[briandear]

> administer the market

That’s a scary idea. There are massive unintended consequences to such a strategy of reducing the benefits of “absentee” ownership. Almost every private rental property in existence is the result of absentee ownership. A move to disrupt that would result in a dramatically reduced supply of rental properties. Not everyone has the resources, credit or responsibility to own their own home. The financial crisis of 2008 was trigger by a whole bunch of people buying when they shouldn’t have. The places where people try to “administer” the market either through aggressive regulation or capping rents through rent control have the most inefficient and expensive markets.

[bufordsharkley]

It's interesting that you jump to "aggressive regulation" or "rent control" instead of the solution that has close to full consensus from the economic profession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

[scythe]

LVT is a good policy but it doesn't make land ownership a bad investment. It just tends to decrease the price of land, which is not usually a problem because land is not produced by people, unlike other securities.

[bufordsharkley]

The reason that land is a good investment is precisely because of future land rents that a land buyer expects to receive.

If these land rents are instead paid towards a tax, how wouldn't this make land less of a good investment?