They are generally called non-primary residency taxes, and they're definitely a thing, and definitely getting more publicity, and most definitely need to become much stronger and more widespread.
One of the issues is that when these sorts of policies initially roll out you tend to see a contradictory effect of sudden spiking in prices as a lot of people who were on the fence suddenly decide to add to the housing market demand - but over time these policies tend to settle in a place where thing are more affordable.
The other issue is that the renewal period for first time home owner benefits is quite long, so if you are exiting a long term relationship or trying to pick yourself up after bankruptcy you can be forced to enter the market as if you were a well established asset holder.
Some further flaws in the system: I was shocked to find out that the new home buyers tax credit only applies to homes under $500k - which in vancouver means it only applies to a handful of small condos. It's also not poolable, so two first-time buyers going in on a $501k condo are disqualified.
[0] https://smartasset.com/taxes/what-is-a-homestead-tax-exempti...
Could you point me at some more reading that talks about this? The increase in prices makes perfect sense to me, but I don't really have a good handle on why things would come back down.
I seriously doubt that to be true in a low supply situation. In the Netherlands, the government reduced real estate transfer tax from 8% to 2%, and sometimes even 0%. This should make houses more affordable to newcomers.
Another well intended measure was for older people to share their wealth to their children via early inheritance, tax free.
The market simply adds this discount and extra start capital to the price "room". In a situation of perpetual scarcity, the price will rise to the maximum people can afford/borrow.
And with "people", I mean only the buyers. It doesn't matter if 90% of the population is priced out of the market if the richest 10% is still enough people to buy up all supply.
This last bit is most worrisome, because it means that even the nuclear instrument of increasing interest rates is unlikely to resolve the issue. The interest cannot be jacked up much because that would bankrupt the middle class. A minor tweak will be no issue at all for the richest 10%, so the price will not come down.
Increasing supply in a dense and popular area isn't a structural solution. Not only does it meet a lot of resistance, new demand will forever continue to outpace the constraint of delivering new supply.
Which is why I believe in reorganizing demand. These dense areas are dense because it gives people access to jobs and education. If we reorganize that into a more sane distributed way, we truly address the problem.
Yes, one effects people like you and the other effects people like me.
Entire lifetimes wasted before our eyes. Anyways, maybe we can solve free school lunch finally, seems like that’s what we’re up to.