[tachyonbeam]

I agree that we need to stop treating houses as investments, because they're a basic fundamental need everyone has.

IMO, the problem could be fixed by having stricter laws prohibiting people who aren't residents from owning homes in another country. The requirement to become a resident is only to live in a country for over 6 months out of the year. Before that, you can just rent. We could also do things like limit the number of houses a person can own, and tax every house sale based on capital gains (even primary residences).

However, another problem we have is that interest rates are too low, and there isn't enough construction. Those are harder problems to solve. I really think we should build more, but we'd need denser construction as well. What do you do if you need land to build and there's already a house there, or someone already owns the land? Maybe it's kind of silly to have this idea that a person can "own" a piece of this planet we all live on, but we probably don't want to live in a communist country where the government owns every home and everyone is renting either.

As for interest rates, this is driven by our current economic policy and money printing. Maybe there's a way to somehow detach the interest rate used for mortgages from that in other areas. Surely, the government could print stimulus money and direct it where it's needed without interest rates being artificially controlled? The main problem with these near-zero interest rates is that they completely kill the free market. We keep zombie companies alive and we allow people to speculate on home prices endlessly. That's not natural. In a "true" free market, there's a natural equilibrium between offer and demand, both home prices and rents will fluctuate but they will balance out. My ex's parents bought a home in the 1970s, they only had high school education and were both making minimum wage. Said home is now worth over a million and out of reach of anyone not making 200K+ household income.

[whoisburbansky]

Something like this would effectively bar any person born in India who tried to immigrate to the U.S. in the last ~5 years from ever buying a house, unless they got married to a citizen. Broad strokes, I agree that residency requirements might help with reducing speculative investment, but maybe phrased in terms of how long you're in the country, not literally permanent residency as a legal threshold.

[tachyonbeam]

Yes I agree, I meant residency requirement, requiring that people live in a country for at least 6 months before buying a house, which could be done on a work or student visa.

[Cerium]

Not necessarily - for example in China foreigners are limited to owning one house. That limits speculation but does not provide hindrance for someone honestly trying to live.

[whoisburbansky]

What’s the “not necessarily” in response to here?

[Cerium]

That policies restricting who can buy homes will hurt immigrants.

[whoisburbansky]

In general, of course not, but GP originally proposed specifically forbidding non-permanent residents from buying houses. How is that not hurting immigrants?

[Cerium]

The policy does not have to be binary - you can forbid non-permanent residents from buying more than one home instead.

[throw737858]

In China nobody owns a house, it is just leased from government for 70 years.

[gowld]

"permanent" residency was your contribution, so there's no need to rebut it -- just don't propose it in the first place.

[tachyonbeam]

I edited my comment, I had written "permanent resident", when what I actually meant was just "resident".

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Landlording is not the problem.

Not everyone wants to own the place they live in. Lots of people plan on only being in a location for a year or two or four, and would rather just rent.

Some people would just rather rent indefinitely.

The problem is free handouts for homeowners in general.

The handouts entice the landlords, because for the last 30 years with the exception of 3 years (2005-2008) - housing on leverage has absolutely destroyed equities as an investment.

If you got rid of the handouts, this wouldn't be the case. Then you wouldn't have people like Blackrock gobbling up houses. They'd just be buying equities (the things that are supposed to be investments?) instead.

[redleader55]

Do you think the problem with money printing by governments is that people own houses in another country?

[OJFord]

So, also make holiday homes also illegal?

[tachyonbeam]

Maybe? They are a luxury for the upper middle class, and you could easily rent one the same way you rent an airbnb. Those holiday homes do need to belong to someone though, so I suppose it makes no sense to outright ban own multiple homes, but we could structure it so that resale is more highly taxed, particularly resale after a short time (i.e. people "flipping" properties).

[gowld]

This is already a solved problem: property tax + homestead exemption.

[datavirtue]

Ok...we need more houses so tax the hell out of developers?!

You need people to be able to build and flip properties without being taxed at all. The current taxes are carving a modest profit down to "not worth it" for a lot of people who could otherwise build and revitalize affordable housing.

More taxes on home sales results in less homes for sale.

[tachyonbeam]

IMO we should probably reduce taxes on house builders. Maybe even give them tax exemptions. Do what we can to increase supply.

Speculators wanting to buy a house, redo the kitchen, and mark up the price 20% 6 months later though? We could just let older, unrenovated houses be cheap. That opens up deals to new home buyers. You can redo the kitchen after buying the house if you really care. You don't need some middle man to do it and mark up the house.

[sokoloff]

Lots of people want to buy a move-in-ready house. Many don’t know much about construction, don’t know which end of a hammer to hold, can’t afford to have a house sit idle for 3 months while a renovation happens, and want to have the “Apple” experience for one or two hundred a month more in their mortgage payment.

That’s the service flippers provide, IMO. (I’m not one but I think they’re more helpful than not in terms of providing housing that owner-occupants want.)

[nitrogen]

There's flippers who truly restore a dilapidated house and help resuscitate a neighborhood, and there are flippers who put a thin veneer of newness on a rotting frame, bury the waste in the backyard, and then still try to charge the same as the first kind. We don't need more of the second kind.

[throwaway0a5e]

Or just tax them differently than a primary residence.

Stable and long term living arrangements are something the government should be incentivizing so primary residences should be taxed minimally.

Vacation houses and income properties should be taxed higher.

[rafale]

Maybe if it's not in the middle of an urban area the rules don't need to be strict.

[kaibee]

> but we probably don't want to live in a communist country where the government owns every home and everyone is renting either.

Yes, like the famously communist state of, checks notes, Singapore.

Sorry for the snarky reply, but I don't think calling the breaking of monopoly power/taxing unearned rents is communism.

[tachyonbeam]

Is that how it works in Singapore? I know in China you lease land from the government for 50 or 100 years. I do think it's important to be open to ideas, and I think there probably ought to be redistribution of wealth, particularly when it comes to land ownership. That has to be balanced with some minimum set of rights so that people can't be randomly evicted because people in power want that land, and that when people are evicted, they receive fair compensation.

[jnosCo]

It's not so different than how the US operates, except the lease is called a deed and it's term is indefinite. The government can still take "your" land away if you stop paying taxes or they need it for something else.

[alasdair_]

The most objectionable part of real-world communism is the authoritarianism that goes along with it. Singapore is extremely authoritarian.