The ownership of homes by wall st. was always a terrible idea.
yeah, fuck tax benefits, make it illegal
Property tax should be 100% for third houses (there are legit reasons to own 2 houses - especially when helping a family member finance a home or inheriting property) and for any houses not owned by an actual human.
Give developers building a house 3 months to sell after completion. If it doesn’t sell in that time, it gets auctioned off to the highest bidder with no minimum price.
Also give a maximum construction time of like 2 years to keep them from leaving a door off or something and calling it unfinished until it sells for their inflated bullshit value.
Land zoned residential must be developed or sold to an individual human within X years. Empty land that’s zoned residential should be platted with a maximum lot size appropriate to the area to keep them from developing 1 house on a thousand-acre tract and selling it to someone who is trying to sit on the land as an investment.
Essentially, developers need to be forced to build and sell houses at a fair market rate they’re prohibited from manipulating.
also 100% rent tax for second rent and beyond.
you ask rent for one house, fine. maybe you invested in it, inherited it, whatever. maybe you have one house but don’t want to live in it so you have renters in it while you rent another apartment yourself, cool, you do you. you’re paid rent from one source, you pay regular rates. you put a second place for rent, sorry, all of it goes to subsidizing affordable (if not free) housing.
and because I’m a gracious and benevolent pretend lawmaker, you get to choose which single place you get to pay the regular rates for. all the rest of your places get 100%.
market rates can also be enforced with flexible tax rates:
if the market is 100 and you ask for 100, you pay X.
if you ask for 200, you pay X + 100.
if you ask for 300, you pay X + 250.
if you ask for 400, you pay X + 400. and so on.the government can easily make sure you get not only zero benefit from inflating prices, but actually take losses. if the rich cunts can pay negative taxes, they can handle negative net gains.
My one question with this is, what do you do for multi-unit apartments and such that aren’t condos? Yes, it’s corporate-owned. Yes, that has its own slime that needs to be cleaned up. But it’s also a reasonable way to increase housing density (meaning more housing and, if done correctly, less reliance on cars). Housing rentals do have their place in the world, especially when people only plan on living somewhere for a few years (college students, military, medium-term jobs)
How do you free up the housing market from landlords and investors while not screwing things up for people who would actually be better off renting?
simply decommodify housing, either by force or with aggressive taxation that makes it effectively poison to try to collect houses like these leeches do. once all the extra houses become poison, the government buys them for a reasonable price.
reasonable for the people, btw, not for the owners. then you provide affordable housing that pretty much acts as a rent, except instead of pouring money into the bank account of a random fuckwit you pay a little extra tax for it.
because it’s super affordable and always available, losing your home is now no longer a big concern. imagine the kind of power this gives people in the workforce alone. let alone general public health and mental stability.
you could have it as rent-taxes as long as you stay, where you can move out whenever, move in to another government housing or maybe buy your own and move there. or you could have the option to rent-until-you-own, where you pay taxes to live in a house until you completely pay it off, and then it’s yours, so long as you don’t own another home. basically like mortgage/credit but without banks and much cheaper installments and overall price.
Ehhh… Your first word was “simply” and that was followed by a 4-paragraph paradigm so different from what we have it’s bound to open many more cans of worms. I’m not sure it’ll be that simple
I’m sorry, we were knee deep in a situation already completely different than what we have and then you asked what about the benefit of renting. this is only one step away from what we were saying before. we already established that taxes should make owning homes untenable. next step is the government buying those extra homes and making them available for rent.
150%.
100% still let’s them sit on it and raise property rates.
I think this is maybe a tad extreme. There should definitely be diminishing returns for each additional single family home rented, but I propose something like an additional 20% per. So, 20% for the 2nd, 40% for the 3rd, 60% for the 4th, 80% for the 5th, etc. Nobody needs to own more than six single family properties.
My proposal, however, also includes that when we catch some asshat inevitably inventing shell corporations and LLC’s attempting to evade this, as if we couldn’t see that coming a mile off, we don’t tax or fine them.
Instead, we put them in jail.
Can we add on the penalty being forced to hike across the Mojave buck naked with no shoes.
Tax benefits for investors buying homes?!?!?!!??!
Who the FUCK DID THAT?!?!?
“housing market is really hard to fix guys”
Gives tax breaks to landlords
You won’t believe it, but they are also invested in Congress, and Congress knows how to pleasure shareholders.
Guess
Ummm. The investors I would guess.
Depreciation of assets are tax write-offs, I think.
enforce fair housing laws
Hopefully this includes not kicking out people who can still pay rent, just so the landlord can have themselves a weekend vacation cabin or higher-priced rental. And there should be a law forcing landlords to offer a rent-to-own option. Also, how about recalculating inflation to account for every expense that has gone up, so that the percentage a landlord can raise rent each year isn’t so damned high. While we’re being fair, of course :|
I agree with everything you said except for this:
And there should be a law forcing landlords to offer a rent-to-own option.
I generally don’t think there should be laws forcing individual citizens to sell anything they own. I could however be on board with government regulated and incentivized rent-to-own programs.
Owner Occupancy credit against property taxes. Sometimes called a “homestead exemption”.
Basically, if you live in a house you own, you pay a vastly lower property tax rate. If you own a house you don’t live in, you pay a vastly higher property tax rate on that house, because you can’t claim the exemption.
When we establish this, “landlords” stop “renting” and become private mortgage lenders. They sell their homes to their former tenants, or issue “land contracts” (rent-to-own arrangements), and enjoy the lower tax rate on the property.
If they foreclose or evict, they pay the higher tax rate until they get a new “buyer”.
I like the general idea but how does rent to own work for multi family properties, especially in larger apartment buildings? I know condos exist already but that requires an HOA or something similar to provide upkeep for the building/property. I also wouldn’t want to completely deincentivize renting because there are situations where it’s a better fit for people as long as they are not getting gouged or kicked out needlessly.
Maybe instead of a credit for occupying a property you own, add a tax on income from rental properties that is earmarked for the kind of infrastructure that an area needs to accommodate a growing population including mass transit. There would have to be some protections in place to prevent landlords from passing that cost directly to tenants but I’m not smart enough to know how to do that.
Alongside that, offer a tax credit for rent to own arrangements that starts small and gets larger as the tenant gets closer to owning the property. Successful transfer of ownership gets the original owner a credit equal to the difference between the taxes paid and credits received plus interest and the new owner gets a reduced property tax rate for their first year of ownership.
Is rent to own that common? Is it a viable option? I have heard of owner financing situations, but they are generally looked down upon (risky).
No. It’s extremely uncommon but the comment that started this discussion mentioned forcing landlords to adopt rent to own programs. Got me thinking about how cool it would be if that was a viable option.
That’s a good point, having that option could be good if it was supported appropriately.
have heard of owner financing situations, but they are generally looked down upon (risky).
Owner financing is far less risky than renting from that same owner. For both the seller/lender/landlord and the buyer/borrower/tenant.
That could be, I’m only familiar with the negatives but in reality I know little about that option.
how does rent to own work for multi family properties,
For duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes, so long as the owner lives in one of the units, the whole property is eligible for the owner occupant exemption.
I also wouldn’t want to completely deincentivize renting because there are situations where it’s a better fit for people as long as they are not getting gouged or kicked out needlessly.
Land contracts will replace rental agreements.
A land contract is (initially) a rental agreement. The rent price is the monthly rate of a 30-year mortgage. The agreement is recorded with the county, like a deed, and for our purposes, this tenant would be considered the owner.
If you walk away in the first three years, the contract never becomes anything more than a rental agreement. You forfeit any equity you would have built, but you can walk away without additional repercussion.
If you stay for three years, your previous “rental” payments convert to “mortgage” payments, and you gain equity in the home. That equity becomes your down payment on the mortgage, and the agreement converts to a purchase contract with a private mortgage from your landlord, with 27 years left on the mortgage.
With the tax system I described, landlords will be fighting tooth and nail to convert tenants to buyers under land contracts. Short-term tenants won’t see any significant difference, but long term tenants are helped into home ownership.
I like the general idea but how does rent to own work for multi family properties, especially in larger apartment buildings?
You get the reduced tax rate if you live inside the building. If the owner of an apartment building has to live inside the apartment building then the overall quality of the facilities is going to be better maintained.
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That does nothing to answer the question of how a single building with multiple occupied units could be converted into a rent to own property.
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In most states that have a program like this the property tax exemption is laughable compared to the average annual income from owning an apartment building with 10+ units. For example, in California you get $7000 towards your annual property taxes for living on property. The average rent for an apartment in San Francisco is right around $3500/month.
Apartments get converted to condos all of the time. I don’t necessarily agree about a rent to own mandate, but long term renters ought to see something back.
In the system we have right now the owners take the profit, keep the equity, and have very few (if any) constraints on how much they can charge. Modern software allows even small landlords to collude and price fix just like the big guys.
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Condos are deeded properties. Convert the building from apartments to condominiums, and use land contracts instead of rental agreements. Anyone who stays longer than the initial period of the land contract begins to gain equity in their property.
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The “stick” is the massively increased property taxes on residential properties, so that the exemption can be larger. I would say that San Francisco is an outlier, and should not be used as an example when considering a general rule. They will require special consideration.
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Maybe instead of a credit for occupying a property you own, add a tax on income from rental properties that is earmarked for the kind of infrastructure that an area needs to accommodate a growing population including mass transit. There would have to be some protections in place to prevent landlords from passing that cost directly to tenants but I’m not smart enough to know how to do that.
I think landlord income should be taxed differently from actual income. We tax people differently for investment income (and it’s lower). We could make up a separate category for this as well.
There is a tax where I live if you rent your place out, and it’s so common in my units that they just assume you are and have you prove you aren’t, but it was a whopping $60 a year. 🙄
I understand what you’re saying and I did feel weird typing that since I know there must be a better alternative.
Something has to give, though. In late June I had to leave a place I rented for 19 years and I’m still stunned. Idk how much of the house’s value we paid in rent, but it was a lot. And it wasn’t even a large home, just a small cabin few people would wish to live in. But there was nothing stopping the landlord from kicking us to the curb.
Idk how much of the house’s value we paid in rent, but it was a lot.
Definitely 80-100% of it.
Almost 20 years of renting, if all of that including the (almost certain) increases had been applied to the original mortgage you’d likely own it by now.
They charge you everything they’re charged plus add on a profit margin. That profit margin if applied to principle on a standard 30 year mortgage would’ve paid it off earlier.
Yeah, and it sucks, but what can I do but move on :/
Honestly, I don’t feel like landlords should even exist
Sure, maybe renting can still exist, as long as it’s cheaper and government run or something. I would much much rather give my rent to the government than some rich fuck who literally gets my money for free
Whether or not they should exist is basically irrelevant. They do and that’s not something we’re likely to see change. Also, sometimes renting is a better fit for people at certain phases of their life.
In exchange for a reasonable rent, a landlord is responsible for ensuring that the building is kept safe and well maintained and that any necessary repairs happen as quickly as is reasonably possible. What I’d really like to see is landlords being held accountable for failing to do so.
In exchange for a reasonable rent, a landlord is responsible for ensuring that the building is kept safe and well maintained and that any necessary repairs happen as quickly as is reasonably possible. What I’d really like to see is landlords being held accountable for failing to do so.
Most of the lack of enforcement is for obvious reasons (landlords lobby and in some cases run the government), but there’s also a practical constraint: individual renters in a building tend to litigate this individually.
It should be easier to either start up a class action lawsuit, or there should be a mechanism to “unionize” renters in large buildings automatically or something. Slumlords are a very real thing, and there ought to be a better way to litigate them out of existence.
You may have to redefine the legal term for landlord then, cause there are a lot of things that would count towards it on a legal level. For example renting out a portion of ones land for secondary use, an easy example is someone sticking a trailer on ones land and living there. Another two examples are closer to industrial but still count, renting land for livestock grazing and renting land for storage. Pretty sure they all count towards landlordship on a legal level.
It’s almost as if Harris knows how much Trump loves playing with his real estate
Her campaign so far has been a masterclass in trolling. Can’t wait for the next Truth meltdown to drop.
Vice President Kamala Harris will call for the construction of 3 million new housing units in her first four years in office, as well as a new tax incentive for builders that construct properties for first-time home buyers,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The housing initiatives are part of Harris’s emerging economic plan, which she is expected to address in a speech in Raleigh, N.C., on Friday. Rising prices have become a point of intense debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump.”
This is what kills me among many things about Republicans. Trump’s pitch is “BiDeN RuInEd EvErYtHiNg!” and his only policy is “deport everyone and give the heritage foundation whatever they want.”
Democrats actually have plans to attempt to fix the issues we have, whether self inflicted or not. Whether they can actually accomplish those plans is something else, but at least there’s a plan other than bitching “the other guy sucks so vote for me!”
Magoos act like we are the same with Trump, but that’s because it’s all fox news tells them and their feelings get hurt when we say how horrendous Trump actually is so they get defensive and rely on BoTh SiDeS!
Those are going to be some shitboxes.
The US built 30 million single family homes after WWII, and some people still live in them. Post war has its own architectural styles. The split level ranch came from that era.
Many of those same “shitboxes” built during that era are now on the market here in California for over a million dollars. 😆
How many cheap new homes have you been in?
I understand where you are coming from, but this initiative could come with regulations. It should come with regulations!
There won’t be quality regulations than mean anything. There are going to be a lot of profiteering developers lining up to build tanks housing as cheap as possible. If an inspection shows it’s too low of quality are they going to miss the target to rebuild or just let it through?
I’m not saying this isn’t good. Just saying it’s going to be “the projects”.
Compare owning some land and shitbox you can live in to being homeless or watching all the money you earn be taken and horded by landlords.
I’ll take the shitbox please.
What protections for renters? They basically have none. Let’s see some implemented!
Lol read the article for answers to your question
It’s a rhetorical question. It’s meant to underline how I think the protections are grossly insufficient.
Why won’t anyone think of the tax investors on wall st?!
THANK FUCK
It’s not social housing, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction
Maybe that helps, in general private equity or owners need a cap on purchasing rental housing units
Somehow it won’t get done in her first term but vote her back in and she promises it will get done in her second term. How do I know? Because every single president does the same exact thing.
Because every single president does the same exact thing.
What are you talking about?
Biden got about as much as he could get through a Republican controlled House and a filibustering Senate: a major COVID relief bill, a major infrastructure bill, and a major environmental reform bill.
Trump did a shitload in his one term:
- Replaced 3 Supreme Court justices and a lot of lower court judges who went on to overturn Roe v. Wade and Chevron, deliver a shitload of conservative decisions, and block a bunch of Biden executive actions (including student loan forgiveness, all sorts of COVID policies, and a bunch of economic regulations).
- Major tax cuts in 2017 for corporations and high earners
- Withdrew from the Paris accords and rolled back a lot of Obama EPA regs
- Made shifts towards privatization of k-12 education, including towards religious private schools.
Obama signed a bunch of stuff into law his first two years:
- Obamacare
- Universal healthcare for children under S-CHIP
- Student loan reform, creating public service loan forgiveness and much better repayment plans while cutting out private lenders who took all the upside with none of the downside.
- Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
- Repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
- Passed Dodd Frank, including the creation of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau
- School lunch reform
Bush campaigned on tax cuts and got them, and then got a bunch of other stuff in from his first term related to 9/11 and the aftermath: The Patriot Act, authorization for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, etc.
If anything, presidents are far less effective their second term than their first term.
What a terrible reply. I never said presidents don’t get anything done in their first term. Just pointing out how a lot of shit they campaign on doesn’t get done so they campaign on the same shit again.
And they’re telling you you’re wrong. Biden campaigned on getting stuff done and he got stuff done. Don’t project your pessimism onto everyone else, it’s not helpful
Well of course there are things that get done. I feel like I’m talking to a child right now. I thought when I switched to lemmy I wouldn’t have to explain every single detail in my comments, boy was I wrong. You guys do not understand and you’re arguing like you do.
Don’t be obtuse.
They provided you a ridiculous amount of counter points.Please go back to Reddit.
Counterpoints to something I wasn’t even talking about. I never once said presidents don’t get stuff done in their first term. They just listed stuff they did in their first term.
And yet this flawed process has still accomplished more than edgy cynicism ever has.
Most presidents get tripped up by Congress and the filibuster.
Only comment that makes any sense in reply to mine. This is true. I’m just saying they always campaign on the same shit that they can’t get done in their first term.
While you’re probably right, there really isn’t a better choice here. It is what it is.
I’m only voting for her because of her running mate.
I’m voting for both of them. Seems like a great team.
Yeah Walz is the kind of person I really want up there. It’s not just that he’s liberal(as far as our country’s standards go) but also the fact that he has a great track record on delivery.
I’d still vote anyways to keep DT out but you know how it is. It’s hard to be excited given how it feels that the Dems have a habit of wiggling their way out of delivering on important issues.
This is how politics work. This is neither new nor a deep critique.
Most people have too much mental load in load in their life. Politicians tie things to election years because people would forget what they did otherwise.
Don’t protect “renters”. The entire concept of “renting” needs to die in a fucking fire.
Instead, we need to jack up taxes on residential properties. Send them to the moon. $2000/yr? Fuck that: $2000/month.
But nobody actually pays these exorbitant rates, because we create an “Owner Occupancy Credit”. The tax rate is only high if the owner doesn’t live in the home.
What happens to renters? Do landlords jack up their prices to cover the increased property taxes? Or do they offer their tenants a private mortgage or a land contract, so they don’t have to pay the hiked taxes?
When they can make more money as a lender than as a landlord, they aren’t going to be renting anymore. Establish an owner occupancy credit, and “landlords” will be fighting tooth and nail to convert tenants into buyers.
(The actual tax rate should target an 85% owner occupancy rate. When more than 20% of the population is renting, the non-occupant tax rate is increased 1% per year. When less than 10% is renting, the non-occupant tax rate is dropped 1% per year. )
Nah, nonprofit state-run landlords (in countries which have them) are great, and strong protections for renters are good. I don’t want to buy a house, I move around a lot, don’t wanna deal with lawyers every time I move, don’t wanna be responsible for maintenance, I just want some basic level of security and not to be completely ripped off.
Why is 85% the magic number? Just because you say so? I do agree that increased property taxes are important, but there’s no reason not to also make rental contracts less exploitative.
Nah, nonprofit state-run landlords
We have those. They run “Section 8” housing, which, in my area at least, is substandard housing in high crime areas, because those areas have the cheapest housing, and that’s what the state buys. They also currently have a 6-year wait-list in my area. You only have a fixed time you can live there. There is means testing, and strict rules on who can come and go.
The problem isn’t actually the “state run” part, though. The problem is the market in which the state is operating. Whatever approach we take, we need to fix that market first, and that’s what I’m talking about.
I don’t want to buy a house, I move around a lot…
I don’t think you understand what a “land contract” is. It gives you the flexibility you need from a rental agreement, without imposing rent on long-term residents of a property.
If you are only going to be living in the property for less than 3 years, it is a rental agreement. It is an agreement that happens to be recorded with the county, like a deed, which allows them to consider you an “owner occupant”.
The real differences are if you decide to stay there longer than 3 years. Your monthly payment was calculated by assuming principal, interest, taxes, and insurance on a 30-year mortgage, which is usually what you’re going to be paying in rent anyway.
If you stay at least three years, the agreement becomes a sale contract; you become the deeded owner; your equity becomes the down payment, and your former landlord becomes a private lender with those pre-existing terms.
If you leave before 3 years, you forfeit your equity, and the agreement functioned identically to a rental agreement.
You still get to live like a tenant, and move around as you like. You can unilaterally abandon the contract for any reason during that 3-year period. For you, nothing changes other than the words at the top of the agreement. Words that are important to your “landlord” as it saves him a lot on taxes, but that are completely irrelevant to you as a “tenant”.
But, if you do change your mind during that three year period, and decide you do want to become a homeowner, you’re already well on your way.
Alternatively, Duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes are all single properties, where the owner of that property can live on site, making the property eligible for the owner occupant credit. The other 1-3 units on the property are available to rent out. If you really want an actual rental agreement instead of a land contract, that is one option.
How would you handle apartment buildings?
Making them all Condo’s possible I suppose but, there’d be a lot of poorly maintained buildings no one would want to actually own part of
Landlord has to live on-site. In what I fondly call “face-punching distance.” And can only collect a monthly salary equal to 3x the median rental price of all of the units in that building. Any surplus profit after paying utilities, taxes, and maintenance cost (to maintenance people who either also live on site or are at least paid 3x the rent of a median unit), gets refunded to the tenants.
I would strongly discourage landlording of more than 3 units by extending the owner occupancy credit only to 1-4 unit properties. Apartment complexes could be divided into multi-unit condos, with the extra units able to be rented out by the owner.
The owner of the building lives in the building and leases apartments to tenants who live in the same building as the owner.
Duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes could all have an owner living in one of the units, making the whole property eligible for the owner occupant credit, while the other units remain available for rent.
Bringing this back to your comment, suppose instead of dividing a complex into individual units, we divided it into a “quadplex” condo. A single property consisting of 4 units. The owner of that property occupies the quadplex, making the quadplex-condo eligible for the owner-occupant credit. 3/4 of the apartments are still rentable.
there’d be a lot of poorly maintained buildings no one would want to actually own part of
Somebody is making money off of those poorly maintained apartment buildings now. Better that somebody be someone who is actually part of the community (and thus motivated to improve the property) than a hedge fund manager living on the other side of the country.
NY has this. What you have described is the STAR tax credit. This credit only applies to school taxes (2-3k a year)
Yeah, many states have similar credits or exemptions for various purposes. From my brief research, it seems the STAR credit is not available to new homeowners. It’s only available to people who are grandfathered in. But, it works much like I describe: a credit for owner occupants.
Ohio has a “Homestead Exemption” allowing disabled and elderly homeowners to deduct $25,000 of the market value of their residence.
We can do the same thing for purposes of discouraging corporate and investor ownership of residential property, and encouraging occupant ownership.
it seems the STAR credit is not available to new homeowners. It’s only available to people who are grandfathered in.
You might be looking at the enhancement STAR which has more complex requirements. Here is the PDF for new homeowners and here is the actual eligibility page.
edit: OH you are looking at the STAR exemption vs the STAR credit. Yeah it’s basically the same thing. One is applied to your taxes before you receive your tax bill (and is being phased out since 2015) and the other is a direct deposit you receive. Same amount.
Ah, I see. Yes, I only did some very brief research to verify the concepts matched; I didn’t delve into the specifics.
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Promises mean dogshit in this day and age
You’re getting downvoted, but it’s true. They aren’t obligated to stick to campaign promises. And often don’t, or get hamstring by legal hurdles and/or congress.
Yep. And the further feasibly left we vote the more likely we are to see those kinds of things happen. It has to be consistent and it has to be the furthest left that can actually win.
She hasn’t promised anything. It just says she is supporting a proposal.
