[mcv]

All of this has already been thought about. In Amsterdam, for example, you don't own the ground that your home is on; you lease it from the city. Extending that lease is automatic, but technically, eventually everything reverts back to the city. And if you still need it, you lease it from the city again, for whatever the city now thinks the land is worth. That way the city continues to benefit from private development of the city.

[red_admiral]

Is this basically Georgism? Or is there some important distinction I'm missing?

[mcv]

I don't know. I'm not familiar with Georgism. It's called "erfpacht" in Dutch, and it's an old practice. Amsterdam is the only city I'm aware of that does it on this scale, but it's not unheard of elsewhere.

[andyjohnson0]

Google translation of the Dutch wikipedia page for "erfpacht" [1] translates it as "Ground lease" and suggests it is used in various countries including the Netherlands, about which there's a large section. I don't know how well the translation is w/r/t technical terms, but it reads ok to me.

[1] https://nl-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Erfpacht?_x_t...

[quickthrower2]

Is this like ground rent in the UK for leasehold property? This is a thing but usually a fairly insignificant cost as long as you keep renewing it with decades to spare.

[red_admiral]

UK ground rent goes to the private owner of the land though, which is mostly not the state. That's why there was a scandal recently when some landowners tried to impose a ground rent that doubled every X years - which the government has thankfully banned now.

[justincormack]

Except when someone invented ground leases that keep doubling a while back…