[hehhehaha]

> The yimby argument has always seemed flimsy. Its strange logic is that speculative developers would build homes in order to devalue them: that they would somehow act against their own interests by producing enough surplus homes to bring down the average price of land and housing. That would be surprisingly philanthropic behaviour.

This is probably the dumbest thing I've ever read in my life. The real argument against yimby is that if the conditions for hold property is cheap, then landlords can afford to not be elastic with pricing thereby creating an inefficient market. The obvious solution is to increase property tax to force the hand of landlords. Another more radical way is to create legislation that gives the right to renters and/or gov to buy property at a certain price.

[redleggedfrog]

I assume that means, "The obvious solution is to increase property tax on rental properties to force the hand of landlords.

Otherwise you're taxing the potential and new home-owners who might be on the edge of being able to afford a house.

I'd pretty much go for anything like this at this point that would stop the ever widening gap between average income and average house price - and I'm a landlord.

[seanmcdirmid]

If you only increased property tax on rentals and not owner-occupied homes, it would basically be a tax increase on the poor (since they are competing for rentals, and landlords that would rent to them all have the same property tax increase). I would never go for it.

[gandalfian]

Rental income already pushes most private landlords into a high tax bracket. Probably at least 20% of rent goes straight back to the government in tax. If the tenant was paying mortgage payments or social housing rent instead then no tax...

[hehhehaha]

Much of the gap of debt to income comes from interest rates. I don't know what the best way to address this, but I think we can require larger downpayments for investment properties too.

[jdminhbg]

> That would be surprisingly philanthropic behaviour.

It is not through the benevolence of the property developer that we expect our housing, but from their regard for their own self-interest.

[mjevans]

Yes Taxes. I keep proposing that idea in threads like this.

Live somewhere 35% or more of a tax year*(or if sold/bought)? Counts as a primary residence and the low tax bracket. OTHERWISE it's a rental and will be taxed _hard_. Even if unoccupied.

[floor2]

Taxes should be used to pay for government services, not as arbitrary attacks on people you don't like.

Also, raising taxes just raises costs for renters. The solution to housing affordability is building more housing. Align the market incentives to build more housing, don't try to fight against market forces.

[hehhehaha]

>Taxes should be used to pay for government services, not as arbitrary attacks on people you don't like.

Land taxes are not arbitrary, it's a way of generating revenue from the single most important shared resource.

> Also, raising taxes just raises costs for renters.

Landlords usually have more pricing elasticity than renters, therefore taxes will have a depreciating effect on housing prices.

> The solution to housing affordability is building more housing.

Don't disagree

> don't try to fight against market forces

Increasing supply and using supply more efficiently are both important

[hehhehaha]

Yes, another piece of the puzzle is that the government, (Fannie/Freddie) should not be loaning money for investment properties.

[ethanbond]

Land Value Tax achieves more with less compliance overhead and no loopholes (hiding land is hard).

[throwaway243243]

The problem is that moving is economically inefficient and a large part of the population will be priced out and have to continually move so you need some hysteresis.

[hehhehaha]

Moving is extremely economically efficient. Older people should not live close to the financial district, people with kids should cluster around schools and playgrounds, people without cars should live closer to transit, etc, etc

[throwaway243243]

Real estate agents take 6% and that's before fees and the cost of movers. This is not an insignificant economic cost.

[ethanbond]

Sorry is "real estate agents need their cut" an argument against moving, or an argument for reducing the power of real estate agents, who are pretty much useless for 99% of residential transactions anyway?

[_dain_]

land value tax, not property tax.

[ethanbond]

Absolutely. In Churchill’s prose: https://www.landvaluetax.org/history/winston-churchill-said-...

Landlordism is an absolute scourge.

[seanmcdirmid]

> land value tax, not property tax.

If you fund your schools with tax on property, the amount of money you need scales with the number of residents you have. So now you have to distribute those liabilities across land value rather than per occupied units, that could lead to some huge distortions (a 100 story apartment with 200 kids paying negligible taxes while a single family home paying for 200 kids while they only house 2).

[ben_w]

UK schools are funded from central government: https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/03/19/school-funding-e...

Local councils do collect a "council tax", but it's basically a fig leaf to disguise a poll tax by just enough that people don't outright riot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax_riots

And in practice, council tax is only about 55% of local council's funding, the rest coming from central government. And the councils do sometimes go (effectively, but not literally) bankrupt: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-66878229

[marssaxman]

How wealthy would a family have to be in order to live in a single-family house on a piece of land so valuable, so centrally located, that its value could equal that of the land hosting a massive high-rise? This sounds like a very progressive form of taxation.

[seanmcdirmid]

There is a lot of housing that is unimproved because the owners can't afford to improve it. E.g. you bought a long time ago, or it is used as low income housing now (conversely, in my neighborhood at least, the low income housing is older and less dense than the shiny new dense luxury apartments). The only recourse for that land is to convert it into a tower of new luxury apartments, gentrifying and pushing out whatever poor folks are housed in it now.

There are other ways to game this, there are always arbitrage opportunities when a tax isn't aligned with its expenses.