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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

I'm not smart enough to tell you what would work, but I've read a few ideas I'll throw out there as possibilities over the past couple years -

1 - Build more housing.

2 - Eliminate weird NIMBYisms in a lot of places.

3 - Rent controls

4 - Eliminate corporate ownership of SFH

5 - Progressive property taxing

Instead, we've done absolutely nothing, and that unfortunately didn't seem to work.

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Progressive property taxing makes housing more expensive, not less.

Not necessarily. If property taxes were 0%, that would make housing a very desirable investment, pushing prices up out of reach of average people.

On the other hand if property taxes get high enough, they basically act like rent, and the purchase price drops because it's no longer a good investment.

Having to both pay to purchase and pay rent makes housing more expensive as well as destroying the concept of home ownership altogether.

Prices are set by what people are willing to pay. If property tax goes up another part of the mortgage payment (like principle) must go down, otherwise there won't be any sale.

Right, and so existing owners will be driven out of their properties by a rent they cannot afford being imposed on them. Their wealth will be decimated for the reasons you have already stated, and of course new buyers will be purchasing an option to rent rather than own.

What you are proposing is expropriation and state ownership of residential property.

What I meant in my initial comment was progressive as in the more you own, the more you pay. Say, 0% on a primary dwelling, and an extra 5% every new dwelling. The point is to punish hoarders, not to punish homebuyers.

I would recommend using a different and more explicit phrasing in future. ‘Hoarders’ is a needlessly loaded term though. It sounds like you want to punish individuals using houses as investments.

How would your scheme deal with larger multi-occupancy dwellings? Would they need to be demolished, or would they be appropriated by the state?

> It sounds like you want to punish individuals using houses as investments.

Yes, that's exactly the goal.

Rent control has never worked. And never will.

Corporate ownership of SFHs is so small to not matter. The house you live in shouldn't be an investment.

> Corporate ownership of SFHs is so small to not matter

People keep saying this and quoting total ownership figures, which is probably what Blackrock and co wanted. Look at actual purchases in the last 2 years instead. Blackrock has bought nearly 50% of all SFH sales in my area in the last year.

It's no coincidence that corporate buying percentages shot up with the prices.

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