Make it illegal for corporations to own single/dual family residential property. Boom. Done. End the corporate landlord.
Residential property owners don't go scooping up empty factories and strip malls when the market is down.
Ideally there would be a federal moratorium on new land-lording, and all current landlords would have to setup an estate plan to transition ownership to heirs for use as a primary residence if they did not already own one, and the excess could be sold at auction to those who don’t already own a primary residence, or to those who are trading up or down to another house.
Not sure if that’s a great way to go about it, but it could work.
My mother spent 30+ years paying off her mortgage, busting her ass to ensure that I would inherit her property free-and-clear. I'm just beginning to setup the place with a property management company, and already my projections indicate it is the #2 source of income and wealth in our family over the next 10 years (my income is #1, wife's income a VERY distant #3). Property ownership, and leveraging assets to acquire more assets, isn't used exclusively by the already-wealthy 1%. It's also used by middle-class minorities, living well within their means, to climb the ladder out of the working class and into the capitalist class. I'm finally starting to see a light at the end of the wage-slavery tunnel.
My primary residence is outside the US, and I have no intention or expectation that I would ever penalize my children by forcing them to reside in the crumbling, socially-fractured dystopian hellhole of America. I would absolutely fly MYSELF back to the States, perhaps even augmented with personally-hired SE Asian "security contractors" (far more affordable than US veterans) to defend my family's assets with lethal force if someone tried to implement this insanity.
"Do-gooders" and their unintended consequences really grind my gears.
(Note that I’m part of the problem too, by renting out our previous house so that my kid may eventually be able to live close to us, but at least I’m not a hypocrite, knowingly or not, about it.)
Congrats. I wish the same could be said of the people that are going to be beholden to wage slavery to rent the residence that you own and they get nothing out of at the end of their leases.
> My primary residence is outside the US, and I have no intention or expectation that I would ever penalize my children by forcing them to reside in the crumbling, socially-fractured dystopian hellhole of America.
But you're okay contributing to making America more of a hellhole for others? If you don't reside in the US, and you have no intention of living in the US, nor having your family live there, but you own property that you extract rent on, you are the EXACT problem that people complain about. How about you sell your US properties and buy ones where you live? After all, the US is a hellhole, why would you want to own a piece of it.
Those 'do-gooders' that you complain about, may be wrong, but they're trying to better the situation. You seem to content to shit all over it instead. That makes you no better than said 'do-gooders' and if anything quantifiably worse.
Almost every urban development thread on HN is full of comments about how Americans need to abandon the idea of single-family home ownership and move into apartments. How is renting out a SFH any different from a small-time landlord than owns a property with 10 tenants? Either way the inhabitants leave the relationship with no change in their ownership of the underlying physical land.
>>>But you're okay contributing to making America more of a hellhole for others?
Middle-class rental property owners aren't even on my Top100 list of Things Making America a Hellhole.
>>>If you don't reside in the US, and you have no intention of living in the US, nor having your family live there, but you own property that you extract rent on, you are the EXACT problem that people complain about.
You've basically just described "Foreign Investment". Renting property is protection from the elements, without the long-term financial risk of a mortgage. Likewise, working a job is a means to generate income, either in the absence of accumulated capital (for starting your own business), or when the laborer is unwilling to risk their own capital. So if renting out our family home is apparently immoral, is it also immoral to open a factory and employ American workers, while I live overseas? In both cases I am levering my possession of private property, which I am not personally using, to amplify the accrual of wealth to myself. I'm considering sub-dividing my property and building 1-2 additional houses on the currently-unused land. If zoning weren't an issue, I could tear down the existing home and replace it with a 3-unit apartment building. Would I still be "the exact problem" if I now owned a luxury condo building instead of 3 single-family units?
>>>How about you sell your US properties and buy ones where you live?
My US property is severely undervalued because it is in a historically-black neighborhood with a poor-performing school system. I was quoted a sale price of ~$275k....while houses barely 1.5km away in the white neighborhoods, with fewer physical features/amenities than our home, are selling for $450k. If I ever sell it at all, it will be after the neighborhood sufficiently gentrifies and home prices normalize with the surrounds. As for buying a home here (Japan), why would I undergo all the various transaction costs involved (FX risk, agent commissions, etc...) just to physically shift the source of my revenue? With the current exchange rates, it's more advantageous in purchasing-power terms to collect an income in USD, and spend JPY. It's also generally a better risk-management strategy to hold physical assets during periods of high inflation (like now), so I wouldn't want to sell the US house and just sit on the cash either. So if I bought a house here, I would lose on the transaction costs, gain nothing in nominal wealth (break even on house price), lose qualitatively on the physical features (you're not getting a 4-bedroom house with an inground pool for $400k in Japan), and lose on purchasing-power-parity of my rental income.
>>>Those 'do-gooders' that you complain about, may be wrong, but they're trying to better the situation. You seem to content to shit all over it instead. That makes you no better than said 'do-gooders' and if anything quantifiably worse.
Yes, because all too frequently, doing something is objectively worse than doing nothing. I've seen it a million times in the military: new officers come in, always trying to shake up the status quo and "improve" things....but they have a terribly limited understanding of the depth of the organization's problems...so they force us to implement poorly-thought-out adjustments to our business practices. Then they are out the door to another office barely 1 year later. The constant churn of bad ideas leaves the organization unable to build institutional proficiency, worse than if we had just stuck with one set of mediocre solutions for ~5 years instead.
So when someone suggests that the solution to America's housing problem is "get the central government to seize and redistribute private property", I absolutely consider my position quantifiably better than their suggestion.
I never said that the idea of owning a SFH should be abandoned. Owning multiple SFHs for the purpose of turning them into an investment vehicle should be the thing that's abandoned. I also believe that as long as you are renting, you should be gaining equity in the property.
> Middle-class rental property owners aren't even on my Top100 list of Things Making America a Hellhole.
Lets hear them then. 1-100, a numbered list please.
> You've basically just described "Foreign Investment".
You state this as though I am not aware of it. I don't think foreign investment in house-bearing real estate should be allowed.
> So if renting out our family home is apparently immoral, is it also immoral to open a factory and employ American workers, while I live overseas?
If all you do is extract and expatrtiate the wealth gained from said factory, yes, it is immoral in my mind. You should be reinvesting all of the profits into the factory or the workers with some _very_ minimal amount kept for yourself as profit.
> In both cases I am levering my possession of private property, which I am not personally using, to amplify the accrual of wealth to myself.
You should be limited in the ability to accrue wealth. If anything, this is an argument against what you're doing. And ultimately, if you're not using it personally, you should sell it to someone that would. That's the most benefit to society.
> I'm considering sub-dividing my property and building 1-2 additional houses on the currently-unused land. If zoning weren't an issue, I could tear down the existing home and replace it with a 3-unit apartment building. Would I still be "the exact problem" if I now owned a luxury condo building instead of 3 single-family units?
Again, I have no problem with you using your property as you wish as long as you don't exploit other people. If you subdivide your property, build houses or apartments on it, and then rent them out at cost or very close to, there's no issue with that. But if you subdivide your property, or develop it into a profit-generating vehicle that goes beyond just cover your costs as a landlord, I have a problem with that. I don't really give a crap that you want to generate some profit off your properties. The need for housing overrides your desires for profit, and ultimately if that means you lose your additional properties, that's fine by me as long as society in general benefits. Your feelings on this are 100% irrelevant.
> My US property is severely undervalued because it is in a historically-black neighborhood with a poor-performing school system. I was quoted a sale price of ~$275k....while houses barely 1.5km away in the white neighborhoods, with fewer physical features/amenities than our home, are selling for $450k.
So you made a risky investment that will possibly not pay off in your lifetime? What's your point?
>If I ever sell it at all, it will be after the neighborhood sufficiently gentrifies and home prices normalize with the surrounds. "I will remove this home from the market and disallow any other potential homeowner to use it as a home until my investment has been recouped. And until I have done so, I will extract wealth from those than cannot compete with me for the purchase of the home."
What you're signaling here is that your property is purely an investment vehicle and that the only thing you intend to do with it is extract rent.
> As for buying a home here (Japan), why would I undergo all the various transaction costs involved (FX risk, agent commissions, etc...) just to physically shift the source of my revenue?
Well, some people see that as away to have a home that they don't need to be worried about getting kicked out of. Pretty sure they mind much less than you going through all that process.
> So if I bought a house here, I would lose on the transaction costs, gain nothing in nominal wealth (break even on house price), lose qualitatively on the physical features (you're not getting a 4-bedroom house with an inground pool for $400k in Japan), and lose on purchasing-power-parity of my rental income.
Once again, and? You state this as though there's some necessity in the world to guarantee your income/profit. If you're going to lose money on buying a house, then don't buy the house. I ain't twisting your arm.
> Yes, because all too frequently, doing something is objectively worse than doing nothing.
When the system is at rock bottom and grinding people into dust, and any motion outside of the current system will result in a more beneficial local minimum, then doing nothing is objectively worse. This isn't like a new officer changing the processes and routines of a well-established unit. This is taking a shitty officer out back after he just joined the unit and suggested they should change tactics to attacking the enemies buck-naked without any weapons. We're well past the point where doing nothing is neutral.
And here's the other thing, as long as the wishes are of the society at large, then it doesn't really matter how mercurial they are. You can either follow them, or be ostracized.
> So when someone suggests that the solution to America's housing problem is "get the central government to seize and redistribute private property", I absolutely consider my position quantifiably better than their suggestion.
But the suggestion isn't to seize private property. It's to tax private property that can serve a public good enough that serving the public good becomes more profitable than not. You're free to own as much property as you want as long as you commensurately compensate society for said property.
But even if the suggestion was to actually seize private property and redistribute it, in certain contexts that would be perfectly acceptable.
The solution to the housing problem in the US is not only building more housing, but shutting down avenues of removing or significantly pricing-up housing supply from the market. It helps no one if new housing is out of the price range of the people that need housing the most. And as such, your approach to housing, is part of the problem.
>>>You should be reinvesting all of the profits into the factory or the workers with some _very_ minimal amount kept for yourself as profit.
Define "minimal amount". If it is MY property, who are you to determine the limits of how I compensate myself for the risks that I assume with my capital allocation?
>>>And ultimately, if you're not using it personally, you should sell it to someone that would. That's the most benefit to society.
Am I not a member of society? Am I not allowed to benefit from my property? Why are you mandating that the material abundance accrue to total strangers? What makes any other individual member of American society more deserving of the utilization of my family's assets?
>>>Again, I have no problem with you using your property as you wish as long as you don't exploit other people.
If people are voluntarily entering into a business relationship with me, who are you to interject that they are being "exploited"? Do they not have their own agency as rational adults?
>>>The need for housing overrides your desires for profit, and ultimately if that means you lose your additional properties, that's fine by me as long as society in general benefits. Your feelings on this are 100% irrelevant.
This is fundamentally anathema to the basic concept of private property rights in America.
>>>So you made a risky investment that will possibly not pay off in your lifetime?
Made a risky investment? I am inheriting the house I grew up in, which is paid off, and has been for years. I'm not that concerned about a guaranteed return during my life, as I'm more interested in snowballing asset ownership for my children, and my children's children. The only risk is opportunity cost compared to ownership of other assets.
>>> You state this as though there's some necessity in the world to guarantee your income/profit.
I'm not guaranteed anything (beyond what is elucidated in the Bill of Rights)....and neither is anyone else. I'm exercising my rational self-interest, as is whoever decides to become my tenant. Are you not familiar with the concept?
>>>If you're going to lose money on buying a house, then don't buy the house. I ain't twisting your arm.
I merely articulated a response to YOUR suggestion that I purchase local property, explaining why that wasn't the best course of action.
>>>And here's the other thing, as long as the wishes are of the society at large, then it doesn't really matter how mercurial they are. You can either follow them, or be ostracized.
Yes, you should follow the society at large's wishes regarding the value of private property rights. [1][2]
>>>But the suggestion isn't to seize private property.
The post I responded to stated: "federal moratorium on new land-lording ...all current landlords ...setup an estate plan to transition ownership to heirs for use as a primary residence ...and the excess could be sold at auction". There is nothing in there about "taxing private property". It is about forcing land owners to auction their assets. A forced auction is essentially a seizure and redistribution with a few extra steps.
>>>as long as you commensurately compensate society for said property
We already have a vehicle for that. It's called "property taxes". And you keep using the word "society" as if it is some amorphous blob that can be directly engaged with as a unit. Civilizations are composed of individuals, and when you get down to the nitty-gritty details of everyday resource utilization and AUTHORITY, there is always A PERSON who wields that authority. In our current system, the authority is typically tied to the person who OWNS the resource. "Society" cannot sign a document. "Society" cannot make a decision. Individuals vested with authority do (until we adopt DAOs at large, but hey HN hates blockchain tech, so let's not go there either....). If you want "society" to exert influence, it will be via essentially governmental bureaucrats. We've seen the performance of systems where government middle management controls resource allocation.....somehow the bureaucrats manage to all have nice Dachas on the Black Sea Coast while the populace at large still goes hungry, and lives in shitty apartments. Good luck pulling this off in the US, where trust in government is terribly fragile [3].
>>>But even if the suggestion was to actually seize private property and redistribute it, in certain contexts that would be perfectly acceptable.
Well, it's been tried before at scale and the consequences are typically disastrous (Soviet Collectivization, Mao's Great Leap Forward).
[1] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/12/21/ilya-somin/more-empi...
[2] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/12/27/ilya-somin/what-surv...
[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/07/22/trust-and-di...
Where do you draw the line?
I think landlords are an archaic remnant of the past that refuses to let go. I haven't self-resolved my thoughts on whether or not it's ethical to have property you don't, yourself use. In my opinion, it's complex, ethically. Ideally we wouldn't need landlords or apartments or anything (hey 37% of the workforce in the US could "easily" work remotely! what about th) - but since they exist, I'm in agreement. "holding land" should be frowned upon.
The only reason you would want to hide behind an LLC is so you can avoid liability as a landlord. That is the source of so many horror stories. Dangerous, disgusting, pathetic horror stories.
Banks shouldn't own houses. People should.
I think there are ways we can draw the line. We can accept that some form of property ownership is fine, even if it means that one person owns multiple properties. For example, an older couple renting out their old home after they downsized. But there needs to be a progressive tax on additional properties. Something like that by the time you own 10 properties, each additional property costs you more in taxes annually than it can ever bring in (think 500k annual tax on a property valued at 500k.)
Corporate property ownership we can treat two ways -- completely eliminate it, or similarly progressively tax it, but at a much harsher rate. Like, each additional property requires 2x the taxation of the previous one. And make any attempts to circumvent this very criminal and strict liability -- like 25y/life for the executive and board levels, and no arguing that it was some underling that did it.
https://www.avail.co/education/articles/should-you-create-an...