| If experience has taught us nothing (and it hasn't [1]), it's that price controls simply don't work in the long term. That being said, capital controls are an entirely different beast. I've seen a variety of property systems in different parts of the world. In Sydney and Melbourne for example, it's hard to work out what anything will cost because the majority of properties are sold at auction. If there's a listed price at all, it doesn't tend to tell you a lot. I haven't seen the state of Switzerland in more than a decade but from my time there, they seemed to have a pretty reasonable system. It's one that basically discouraged property speculation in that short term sales of property attracted high, even punitive, rates of taxation. This could be close to 100% of the gain if held for under two years. There's two basic problems with global real estate as I see it right now: 1. Real estate is not a reportable asset under FBAR (the US foreign asset reporting framework to ostensibly clamp down on money laundering). As such, it's becoming pretty clear that real estate in the world's great cities are being used for money laundering; and 2. Real estate is being used to park vast amounts of foreign wealth. This is the case in Vancouver, London, NYC and a host of other places. Now if a bank takes money there is a lot of requirements placed on the bank, so called KYC (Know Your Customer) frameworks. In most cases this simply isn't the case with real estate. Why not? The true owner is hidden behind an LLC in any high end property sale in NYC. But (2) is the big one. I'm a firm believer that New York, for example, should be for New Yorkers. Not Russian and Chinese billionaires. Australia has a regime where property purchases by foreigners need to be passed by the FIRB (Foreign Investment Review Board). This typically means new developments. This is a somewhat flawed system as it means apartment buildings are built for and sold to foreign investors. This is killing inner city living. In NYC ultra-luxury condos are taxed really low, probably the lowest (as a percent of market value) of any property kind in NYC. The reasons for this are complex and NYC can only do so much to fix it because it's up to New York state to fix it and New York state has a whole bunch of SFH owners who will fight property tax reform tooth and nail. Property investors in general perform a useful service. Those houses and apartments you rent have to be owned by somebody. Kill that regime and where are people going to live? As an example, before about the 1970s, the UK had a virtually nonexistent private rental market. So I'm all for: 1. High valued properties taking a bigger share of the tax burden (as a function of property value); 2. Restricting to some degree who can buy property in a city; and 3. Taxing non-working property punitively. By this I mean a property that isn't either occupied (by the owner or a tenant) the majority of the year. This French system however of forcing someone to take the first offer is ludicrous. [1]: Reference to https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSimpsons/comments/2w2hjs/lisa_if... |
re Sydney and Melbourne (and Australia in general)
FIRB is easily circumvented (just buy properties using a company structure, no need to tell FIRB now)
Also regarding the $800k overage paid, this kind of thing has been happening in Australian east coast cities for a decade, due to our govt refusal to enact Anti Money Laundering funds transfer reporting rules for accountants, lawyers and real estate agents.
Australian govt of both flavours review the AML reporting rules every 2 years since 2006 but never actually change it to include realestate.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/09/us-cracks-down-on-r...
So now I live in Melbourne's east in a 1930's house last renovated in 1980 that sold for $2.2 million earlier this year and I rent it for $650 a week.
Previous owners bought it for $1.1 million 8 years earlier.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4867622/Melbourne-ag...