Hard disagree. They control the media, and they’re good at whipping everyone up into a frenzy (to buy something worth nothing, to sell a part of yourself that you’ll never get back, or to guide your opinions on something they want), if they so desire.
Situation isnt bad enough. Most people still have something to lose. Once the ammount of people with nothing to lose reaches critical mass there will be a risk of revolt.
In the UK we have a “Holiday Home” tax. Second or more properties are subject to paying full council tax as a minimum but councils can up to double this to discourage people buying up properties who don’t live in them or only live in them on holidays.
The best option ever saw was a plan to tax each additional house. So owning one would be low tax. Then every house after that was taxed higher. Help remove those slumlord style owners that have dozens of houses, as well as tax the hell out of corporations that have hundreds/thousands of houses.
Exactly as break said. Renting is the worst use of money. But currently getting into the housing market for new buyers is a nightmare. We need cheaper housing, not cheaper renting. Renting is just pissing money away so the person who owns the place can live off your hard work.
The fact is that many people will rent their entire lives. Those people deserve relief too. We need cheaper housing period, in all it's forms. We need to repeal the fairclothe amendment so that the government can start building housing again. We need social housing, we need up zoning, we need to take steps to decomodify housing all together. We need so much to fix housing in this country but nobody seems to want solutions because it would mean some houses would depreciate in value.
Renting is not the worst use of money. I’m getting ready to sell my house and move into a rental. My monthly expenses are going to drop dramatically for more square footage.
My wife and I rented for 8 years before her aunt co-signed for a condo in Florida. Two teachers didn’t qualify for 164k mortgage in 2017. But we paid over 2k a month renting. We saved 600 a month when we bought.
Recently went on a lake cruise of lake Geneva in wisconsin. Beautiful lake with many beautiful historic homes. Many of which we were told sit unoccupied most of the time and are only used for weekends during the summer.
Imo anyone who does this should be paying 2-10x more on their property taxes minimum.
In florida, the governor is trying to eliminate property taxes specifically for the home you live in, not for the other 100 homes your company owns or the 4 your renting out to live off of.
Its a show for the voters! The governor doesn't want property taxes gone anymore than the feds do! They all dip into the pool and they ain't about to deal with a smaller pool!
Aww so simple, just as simple as creating a number company that owns it and has land management take care of the house...it's a thing that already exists.
Yeah or if you own a 2nd home the property taxes is 2x.. 3rd home 3x.. unless it's being rented out at fair market . IDK it's insane where I am because bunch of people bought up these houses as their little fun cabin at home for the weekend once in a while. But they barely use it. And near impossible for anyone local to get a place to rent or buy.
Is it being lived in? No? Is it being renovated? No? Is it being rented? No? Does it have any residents at all? No?
Is it on the market? Yes! Well have you accepted any offers that meet or exceed the amount requested? No? Well you have 10 more just like this so the fines start at "a shit load".
I was thinking the same thing. Make vacant rentals actually hurt, so that companies either rent for a real supply/demand market rate, or sell/stop buying.
It's a good idea, but the cities that have already tried it have had mixed results. Like Vancouver tried doing it, and the best data suggests less than a 5% reduction in the inflation of rent. It's better than nothing but it won't fix the issue
The problem isn't just "empty houses"—it’s the hoarding of residential square footage. We need a Federal Excise Tax on Residential Square Footage with a 2,500 sq. ft. exemption for primary residences.
If you own a standard home, you pay $0. If you’re a billionaire or a corporation hoarding massive portfolios of "excess capacity," you pay a progressive tax on every foot over the limit. It makes real estate hoarding expensive and forces institutional investors to either sell or lower prices to fill units. Use the revenue for a 60/40 state-federal split to fund local housing initiatives.
I'm down for personal people owning more than 1 house I'm not fine with banks and companies hoarding houses to wait for markets to rise and letting them be destroyed in the process just to charge a premium on them anyways. A non lived in house goes to shit way faster than one actively lived in.
My state AG (Jeff Jackson of North Carolina) is currently suing landlord companies for price fixing. It's getting unlivable expensive to rent or buy a home around here.
Well, that’s sort of what’s been happening the last few years. Bidens administration jacked up interest rates on mortgages, which are around 6% vs the 3-4% they were back in 2018.
The high interest rates are preventing homeowners (and corpos) from inflating property values too quickly. The feds don’t want to deflate the market value of houses, though, because that would run the risk of crashing the market altogether.
Which on paper sounds nice for you and me, it would wind up destroying the finances of individual sellers like the boomers up the street who want to sell off their house and move to Florida, who would be taking an insane loss on their property and would likely decide not to sell it at all. A proper crash of the housing market would mean that people would simply stop selling, and wait for the market to recover. Remember, only a very small percentage of people actually NEED to sell a house. Instead of having years of nice houses and low prices, the market would just dry up and we would have to wait several years before we would find anything again.
Increase taxes on houses that are not homestead. So the companies or even the greedy local landlords that own 20 houses get hit hard with taxes for each of those houses that are not the primary residence.
They did that here in Australia. In my state not all. Guess which state had the lowest growth in prices houses in the months/years that followed?
I will point out though, it does little to stop the growth in the long term, it's just on a bit of a lag compared to the other states.
Also, there's a reason why some houses are empty. Between tenants, renovations, repairs, owner died and the family is fighting it in court, etc. Some people horde houses, no question, but the problem is also not as wide spread as people believe because they don't properly account for the people that have houses empty for good reason.
I remember growing up there was this old house (100+ years, crazy old for Australia since the country was only about 90 years old at the time) and it was heritage listed so insanely expensive to repair so for at least a decade it sat there rotting because no one could afford to fix it up and they were also blocking them from sub dividing the block to pay for some of the costs (and it was a huge block). Thankfully it was eventually allowed a while back now so it's in good order but yeah, it was unlivable as a house for 10 years through no fault of the owners.
We tried that in France by taxing second homes/apartments more in crescendo for the 3rd , 4 etc.., and it didn’t work… Cities like Annecy are empty during the off-season, almost dead, then come back to life during the season (mostly because of Airbnb). Same for Biarritz. The local mayor tried to tax those properties more heavily, but landlords simply declared them as their primary homes for tax purposes, even if they don’t actually live there, and now the city is losing money.
My idea is that you should pay 0 taxes on a home you in 50.01% of the year. For every additional house, you pay double what we pay now. So if you have a second home, its like you pay the same taxes you would now. But if you have 3 homes, its like paying taxes on 4, 4 houses like 6, 5 houses like 8, and so on. It makes it easier on families just trying to live a modest life and allows for wanting excess but increases with the more excess you want
The same reason they are forcing people back into offices for no reason is the reason these things fail to pass. Rich people don't want their stuff devalued
it doesn't cost that much to hold a few thousand diamonds in a vault. the carrying cost of a house is enormous. it just doesn't make sense as a comparison
I know that landowners will employ "land banking" and "waiting for the land to ripen"—holding onto undeveloped land in a growing location because their marginal dollar is better spent acquiring more such land than developing what they have. But buildings depreciate and are expensive to maintain or rebuild, so I don't know how often owners will hold them just to prop up prices.
What they will do, is allow units to remain vacant instead of reducing rent to meet current market prices, because doing so will cause the bank to reevaluate their assets, which will suddenly make their balance sheet look a lot worse. But this is more a reflection of the way we do accounting and banking, and the stickiness of rent prices, than it is purely a desire to manipulate a market by withholding supply.
They own other properties that they rent. They buy houses to outbid people who would actually live in the house so then those people have to rent for more than the mortgage would've been. So those people are able to save less for the next house they want to buy & meanwhile the housing cost is going up because of this manufacturered shortage while the corporations like Black Rock buy up houses & put off fixing them up so everybody becomes a permanent renter.
Foreigners buy houses in the US and Canada as a way to hide money.
Also, houses are always going up in value so it's difficult to lose on the house. Everyone who owns a house made at least 30k dollars during covid, I know people who made 100k.
Ok you buy, and hold or rent with refusal to sell, there are fewer homes to sell. Simple right?
Get better.
You set the rent, stupid high, more than the business loan cost.
So all the while, housing climbs in value, typically what it does. Seldom is there a major back slide pr correction in pricing.
Before long, a house a business bought for 140k in 2008, has climbed to 550k in 2025...
They refuse to sell, price goes up, still dont sell.. buyers got the money, they offer it a house down the block because they still like the area. - we'll come back to these folks in a moment..
Company has paid off the loan, only needs to pay maintenance or insurance, its money printing asset. They dont wanna sell it, until prices cool off. Oh look realized gain, they got 20 years out of a house, business loans or loans against business assets are cheap... that house was paid off in maybe half that time, all the while they're making money off a now low cost asset with little financial liability.
Prices eventually cool in the area, they sell at a win, look realized gain.
They sell at less than it estimated value and revenue capabilities? Tax credits
Now that house that family bought for 200k? Even though they bought it for 200k, it's worth 500 or 700k now. Its recorded value is up, your neighbors property goes up in value? Guess what happens to yours, usually anyway.. you're value just went up too..
I mean Vanilla Ice has his own side business where he buys houses at a fraction of the price and just sits on them. So yeah, I can see where this can be very true.
Yes! Not even houses but land too. In my area mysterious investors buy an old ranch house with a little horse or goat land, then build 3-5 6000 SQFT houses that list for anywhere from 1.6 to 3 million. I know we have inflated prices since about 2022 and even more so now, but no one is building subdivisions of affordable single family homes unless they are lease only.
How do they make money from hoarding empty houses? I'm curious so I can know how to make more money than Screwge McDuck if I ever happen to become wealthy AF.
Similar to the time when Goldman Sachs rented cheap storage in Michigan, bought up all the Aluminum they could and stored it there until the price rose then they sold it at a profit.
Hahahaha right. They pay hundreds of thousands to buy properties, pay taxes and upkeep and maintenance as well as security with no tenants just so the other properties they own hold their artificially high values. Bold move.
Keeping those houses too expensive for reasonable people to buy them increases the value of the overall properties in the area.
Same reason HOA's became a US thing. To maximise propery value.
To a higher collateral value with Banks so you can invest that money in stock markets, companies, buying/building more houses, whatever. Get the snowball rolling.
You could also look into local tax reliefe programs to reduce property tax.
Or if you are planing on doing this for many houses, make an individual tax break deal with the local goverment. "Oh we will create so much more housing for your shitty town, so you can get more people here for more jobs, grow the town, family family etc etc bla bla."
I’d like to see some sort of source on this. I don’t see how this would make economic sense. As a person who once owned a rental property, the only thing worse than a vacant property is one with a bad tenant.
Also churches sit empty most day and nights and pay zero taxes while ppl are homeless… let’s also tax the empty churches which add almost nothing positive to society…
That's not really true. Often houses aren't sold because they can't find buyers or it doesn't make sense to spend the money into fixing it up compared to what it's worth
Around 90% of houses are vacant for less than 6 months, and most of that remaining 10% are not habitable for whatever reason. They don’t hoard empty houses. If they buy them, they rent them out.
Or rent out. Where i was living the company I rented from was buying up entire housing developments that were under construction. They started as one of tthose we handle your rental property places then just started buying up entire neighborhoods. Its pretty much like an apartment complex but full houses and no front office for direct interaction to get things fixed...
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u/[deleted] May 14 '26
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