this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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Set some limits. Each person can own one primary residence and x number of secondary dwellings. Each additional dwelling is taxed at a higher rate than the one before.
People can still buy themselves a house and maybe another couple houses or condos for their family or investment.
But big landlords can't profitably buy up neighborhoods then crank up the rent. Or perhaps they can own them, but they're required to be non-profits and expenses and rents are highly controlled relative to income in the area.
It's a tough problem to solve though... Huge apartment buildings do have economies of scale that permit high density living.
And property owners who don't sell or develop their land at all because there's not enough incentive are a big problem in other parts of the world.
I really like the idea to tax each house successively more. And the money made from these taxes could specifically go to the government buying houses and turning them into social housing, or perhaps providing big discounts for first home buyers.
How about communal housing like in Austria? Not sure what's the proper name in English.
The trouble is that ratcheting up the tax on additional homes won't discourage anyone - the additional costs can just be passed on to the renters.
I'd suggest making it illegal for companies to own residential property for longer than 12 months.
Hopefully this would free up enough homes to bring prices back down.
"can be" passed to the renters, but in a free market someone else can do that for cheaper if it is their second home vs their 20th.
Each successive property is less and less profitable the more you have, compared to others that don't have as many.
But this is exactly the point - the market isn't free, it's being controlled. Primarily by companies that are buying up as many properties as they can.
As long ad there are at least two companies in an area, it will be less profitable for every extra property versus your competitor. That at least makes hoarding harder, as anyone can come in to out compete the two duopolies as their first will be way more profitable than the established's 11th. In turn, keeping prices down, scaled by the increase in taxes per extra property
Huge apartment buildings can still be done with individual units being owned rather than rented. They already exist - they're called condominiums.