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Comment by pietrovismara | Hacker News Reader

This is a great idea and I hope more cities take the hint and fight housing speculation.

I hope more cities tackle the actual cause and build/repair more housing.

There's no unlimited supply of land. And there's a limited distance that citizens can travel before that impacts their lifestyle or behavior.

Also, if you wanted to build higher buildings to accommodate more people in the same space, good luck doing that in a city center, because there's no space for such thing.

> Also, if you wanted to build higher buildings to accommodate more people in the same space, good luck doing that in a city center, because there's no space for such thing.

I have seen a three story building knocked down in Hong Kong and a 20 story building rise in its place without any damage to the structural integrity of its neighbours. Engineers are really good at building things if they’re allowed to do so, even under significant constraints.

[gestures at London as a prime example of the same]

The problem is not a technical one, but a legal one. There are very few empty buildings in most euro cities, and people is typically reluctant to get out because of the hassle it causes them.

If there is a run down and empty building, then sure, but you won't find many.

There are already more houses than people. Building more of it isn't going to solve the problem.

Housing cannot simultaneously be affordable to everyone and a good investment. Society needs to pick one and write laws accordingly.

This idea is absolutely going to backfire and drive up rents because they are about to massively constrain the supply of rentable houses.

It depends if current tenant/investors are impacted or not. If they aren't, the supply of rentable houses won't change, or at least not decrease.

It can only decrease. As in someone buys an existing lot, knocks down the house and builds a new house on it. Or a house burns down, or any other house destroying event.

Or you could build apartments. The law doesn't say you can't build rental property, just that you can't build houses as an investment.

The law doesn't mandate building apartments either, so if the same people who build/buy houses as rental properties are unwilling/unable to invest in apartments (because building a 400-person complex is a lot more expensive than a house), then rental property supply can only be constrained by this law or concentrated into the hands of management companies (who have a vested interest in constraining supply)

Furthermore, I'm not completely convinced that restricting rental property ownership to property management companies who can afford to build apartment complexes is inherently more equitable than letting a middle class person with good credit buy an extra house and rent it out. Where I'm from originally (Alberta), it was common for electricians/plumbers/tradesmen to buy an extra property with a combination of credit and wages and maintain it. It's a relatively simple and time-tested path for moving from working/lower middle class to being upper middle class or even wealthy.

You can build new apartments and sell them. I see no problem in there.

The limiting factor is, roughly speaking, wages. Assuming landlords actually want to rent their properties out, the rents will go up to the maximum people can afford/are willing to pay - I'm not sure the distinction matters - and then go no further.

(And it's possible they are already at that level, or near enough. It is after all the price point that a seller always tries to hit...)

I think the correct solution to fighting housing speculation is increase property valuation to real world prices, eliminate extra taxes on vacant apartments, and drastically increase (to about 5% - 7% of valuation every year) the property taxes on everyone.

At 7.2%, the doubling period is about ten years.

This should cool down the market.

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