[anamax]

What definition of "investment properties" are you using?

Does someone who rents two houses count as "investment properties"? How about someone who owns a complex with 50 units? How about a corporation that owns a complex with 500 units?

[Arainach]

A residence which is both:

1) Occupied at least a certain portion (let's say 10%) of the year

2) Occupied by the owner at least twice as often as occupied by non-owners

Can be considered a personal residence in my book. Anything not meeting this is an investment property.

[anamax]

Under that definition, almost all rental residences in the US are investment property, and thus would be banned under the proposal.

Consider a friend of mine who owns two houses. If he lives in one, the other will be "investment property" if he rents it a significant fraction of the year and thus banned. He can't move back and forth to avoid that because there are only 12 months in the year and it takes at least 8 months (per house) to satisfy the "twice as often" requirement.

The only way out is for him to leave the second house vacant the vast majority of the year. That pretty much defeats the purpose of owning a rental and it means that someone who'd want to rent is out of luck.

[Arainach]

What is a rental property if not an investment property? You are renting with the explicit goal of getting more returns (rent/equity/appreciation) than your costs.

Owning property for the purpose of renting it has serious negative effects on communities and society. Communities thrive when people live in them and value them, not when random people come for a few days, abuse the commons, and leave for somewhere else. If not banned, I'm all in favor of heavy regulation and taxation of investment properties, with a maximum number allocated as a percentage of the available housing. If renting becomes unpopular, people will actually have to sell and free up inventory, dropping prices.

[anamax]

I appreciate that you're honest about wanting to ban renting residences.

That said, I see renting as a good option for many people.

For example, I didn't have the money to buy after college so I rented.

Even if I could have bought, I probably wouldn't have because I was reasonably sure that I wanted to move in a year or two.

If there weren't rentals, what should I have done?

[totony]

>For example, I didn't have the money to buy after college so I rented.

I think that's the main issue. One of the reasons housing is so expensive is because it's an avenue for investment/infinite growth. Maybe if you didn't have to outbid people that think houses are invesment you could have bought a house/afforded a mortage.

Land scarcity/livable land is the thing that makes housing expensive. Allowing people to use that to make profit is unethical.

[Arainach]

Apartments are perfectly fine and should be encouraged, as they're dense and serve an important purpose.

That's not what's happening with AirBnB. That's turning the limiter supply of ownable property (condos and houses) into short term rentals for the owner's profit at the community's expense.

Also, I never said that outright banning is the proper option. Heavy taxation on strictly limited rental options (liter to a level where the community is still able to thrive) is also reasonable.

[stouset]

Yes, we understand that AirBNB is having negative effects on communities. Perhaps something should be done. But banning “investment properties” in a way that de facto bans rental units is not only a nonstarter but also a terrible idea in general.

[anamax]

As I pointed out, your "residences can't be investment properties" rule bans apartment houses.

If you intended to talk only about very short-term rentals, you should have made that clear a couple of messages ago.

[jamil7]

I thought the definition was fairly clear and agreed upon?

[anamax]

It's curious that you imply that "everyone agrees" on the relevant definition but you didn't classify my examples according to that definition or say that investment or not depends on other things.

Of course, my examples are intended to show that there is no "clear and agreed upon" definition.