generally really reactive to changes in supply or demand because each ‘product’ is unique and limited, as well as being worth a lot of money so there is more pressure to maximize the potential gains.
This sort of plan increases the resources available to the demand side without increasing the supply side. This drives up prices since there are more potential buyers.
Anyone who couldn’t buy a house without such a program is being added the the pool of people competing for a limited supply of houses. It won’t increase supply because supply is heavily limited by other factors, most notably zoning.
It’s unfortunate, because the thought behind such a policy is admirable. It’s trying to make buying a house more fair and more easily achievable for a broad segment of the population that currently is effectively shut out from owning a home.
The current administration is already doing most of the things regulation wise. Its just not catchy or easy to understand like the down payment assistance part.
The changes the Biden administration has made and is making will take time, houses can’t be built overnight, but the down payment assistance helps now.
In my opinion, its only a bad policy if we choose to allow it to be.
They fucked it up then. When obama did 8k it worked well
The builders have made the 16 million empty homes in this country because they were just selling them to corporations. It’s not that they are not hiding enough, it’s that the rich have engulfed the entire pipe with their gluttonous mouths and there is nothing left for the rest of us.
When will we finally slay the beasts that are killing us?
I’ve started to come around on the 25k down payment assistance. It definitely has it’s problems, and there will absolutely be those who gouge because of it. But because it’s specifically down-payment assistance it will still help first time buyers get mortgages on houses they can afford the regular payments on, but don’t have the extra to set aside for a 10% down payment because rent is taking everything they could be setting aside for a down payment. And it’s limited to first time home buyers, with 2 years of on-time rent payments, and says “up to” 25k. Wouldn’t surprise me if it ends up being limited to 10% of the purchase price (which gets you more favorable loan terms).
My wife and I only own our home because her wealthy dad was willing to front about half of the down payment with an interest-free repayment to him alongside the mortgage. With 25k from the government we’d not have needed that, and we got an acre in California. 25k is huge.
We’ve only ever had trouble with this mortgage once, and it was trouble we could have managed without help had we just tightened our belts for a while (just don’t go to the ER. Even if you have insurance. Even if you’re dying on the floor and an ex first responder demands you to for your safety: die instead. I am not joking, had it not been for familial help we’d be paying it off for the next 5 years and it would eat almost all of the little savings we’ve finally started managing to build up, so one more bump and we’d lose fucking everything), so it looks like all those “well sure you can afford rent that’s 1.5x the cost of the potential mortgage, but how do we know you can afford it on the job you’ve had for 8 years?” Pricks were wrooooooooooong
It’s not that they aren’t building enough. It’s that they are building big luxury homes because there is a bigger profit margin than making affordable homes.
Most builders are already fully booked for work. The one’s that could work faster generally aren’t the ones you want building your house.
One is less evil but still evil
thinking that homeless illegal immigrants are the root cause of home shortage where a single corporation or a billionaire buys thousands of flats to rent them to people for exorbitant prices.
in one way it works because if you kick out many homeless people out of the country, you can say that in one year you cut homelessness by half.
Thats currently already done with jail. The main problem is homeless people don’t pay their jail bills. In my state 15 years ago it was 30$ per day you had to pay to be incarcerated in jail, not prison.
Okay america is sounding more and more like a joke. You have to pay to be in a processing facility? When you have no choice. And you’ll be incarcerated there during trial so before you are proven guilty of anything.
Fun fact! The Constitutional amendment that outlawed slavery also legalized slavery!
Yeah! And until right now, this very minute, as you’re reading this, some Americans didn’t know that.
Right now some americans don’t know they have items in their house produced by slave labor.
Here’s a quick read about it.
I think in my case its only sentenced time that is charged, but I had to pay a bunch of fines and stuff after so it might have just been included in the court costs and fees.
It costs a lot to be in the judicial system. If you have money its far easier.
Quick reminder: The Nazi German government emptied out Eastern European towns and villages taken by the Wehrmacht during various campaigns, most notably Operation Barbarossa, for resettlement of “pure” Germans to those occupied lands (called Lebensraum)… this started almost literally once these occupied towns and villages were far enough from the front lines. Also, the whole point of the US Government’s genocidal forced march of native tribes, often referred to as the Tail of Tears, was to clear said native tribes out so the Southern aristocracy could seize the land for plantations worked by chattel slaves… whole swaths of what is today Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi were settled by whites as a result.
Many a “populist” (read: Fascist or proto-Fascist) operate their politics in this manner. Promise either cheap land (or, at the very least, housing) to the workers and others by committing what is, on it’s face, a genocide. There’s more modern examples (two in particular, going on right this minute for all the world to see), but I don’t want to get the ban-hammer so I won’t name them directly (I forgot to check the instance in which I am commenting before doing so, but not taking my chances).
Additionally, “Mass deportation” is a fucking genocide, I don’t know how this can even be said loudly. Guess people never learn…
It’s not in any way genocide. How do you figure that it is?
Pretty much any time in human history where someone has tried to displace that many people, they’ve either failed or it turned into an ethnic cleansing.
Are you saying that you believe that mass deportation would turn into mass murder?
Just look at history, Germany tried to deport hundreds of thousands of Jews before the extermination camps were built.
Let’s say you suddenly got yanked from your home and sent to live in the land of your ancestors (where you don’t have a home or any friends). Would you survive?
If yes, ask yourself again, but now you’re broke and have a medical condition and you require medication to survive. How about now?
These people getting deported don’t have 2nd homes they can return to, and they can’t just put one on a credit card.
Don’t like homelessness? Mass deportation creates homelessness crises.
Is it being proposed that people be yanked from their homes?
What do you think mass deportation means?
Free lollipops?
Read a wiki.
Learn to articulate yourself
Donald John Trump comes from a family of real estate speculators.
Akira Toriyama once said he based the character of Freeza on Japanese real estate speculators, who he called “the worst kind of people.” (Source)
Am I saying Trump is Freeza? No, Freeza is several orders of magnitude more competent on his worst day than Trump was when he peaked in 1951. But I think it’s important to underline, for the people in the back, what level of cartoonish evil we’re dealing with, because for some reason people will read stuff like this and it won’t sink in. Maybe DBZ will help.
I don’t know. I’m tired, y’all.
https://clearinghouse.net/case/15342/
He was found by a court of law to be a racist slumlord.
So the mass deportation would be of lawful alien residents, because undocumented residents cannot buy houses unless it is straight up cash, and even then would have a hard time getting insurance or utilities, you know, without a SSN, credit history or IDs. Unless they use a stolen SSN, which is very difficult and rare.
Nope! Everyone knows undocumented immigrants are buying ALL the houses, they’re taking ALL the jobs, and getting ALL the public benefits (except for the benefits welfare queens get), they’re bringing in and doing ALL the drugs, they’re committing ALL the crime, and they’re voting in ALL elections. It’s true, I saw it on the TV. They’re busy, I don’t know how they have the time to do all of that.
You know, it seems kind of ridiculous when typing it all out like that. Were the TV people lying to me? Can’t be; now excuse me, I’m going to tell my employees to keep working after clocking out and use the savings to buy several blocks of housing and rent them out at high rates. Their poor time management is not my problem.
Immigrants own Chase Manhattan?!!?!
Damn, lern somethin’ new errday …
If they really wanted to change regulations they’d push changing zoning regulations in cities to allow building anything other than detached single family housing. That would be totally reasonable and help alongside tax incentives. But I have a feeling that’s not what’s meant by changing regulations…
They said “making federal land available”. I take that as they want to sell off land in places like national parks to be developed.
Which, needless to say, is an awful idea.
I thinks that’s one of those state’s rights things where federal government can’t just tell a town how to zone it’s own land unless they’re taking it away from the town like for a national Park or something.
It’s actually an instance of super small government. Those regulations are dictated by city’s and counties not by states
The american dream isnt raising a family in an apartment, and a lot of people were raised on that dream.
We need to change the perception of condensed housing I think before there is support for that.
The best way to change perception of mixed use residential areas is having people live there.
The bigger issue is that these buildings don’t work by themselves. The biggest issue with suburbia is car dependency, which can only be countered by walkable cities and public transport (both of which require higher population densities)
I had another idea, if we reduced meat production we would get back land, could use that to make more houses. Sort of short term I guess. Or maybe its easier to plan a walkable city if you are starting with a blank slate.
What do you think of building new cities rather than retrofitting old ones?
Land isn’t the problem, even in suburbia large commercial complexes fail all the time or rich people get some grand ambition to build their perfect city outside of the existing one. For example Las Colinas outside of Dallas. Or Rosslyn outside of Washington DC. These were planned in one go to be the ideal future of urbanism at their respective times, and there are many other examples beyond these. The issue lately if the local opposition is small or poor is zoning requirements and parking minimums drastically increasing costs.
Unless those requirements and costs are entirely padded numbers, they are there to handle the amount of cars people will be using right?
How do we reduce car usage if we can’t make walkable cities because of cars?
Before you can start to change public perception it needs to be legal to build densely. Parking minimums and a variety of other commercial building code regulations make this much more expensive in the US, all while the people nearby in single family homes fight any new builds due to their poor perception of condos and apartments. Just removing the stigma is only one part of the equation.
Which part do you think has a larger effect, the regulations or the stigma?
My perception of dense housing is smelling cigarettes and weed and hearing fighting, dogs barking, loud exhaust, and loud bass for hours on end.
I think we change the perception by enforcing rules to keep people from disturbing others peace at home. Make it a reality that dense housing isn’t a worse experience. That isn’t currently the case.
I’d be much more apt to go back to dense housing if I was confident that my complaints would be heard and actioned up to and including evicting the offenders (after many complaints and no corrective actions taken). But I have never heard of such a place.
Ive heard that might be a materials issue. The apartment I stayed in had great sound proofing. I think its just lazy cheap builders, or whoever commissions their buildings.
I have no issues with my neighbors to either side of me. Either they’re quiet or the walls separating us are decent enough to block it.
My issue seems to mostly come via the windows. Even closed, I can hear far too much.
I should clarify my original comment - I’m currently living in a townhouse (first time) and we’re already trying to sell to get the hell out of here and back into what we’re used to, a single-family home. I now understand why people hate them so much. I should have known from my time living in an apartment when I was younger.
I hate any financial assistance that doesn’t address the root cause, because all it is at that point is more tax and wealth transfer to the rich.
That’s the feature of these issues, there is no incentive for people “fixing” them to end the grift.
$25k down payment assistance where one bed one bath houses are routinely nearly half a million is a joke tbh.
Honestly I really don’t think that’s effective either. Giving people more money to buy something generally just means the market will respond by charging more money for that thing. The assistance will effectively get “priced in” given time.
It’s honestly the weakest part of the Harris/Walz platform for me. Trump plan is utterly insane top-to-bottom though, and they’re just using immigration as a scapegoat here, which is… something.
Makes sense to me. 25k is an incentive to buy a home, not an incentive to build one or sell one.
Make owning multiple homes more expensive. Fine landlords for unfilled housing, and make the fine is proportional to maximum advertised rate for the unit. Now they have an incentive to keep their units filled, and keep from jacking up rent.
I do think it can help those that are prepared and on the border of approval. But those that aren’t it ain’t gonna do shit.
Yeah, I don’t think the idea is a total non-starter, but I’d definitely like some details. How will this be limited to ensure it’s not being used by investors and house flippers? How will this be ramped down once the housing market settles to avoid it being permanently “priced in”? How will this be paid for and how much will it cost?
Unfortunately American political debates right now are more of a pissing contest about rally turnout than they are about actual policy details, because that’s what sways the voters on the fence for some reason.
I started getting tons of calls because I was approved last year when she announced this. So if it can get me into something I want to know. But it just might be bullshit.
That’s not everywhere in America. That’s not even most of America.
And while it’s an interesting discussion, it’s not the point of the post.
it’s not the point of the post.
Yes we know the point of the post is “Democrats good” so it sounds off topic to you when people push back against that. But $25k of down payment assistance is fucking pathetic and we need to be calling this shit out.
The democrat solution isn’t “get 3 more chairs” it is “provide the 7 kids who are already in chairs some extra materials to build more chairs for themselves”
Bullshit. Not that you would know.
Try using your words. What the fuck are you even trying to say?
This post is seriously sad though. Here you are enthusiastically disseminating propaganda for some of the most soulless, most evil humans who have ever lived just because they pretend that they’re better than their buddies from two doors down the hall
Try using your words. What the fuck are you even trying to say?
You’re fun. We should hang out more.
it’s down payment assistance, and down payment is typically around 20% of the value of the house. $25k would fully cover the down payment of a $125k [probably trashed] house, or 1/4th of the down payment of a half-million house
I’m curious how many houses/apartments are unused in the US, acting as a speculative asset and if building more is even necessary.
Building more is necessary if the available housing is not located where appropriate employment is located. Thus, the gross number of available homes isn’t a good metric to use for determining the actual need for new construction.
If enough more houses are built that prices stop increasing faster than inflation, housing will no longer be valuable as a speculative asset. Building more houses BOTH makes housing immediately available, and changes the market forces in a way that pushes out investors squatting on un-lived-in units.
As usual, the blue choice is obviously much better than the red choice, but only in comparison to this bat shit crazy red choice. On it’s own, the blue choice is still rather bad.
I’m starting to think that Republicans just exist to make the bad Democrat options look always better in comparison.
If you have one side that is pushing into the crazy territory really hard, the public discourse will change and shift in a way, that a moderate position will be perceived as extreme. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Your comment made me think of this spoken piece at the end of Anti-Police Aggro by Oi Polloi.
“Revolution isn’t a thing that happens overnight. It’s not a thing that - the orgasmic storming of Buckingham Palace and everything’s all right in the morning, we’ve got a revolutionary society. We’ve got to realize that as things get harder - when we have a revolution, when we’re headed towards a revolution things’ll be harder still - and when we’ve obtained our revolution it doesn’t stop - it continues on and on and on and on - It continues on until WE are the moderates. Right? When we are the moderates that’s when we have a revolution. When ordinary people say “Anarchists? Ah, fuck - they’re a load of fuckin liberals - they don’t believe in revolution at all, ah, fuckin hell they’re useless, like, you know” - Yeah, that’s what I wanna see. That’s what I’m fuckin’ fighting for.”
Well said. Yes, this is what self-identified-“leftists” miss out on. Their dismissal of Democrats is based in a child’s fantasy of politics. In the real world, you have to win the election, move everybody up one, win another election, move everybody up one, win another election, etc. In the meantime, republiQans kick everybody back at-least-two either way, and the cycle repeats.
Magical leftist thinking says we all vote for gay space communism and tomorrow BAM it’s replicators and free energy. Alas. There exists a timeline where that is at least sort-of-possible - but we ain’t in it right now.
Yup. Lasting change requires shifting the Overton window to the left. Otherwise, you get something like Iran.
I have one “weird” and “radical” proposal: public housing to rent. Not to but. At affordable price. That would lower the price of every house, flat, …
Those who live in apartments, and only they, should collectively and equitably own the building entirely.
Put the squeeze on the landlord and then collectively make a low-ball offer.
In the SF Bay Area, it costs over $1 million just to build one “affordable” housing unit.
Good thing the fucking country is bigger than the SF bay area then, isn’t it?
It’s sold at that price. I’m sure it doesn’t cost that much.
That same article says it clear: the lion’s share is the taxes part, not the house. If there was a public program, the taxes should be far lower. After all, that project wouldn’t be a for profit one.
No it doesn’t say that at all.
“While hard costs have surged during the pandemic, thanks to complications like diminished trade and supply chain issues, Alameldin said San Francisco has long been “practically infamous” for driving up soft costs with long, volatile planning debates.”
That “practically infamous” means is not just a tiny part of the price.
They ban abortion and then don’t want those babies/future adults housed. Classic.
Because being poor, uneducated, and unloved with a chip on your shoulder makes you a likely Republican voter. I would bet the whole farm that unwanted children are far more likely to grow up to vote Republican, and I think that’s one of the primary reasons they fight against abortion, and any other policies that increase education and security for children.
