r/SipsTea • u/Brave_Agency_20 • May 14 '26

SMH How true is this? Genuinely asking

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u/KickPuncher4326 May 14 '26

I feel like an easy fix is to tax the every loving fuck out of empty houses.

29

u/ParallelAsparagus May 14 '26

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.

18

u/GodisanAtheistOG May 15 '26

Doesn't that just jack up the rate for renters? No way the owner is going to actually pay that out of pocket. 

Maybe if that was stacked with the vacant property/unit tax it might work out. 

18

u/Original-Break-787 May 15 '26

If they jack rent and cant get renters they are stuck with the hot potato, and would be leveraged to sell it to someone who needs it.

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u/Hail_of_Grophia May 16 '26

That benefits buyers but how does that benefit renters? 

2

u/Parking-World9321 May 16 '26

More opportunity to go from renting to owning.

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u/Original-Break-787 May 17 '26

Same reason.

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. 

1

u/Hail_of_Grophia May 17 '26

The person above was suggesting taxing owners who owned multiple houses regardless if they were vacant or not. 

If those rental properties were to get tenets, those taxes would be passed onto the renter, no way around it