• CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Yup, and housing shouldn’t be an investment. It can be affordable, or an investment, not both.

    • iopq@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Then you should support less zoning restrictions and lower development fees to increase the availability of housing.

      • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I do? But I also support laws that heavily tax owning secondary properties. Building more houses is not helpful if they just get purchased by landlords.

        • iopq@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Landlords follow market pricing, so if there’s enough housing the prices go down. Landlords are not the reason rent is high

          • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Landlords are not the reason rent is high

            If being a landlord is profitable where do you think that profit comes from? Logically landlord’s need to be making housing more expensive so they can get their cut.

            • iopq@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Return on investment. Not everyone has money to buy a house. Home prices being high keeps rents high. Increase housing supply and it will resolve the issue

              • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                And where does this return on investment come from?

                To put it another way: if a law was passed that owning a property you don’t live on is going to become illegal, there would suddenly be a lot of cheap property on the market.

                • iopq@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  It comes from owning an investment. The stock market has similar returns to the real estate market.

                  But the real estate market doesn’t need to keep going up. For example, after the increase in supply of housing in Austin, the prices are down 16% off the 2022 peak

                  If this could be replicated for the whole country, it would improve the situation immediately.

                  I don’t understand the law you’re proposing. Would it apply to hotels? Do you need to live in the hotel you own? Apartment building? Hot spring resort? Ski lodge?

                  • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                    1 year ago

                    It comes from owning an investment.

                    Only if they’re selling the house. Owning builds equity but you can’t live off that unless you sell the asset to get access to the money. In order to live off of it the profit has to come directly from the renters.

                    I don’t understand the law you’re proposing.

                    It was a hypothetical to prove a point, not an actual proposed law. I would propose a significant tax increase on any residential land a person owns but doesn’t live on. This would have no affect on hotels, resorts, lodges etc. because there is a well defined difference between commercial and residential. This would affect apartment buildings by heavily encouraging the owner to live in one of the apartments, which would also encourage them to keep everything in the building running smoothly.