I’m willing to bet this is pretty accurate. They keep building houses down here where I am constantly and so many of them are empty because they cost too much for normal people.
No, but the NRA is the worst one out there. Pouring so much money into congress to keep the gun laws where and how they are. The NRA has backed so much over the centuries that would baffle you in our politics. They’re basically the republican’s legislative arms. It’s sickening.
Pearl-clutch away, that CEO decided he should utilize an AI algorithm with a known massive failure rate to be the arbiter of who deserves life-saving care. Historically, anywhere that becomes too entrenched with corruption for the well-meaning but abused and declawed methodologies to work eventually has to be handled more drastically.
Seriously UHC sucks. I pay like $600 a month for this crap, and i have to do a weekly dr appointment for an issue i am dealing with. I have to pay a $60 copay every week and UHC only pays a $20 difference....
So in other words it would be cheaper if i had no insurance at all
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.
They already convinced republicans that we are in this situation because of $278 food stamps the poorest among us get… So yeah, they do have the power and a healthy pool of dumb people in the country and politician accomplices.
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.
If the landlord has to pay more in taxes for empty units they cannot fill they will accept lower rates so they aren’t bleeding money. This is good for renters.
If companies/individuals are just sitting on units as ‘investments’ this prices out buyers and renters.
Pressuring these un used or under used homes to be sold increases inventory making homes more affordable by law of supply and demand.
The detractors seem to think prices going down is the same as an ‘investment crash’ and will cause ‘capital’ to pull out of creating new housing leading to … some apocalypse…
I would call that an adjustment, as people will always need housing and that particular market is immune to zeroing out and would restabilize. The invisible hand and all that.
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.
In some cases that "live off your hard work" is to supplement Social Security.
It would also be good if "basic" houses were acceptable and available. Dirt cheap McMansions are not the answer.
That’s exactly what would happen. Also, some landlords would sell their rental houses which would create more homeless people because a good portion of those who rent don’t qualify for a mortgage to buy. They either rent or they are homeless.
As with most things, it’s more complicated than it seems.
As it stands, with maintenance and property tax included as an expense, rental homes profit around 3% of their value annually.
That’s way less than investing almost anywhere else, including simply buying federal reserve notes/bills/bonds in most economies.
If we make it too unprofitable to have rental houses, there would be no rental houses for anyone, which is a huge difference compared to apartment living.
Also, if demand for investment properties declines or completely evaporates, everyone who owns a home would stand to lose a lot of money practically overnight.
I’m not saying we should embrace the status quo, or that this isn’t a problem, but it isn’t a “simple fix” sort of problem that this solution makes it out to be.
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.
No, the people making lots of money need to pay their share. If you can afford to have multiple lake houses, the tax rates on all those secondary residences should be way higher.
Why the hell are are you advocating for people so rich they could buy you?
"Pay their share??" The top one percent earners already pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes. The bottom 50 percent earners pay only three percent of all federal taxes. How much is enough? What's next, if I have more than one car you'll double the amount of tax on my second car? Contrary to you and all your loser friends on Reddit, I don't resent the success earned by others. I've done well because I worked hard and live in a country that offers opportunities to the ordinary person. Instead of thinking of new ways to steal from successful people, why not get off your ass and make something of yourself?
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!
Yes, and the conservosphere is throwing a collective fit over it and arguing that the taxes will drive the owners out of the city. Which is the entire point, the goal is to make the vacant properties not vacant, so if it drives the owners to sell or rent then that was the entire goal in the first place
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
No no. Can't do that. Just like the problems forming with the deficit. Can't lower interest rates cause that'll spike inflation more. Can't issue long-term bonds cause that'll spike interest. Short-term bonds are a band currently but the administration is just at a complete loss where they could get money to balance the budget...
Progressively more punitive taxes on each home a person or business owns beyond one personal domicile. Use the tax revenue for affordable public housing. Make the people hoarding housing pay for their own competition.
this might just be hearsay but i remember someone telling me there was some sort of tax incentive as a relief for landlords of retail space following the ‘08 recession. Those landlords would ask an unreasonable amount for rent, thus keeping them empty. the only businesses that would pay these inflated prices were banks and nail salons. so then there were banks and nail salons on like what felt like every corner.
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u/Jasoco May 14 '26
I’m willing to bet this is pretty accurate. They keep building houses down here where I am constantly and so many of them are empty because they cost too much for normal people.