Rental has its place, there have been plenty of occasions in my life where rental suited me better than ownership. Regulation and enforcement of said regulations would do a lot to protect people in this situation.
How do you handle situations where people want to live temporarily in houses? An example would be a traveling nurse that doesn’t want to be in an apartment building.
May people prefer to rent houses over owning one. Many of them I speak to tell me they want nothing to do with house maintenance and upkeep and they prefer to rent so that they don’t have to think or worry about any of the repairs. They like being able to just call the property manager when the hot water stops working or when their kiddo accidentally breaks a window.
Everything you are saying is true, and even with those facts noted, some people still prefer the convenience of renting and some like the carefree aspect of not having to be responsible for the upkeep.
Well that’s all well and good until every house rental in your area starts requiring you to either do the maintenance anyway, or pay for it. So you get to pay for the house, and you get to maintenance the house, but you don’t get to own the house.
I’ve watched things change in just the last 5 years where renting a house means you have to maintenance everything that isn’t structural, including lawn care, but you don’t own any stake in the house, and you can forget about putting up a shelf or a new coat of paint. And now that you’re paying the mortgage and taxes on this house, you’re paying for all the utilities for the house, and are fixing all the problems that occur with the house, the landlord gets to send people over whenever they want to that get to go inside your house and look around without you being home just to make sure you’re taking care of it the way they want you to. And then when you leave, either because you found a better deal, or the landlord just doesn’t feel like renting it to you anymore, you get the pleasure of walking away with nothing.
Why do you care so much how someone else chooses to live their life? Some people want to rent and it’s no one else’s business to make them do any different.
If you want to own a house and a buy a maintenance contract go for it.
I personally wouldn’t wish dealing with a home warranty company claim on my worst enemy. They are all scams geared to deny claims.
Maybe because corporate ownership of houses is taking over the market and driving people out of home ownership? Have you missed the news of the last many years? And because there is limited number of houses in reasonable distance (aka it’s not like selling widgets).
that’s significantly less bad of a problem than the current issue of no one being able to afford homes. that nurse might just have to go for the apartment… that’s really not that big of a deal.
I understand your sentiment, but it took all of a half second to think of one scenario that would cause problems in the proposed system.
As frustrating as it is to hold off on a good-intentioned change, it is far more detrimental to charge headlong without considering the consequences. The systems that are in place now are there for a reason. Some of those reasons are greed and corruption, but others are because of they fulfill people’s needs. It would be stupid to build a new system to address the greed side without addressing the need side.
But if you can’t summarize the solution to a complex societal problem with a history to it into a single simple sentence that can be used as a punchy “hot take”, clearly you just don’t want a solution! /s
Way too many people in the world who are more willing to believe that things suck because everyone’s too stupid to try the “obvious” solution, instead of the fact that most societal issues are icebergs of complication and causes.
Rental property should be publicly owned. Landlords shouldn’t be a thing.
I can see there being exceptions if you say own a property but have to move swiftly elsewhere and can’t/don’t wish to sell it, in such a case letting it out makes sense.
No, no exceptions. Once there are exceptions people will abuse them. Even if you inherited your parents property if you already have one you should have to pay extra taxes on it from the day they die until the day you sell it, period. Any person, family, business, or corporation should only own one property, zero exceptions.
It can literally take years to sell a property even if you want to sell it. I don’t think it’s fair to penalize people who are unable to unload an asset and I also don’t think it’s fair to expect them to just give it away.
Even if you inherited your parents property if you already have one you should have to pay extra taxes on it from the day they die until the day you sell it, period.
This seems needlessly callous to me. At least give them a 6-12 month period to clean up, do repairs, and sell the house. Not everyone that inherits a house is making enough to pay increased taxes right out the gate like you’re proposing. Also, from personal experience, cleaning houses of deceased relatives tend to require a bit of work to get ready for selling and is incredibly emotionally draining. What you’re proposing is going to be extremely painful for the people at the bottom, and emotionally wracking, since as soon as a loved one dies you’re now under the gun to sell.
I agree though, second homes should be extremely heavily taxed. I just think we need to approach it with an even hand and make sure that we are targeting big corporate rental agencies and the very wealthy, and not some family that just lost their parents/grandparents. Something about targeting those people seems needlessly aggressive and not really the intention being discussed…
Yeah that’s not far off from some folks’ actual unironic opinions so the /s is unfortunately not obvious, lol. The Poe’s Law situation isn’t even hypothetical in this one.
Dude from Ukraine was telling me that most people own condos.
He was weirded out that the vast majority of people in the US don’t have a vested interest into their neighborhood simply because they believe they won’t live there for long.
People who own second and third homes aren’t even the issue. It’s mega corps that literally own tens of thousands of homes each. A better way to go about it is to just progressively tax people more per home. That second home gets taxed at the same rate but any home after is taxed way way way more. If someone can still afford it then that’s fine, just more tax money coming in. That and don’t let corps own rental properties.
So what is your proposal? If anyone doesn’t get any second houses how it will help other people? Let’s say it will make houses cheaper. How is it any good? Lot’s of building companies will go bankrupt in days after announcing such law. Can you imagine what type of chain reaction it will start? Also, people can easily need second homes. 1- For where your work is at. 2- For where your homecity is at. 3- For where you are spending your holidays at. It’s nice of you to be thoughtful of poor people/people in need but socialist dreams are just what they are. Dreams. It’s much easier and logical to make another cake then trying to split a small cake to hundreds of pieces equally.
First of all, I did not suggest that we flip a switch tomorrow that enacts a law restricting home ownership. It’s something we can work towards.
But if you think that it’s reasonable for someone to own a house where they work, where they originally were from, and where they want to vacation, then quite frankly I don’t think we are ever going to see eye to eye.
But if you think that it’s reasonable for someone to own a house where they work, where they originally were from, and where they want to vacation, then quite frankly I don’t think we are ever going to see eye to eye.
I think there’s an “OR” there, not an “AND”. Or are you refusing to see eye to eye with someone who buys a house somewhere because their career moved, then chooses to keep the old one because they were able to rent it? If that’s the case, why?
Also, if it could conclusively be shown that keeping people from having a second home wouldn’t affect homelessness (which I suspect is true), would you still want to prevent ownership of a second home? If so, why? Just want to stick it to the middle class?
I’m sorry, but considering the top 1% has more than twice wealth of the entire bottom 99% combined, it seems counterintuitive to pass radical reforms that have a larger effect on the lower 99% than the top 1%.
I mean, if I were filthy rich and that kind of thing passed, I would just deed out a single plot of land with a 100-mile or more strip between two 100-acre squares (probably work with other 1%ers to have a co-op of that thin strip of land) and I’d get away with having as many houses as I wanted.
But someone like you or me finds a good price on a little 800sqft second house close to work saving time, money, and environment on commuting? Banned?
are you refusing to see eye to eye with someone who buys a house somewhere because their career moved, then chooses to keep the old one because they were able to rent it?
Yes.
If that’s the case, why?
I will kindly direct you to my very first comment in this thread. Cheers.
I will kindly direct you to my very first comment in this thread. Cheers.
Your first comment did not include a “why”. But you also don’t seem to want to engage. Just throwing out a horrific idea on purpose to troll? I think I’m going to presume you’re acting with self-awareness because I don’t want to insult your intelligence.
So you do you. I’m out. Not like what you’re suggesting will ever happen for people to lose sleep over it.
In Texas, your property tax is already somewhat two tiered. Your first home is taxed as a homestead and you get an exemption on part of the property tax. If you own a second, third, etc you have to pay the full amount and the annual increases are not capped. Im not 100% sure on the specifics as I don’t own more than 1 though.
Your not homestead house will be ~$2,000 higher in taxes than if it were not homestead. Exemption is up to $100k I believe, so I’m going off roughly 2% of exemption for additional taxes.
At some point the taxes would be so high that nobody could afford to rent and the owners would lose money forcing them to sell. Which is fine. Just gotta make the taxes higher for more than x houses.
Not sure if you actually meant logarithmic or exponential. An exponential tax rate would mean that the more you own the next unit of value would be a lot more in tax, while a logarithmic tax rate would mean that the more you own the next unit of value would be a lot less in tax. See x2 versus log2(x) (or any logarithm base, really). The exponential (x2) would start slow and then increase fast, and the logarithmic one would start increasing fast and then go into increasing slowly.
We already do this with a homestead exemption in Texas. Problem is, all the rent houses don’t qualify for the tax break, so the tax burden is passed on to the renter market / the tenants.
Surely in the 21st century we can engineer a system in which the moving party is allowed a time period to settle in and sell the old property. We must have the technology and manpower to do this meagre task.
No one gets a second home until everyone has their first.
Rental has its place, there have been plenty of occasions in my life where rental suited me better than ownership. Regulation and enforcement of said regulations would do a lot to protect people in this situation.
Rent apartments. Own houses.
*Since some people really need every combination addressed: Rent/own apartments. Own houses.
How do you handle situations where people want to live temporarily in houses? An example would be a traveling nurse that doesn’t want to be in an apartment building.
May people prefer to rent houses over owning one. Many of them I speak to tell me they want nothing to do with house maintenance and upkeep and they prefer to rent so that they don’t have to think or worry about any of the repairs. They like being able to just call the property manager when the hot water stops working or when their kiddo accidentally breaks a window.
When the kids breaks a window, they still have to pay. They just don’t have to source it, which means they might not be getting the best deal.
Plus, most landlords leave things till the last minute or make it such hard work for the tenant to report it, they don’t bother.
The maintenance is built into the rent, so they’re already paying for it, just not getting the best deal and losing the option to do it how they want.
Everything you are saying is true, and even with those facts noted, some people still prefer the convenience of renting and some like the carefree aspect of not having to be responsible for the upkeep.
I don’t see why they can’t own the property and pay a property manager of sorts.
Well that’s all well and good until every house rental in your area starts requiring you to either do the maintenance anyway, or pay for it. So you get to pay for the house, and you get to maintenance the house, but you don’t get to own the house.
I’ve watched things change in just the last 5 years where renting a house means you have to maintenance everything that isn’t structural, including lawn care, but you don’t own any stake in the house, and you can forget about putting up a shelf or a new coat of paint. And now that you’re paying the mortgage and taxes on this house, you’re paying for all the utilities for the house, and are fixing all the problems that occur with the house, the landlord gets to send people over whenever they want to that get to go inside your house and look around without you being home just to make sure you’re taking care of it the way they want you to. And then when you leave, either because you found a better deal, or the landlord just doesn’t feel like renting it to you anymore, you get the pleasure of walking away with nothing.
Then buy a fucking maintenance contract, just like landlords do.
Why do you care so much how someone else chooses to live their life? Some people want to rent and it’s no one else’s business to make them do any different.
If you want to own a house and a buy a maintenance contract go for it.
I personally wouldn’t wish dealing with a home warranty company claim on my worst enemy. They are all scams geared to deny claims.
Maybe because corporate ownership of houses is taking over the market and driving people out of home ownership? Have you missed the news of the last many years? And because there is limited number of houses in reasonable distance (aka it’s not like selling widgets).
Thanks for your reply, I hadn’t really thought of it this way before
A maintenance company is not a home warranty company.
that’s significantly less bad of a problem than the current issue of no one being able to afford homes. that nurse might just have to go for the apartment… that’s really not that big of a deal.
We can’t solve the problem for 99.99% of people because of this 0.0000001% person. /s.
I understand your sentiment, but it took all of a half second to think of one scenario that would cause problems in the proposed system.
As frustrating as it is to hold off on a good-intentioned change, it is far more detrimental to charge headlong without considering the consequences. The systems that are in place now are there for a reason. Some of those reasons are greed and corruption, but others are because of they fulfill people’s needs. It would be stupid to build a new system to address the greed side without addressing the need side.
But if you can’t summarize the solution to a complex societal problem with a history to it into a single simple sentence that can be used as a punchy “hot take”, clearly you just don’t want a solution! /s
Way too many people in the world who are more willing to believe that things suck because everyone’s too stupid to try the “obvious” solution, instead of the fact that most societal issues are icebergs of complication and causes.
Rental property should be publicly owned. Landlords shouldn’t be a thing.
I can see there being exceptions if you say own a property but have to move swiftly elsewhere and can’t/don’t wish to sell it, in such a case letting it out makes sense.
No, no exceptions. Once there are exceptions people will abuse them. Even if you inherited your parents property if you already have one you should have to pay extra taxes on it from the day they die until the day you sell it, period. Any person, family, business, or corporation should only own one property, zero exceptions.
Edit: /S. Thought that was obvious
It can literally take years to sell a property even if you want to sell it. I don’t think it’s fair to penalize people who are unable to unload an asset and I also don’t think it’s fair to expect them to just give it away.
Added a /s. I should have in the first place. My b.
No problem. It’s often hard to tell because of Poe’s Law.
This seems needlessly callous to me. At least give them a 6-12 month period to clean up, do repairs, and sell the house. Not everyone that inherits a house is making enough to pay increased taxes right out the gate like you’re proposing. Also, from personal experience, cleaning houses of deceased relatives tend to require a bit of work to get ready for selling and is incredibly emotionally draining. What you’re proposing is going to be extremely painful for the people at the bottom, and emotionally wracking, since as soon as a loved one dies you’re now under the gun to sell.
I agree though, second homes should be extremely heavily taxed. I just think we need to approach it with an even hand and make sure that we are targeting big corporate rental agencies and the very wealthy, and not some family that just lost their parents/grandparents. Something about targeting those people seems needlessly aggressive and not really the intention being discussed…
Yeah that’s not far off from some folks’ actual unironic opinions so the /s is unfortunately not obvious, lol. The Poe’s Law situation isn’t even hypothetical in this one.
Yeah, I realized that I should have known better.
Regarding the edit, I’ve seen people unironically post this take on lemmy.
Dude from Ukraine was telling me that most people own condos. He was weirded out that the vast majority of people in the US don’t have a vested interest into their neighborhood simply because they believe they won’t live there for long.
So have apartments operated by the government with strict regulations.
People who own second and third homes aren’t even the issue. It’s mega corps that literally own tens of thousands of homes each. A better way to go about it is to just progressively tax people more per home. That second home gets taxed at the same rate but any home after is taxed way way way more. If someone can still afford it then that’s fine, just more tax money coming in. That and don’t let corps own rental properties.
Nope, I said what I said. No one needs a second home. Lots of people need a first.
So what is your proposal? If anyone doesn’t get any second houses how it will help other people? Let’s say it will make houses cheaper. How is it any good? Lot’s of building companies will go bankrupt in days after announcing such law. Can you imagine what type of chain reaction it will start? Also, people can easily need second homes. 1- For where your work is at. 2- For where your homecity is at. 3- For where you are spending your holidays at. It’s nice of you to be thoughtful of poor people/people in need but socialist dreams are just what they are. Dreams. It’s much easier and logical to make another cake then trying to split a small cake to hundreds of pieces equally.
First of all, I did not suggest that we flip a switch tomorrow that enacts a law restricting home ownership. It’s something we can work towards.
But if you think that it’s reasonable for someone to own a house where they work, where they originally were from, and where they want to vacation, then quite frankly I don’t think we are ever going to see eye to eye.
I think there’s an “OR” there, not an “AND”. Or are you refusing to see eye to eye with someone who buys a house somewhere because their career moved, then chooses to keep the old one because they were able to rent it? If that’s the case, why?
Also, if it could conclusively be shown that keeping people from having a second home wouldn’t affect homelessness (which I suspect is true), would you still want to prevent ownership of a second home? If so, why? Just want to stick it to the middle class?
I’m sorry, but considering the top 1% has more than twice wealth of the entire bottom 99% combined, it seems counterintuitive to pass radical reforms that have a larger effect on the lower 99% than the top 1%.
I mean, if I were filthy rich and that kind of thing passed, I would just deed out a single plot of land with a 100-mile or more strip between two 100-acre squares (probably work with other 1%ers to have a co-op of that thin strip of land) and I’d get away with having as many houses as I wanted.
But someone like you or me finds a good price on a little 800sqft second house close to work saving time, money, and environment on commuting? Banned?
Yes.
I will kindly direct you to my very first comment in this thread. Cheers.
Your first comment did not include a “why”. But you also don’t seem to want to engage. Just throwing out a horrific idea on purpose to troll? I think I’m going to presume you’re acting with self-awareness because I don’t want to insult your intelligence.
So you do you. I’m out. Not like what you’re suggesting will ever happen for people to lose sleep over it.
People who have different world views than you are not automatically trolls. You’d do well to consider that.
It helps other people because more units available leads to dropping prices.
I don’t think there is any data to back that up.
1st year econ says something supply demand curve something something price. But that’s not true in practice
In Texas, your property tax is already somewhat two tiered. Your first home is taxed as a homestead and you get an exemption on part of the property tax. If you own a second, third, etc you have to pay the full amount and the annual increases are not capped. Im not 100% sure on the specifics as I don’t own more than 1 though.
Your not homestead house will be ~$2,000 higher in taxes than if it were not homestead. Exemption is up to $100k I believe, so I’m going off roughly 2% of exemption for additional taxes.
And all that higher tax cost is passed directly on to tenants
At some point the taxes would be so high that nobody could afford to rent and the owners would lose money forcing them to sell. Which is fine. Just gotta make the taxes higher for more than x houses.
Bingo. Most of these tax schemes will hurt the renter, not the landlord.
Logarithmic scale of increasing property tax rate
Not sure if you actually meant logarithmic or exponential. An exponential tax rate would mean that the more you own the next unit of value would be a lot more in tax, while a logarithmic tax rate would mean that the more you own the next unit of value would be a lot less in tax. See x2 versus log2(x) (or any logarithm base, really). The exponential (x2) would start slow and then increase fast, and the logarithmic one would start increasing fast and then go into increasing slowly.
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/7l1turktmc
basically tax it so much that anything beyond a third home is impossible to generate income from.
We already do this with a homestead exemption in Texas. Problem is, all the rent houses don’t qualify for the tax break, so the tax burden is passed on to the renter market / the tenants.
Yup. Housing is for people to live in, not for speculation.
How would you move? Need to time the buying and selling just right?
Surely in the 21st century we can engineer a system in which the moving party is allowed a time period to settle in and sell the old property. We must have the technology and manpower to do this meagre task.