France plans to close tax loophole benefiting Airbnb | Hacker News Reader

France plans to close tax loophole benefiting Airbnb

reuters.com

94 pointsmfiguiere89 comments

8 paragraphs and not a single sentence to explain what the loophole is.

For once reading the fine article has left me no wiser than the headline.

Here it is, from a French article:

> Les loueurs de meublés touristiques classés (de 1 à 5 étoiles), comme Airbnb, bénéficient aujourd’hui d’un abattement forfaitaire de 71 % jusqu’à 176 200 euros de recettes, contre 50 % pour les meublés classiques, et 30 % pour les locations vides dans la limite de 15 000 euros de loyers.

Basically if they don't make a ton of money they can deduct 71% of gross revenue (otherwise they deduct expenses and depreciation, which is probably less than 50%). I suspect this was put in place way back to encourage gîtes (b&bs), which are popular in France.

Which raises the obvious point that a specifically carved out exception for a good on the basis of its assumed positive externalities is not a ‘loophole’. It is at most a subsidy.

(Though, obviously, not enough of one. Land ownership should be taxed but land rental should be untaxed, as a quick glimpse at the market incentive structures will inform. Taxing revenue is insane.)

When you write down rules by which you can take money for free from other people, any rule that means they don't have to give you money is, whether you call it a loophole or not, not a problem. Write your free money rules better.

That would apply if governments were simply bandits providing nothing of value.

Instead, governments provide many extremely valuable services. So, people rightly complain about free riders benefiting from the services which other taxpayers need to pay for without chipping in.

The fact is that the government, like a bandit, says to a person: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

The government does not, indeed, waylay a person in a lonely place, spring upon them from the road side, and, holding a pistol to their head, proceed to rifle their pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.

The bandit takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes people’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travelers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.

--Lysander Spooner

(on libertrarians) House cats. They are convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appeciate or understand.

-- John Spaulding

Cats are quite capable of subsisting on squirrels and birds. But if you put cat food on a plate, they do what's easier.

The question is, does "free" stuff justify its true cost? How many people would willingly pay the amount they currently pay to Raytheon or upper middle class retirees with plenty of savings, if they actually had a choice?

Spending isn’t just individual choices it’s a tradeoff. I can guarantee you want a lot of government spending that I would be happy to cut. If I argue for canceling all weather satellite funding you can bet many would object and so it goes.

I personally think the CIA, NSA etc are a waste of funds let’s slash funding by 90% and see what happens. But that doesn’t mean everyone else agrees with what I think is worth funding.

But that's kind of the point, isn't it? If all the people who want GPS didn't have to pay for bridges they don't want (and war machines and corporate welfare) then they'd have enough money to pay for GPS even if they were the only ones paying, and vice versa. You can still have GPS and bridges because they each have a set of people who value them at more than their cost.

Whereas if the only people who want corn subsidies are the people receiving them and not the people paying for them, you wouldn't have them anymore.

It’s a more complicated problem because if you get rid of say prisons and the police you don’t get groups of individuals privately funding such things. It’s a free rider problem where as can be demonstrated around the world the only known solution is collective taxation.

If you want GPS and are happy to pay for it then why should I pay if I can get it for free without paying? With GPS the idea of encrypting the data might work, but that doesn’t work for say vaccination were public safety results from individual choices.

Governments don't actually solve the free rider problem though. Taxpayers in the US pay for GPS and then everybody gets it all over the world; why should they pay anything when they can get it for free? The same goes for vaccine research and things like that; once it exists everybody gets it even if only one country was to pay for it.

But it still works because people can see that they're better off funding something that benefits them even if it also benefits someone who didn't pay, and so it is whether it's a government or not.

Now, sometimes a government might be more efficient at these things. Having people pay for GPS might be one way to get it, but then you have to collect money from everyone, which has administrative costs, and people who can't afford it can't use it even though there is no incremental cost in providing it to them.

But when you weigh that against the colossal amount of waste and violence governments commit in the process, the math doesn't look good. And you can get the same level of efficiency from a nonprofit that provides the service for free to the public, if the public wants it enough to donate to it. Which people would have more money to do if they weren't paying taxes to fund the maintenance of empty government buildings etc.

People outside the US using GPS isn’t a free rider problem, that use is at the mercy of the US government which is inherently valuable.

Do you think the US would vote for or against the UN to making a global competitor?

There already are GPS alternatives. China and Russia both operate their own, either of which can also be used by anyone for free. But nobody really uses them because the US doesn't actually use "selective availability" anymore, has promised never to use it again, and the modern satellites don't even support it:

https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/modernization/sa/

You can find a list of good reasons why they should never want to do this, but one of the big ones is that if they ever actually did they could only do it once, because then no one would trust them not to anymore and would start including hardware support for the alternative systems in case it isn't available.

But that isn't really the point. The relevant issue is that the US taxpayer pays for GPS and then the people of Italy and Australia and Brazil get it for free. Even if GPS had been an exception with some strategic defense purpose, how does that explain e.g. funding for cancer research?

> People outside the US using GPS isn’t a free rider problem, that use is at the mercy of the US government which is inherently valuable.

I think this is a really cynical take. A government opens up a service that's benefitted billions for 50 years and you think it's so the US gets them "hooked"? They use it because it gives them value, and they (we) didn't have to pay for that value at all.

No, it applies whether governments provide perfect value for money, zero value for money, or something in between. The question isn't how it's spent.

The question is: should we be of the mindset that companies that obey the rules as written are somehow not obeying the "real" rules, rather than putting the fault on the rule writers, whose only purpose is to write good rules, and who are part of the "extremely valuable services" we all pay for?

How much money is spent is ultimately how much money needs to be collected in taxes in one form or another. There is no way to reduce taxes on X without eliminating some spending or increasing taxes elsewhere. Perhaps you’re fine eliminating GPS to reduce your taxes, but in general people don’t want to shut that down etc.

In the end it’s not a question of obeying the rules it’s a question of individuals or companies writing those rules to favor themselves and others objecting to those rules.

Well, no, unless you think money is spent efficiently. And also no, in that money is also borrowed, and the currency is also inflated, so the government has more unit currency to spend. If taxes balanced spending, without taxes just being exorbitant personal effort-destroying monsters, then there'd be no debate.

But anyway. That still is irrelevant to this point, which is that writing down rules is the easy bit, and creating value year on year is the hard bit. Blame the people who get free money to write rules that get them money if there are loopholes. Don't blame the people actually working to make them that free money.

Inflation is a form of taxation, everyone with that currency loses value. Thus when you borrow below the inflation rate the difference is “paid off” by taxing people.

Borrowing isn’t free money, it’s in fact more expensive than taxing people directly.

> That still is irrelevant to this point, which is that writing down rules is the easy bit, and creating value year on year is the hard bit.

Hardly, making money from investments isn’t difficult and has some of the largest tax breaks built in. As someone that’s inherited money I can say theirs nothing inherently virtuous or difficult about it and wow it’s tax free!

But hey I am glad you’re working extra hard so I can lazy around as much as I feel like it.

> Hardly, making money from investments isn’t difficult

You might be the world's best trader if you're saying that, but you still can't just reach into companies' bank accounts and take their money. You take on the large risk of losing money when you invest.

Don’t worry, if I lose money I get a tax break! Because you rubes must want to work extra hard to ensure I don’t have to, even if it’s easy enough to make money literal random number generators work.

Also, individual investors don’t generally need to raid companies they can simply sell to other investors. But collectively or with a large enough percentage of the stock we can dissolve the company and sell off its assets. This tends to happen if the stock price falls so far as to make plundering the company look appealing. See: Corporate raiding etc

Of course you get a tax "break" - the rules aren't so obscene that the rule-writers make money on your losses. If you think losing so much money you pay no tax is a good outcome for you, that's fine. Would we all have such a positive attitude to our losses.

Other than that, I'm struggling to make out what you're saying. It once again doesn't seem related to what I'm saying.

I think the loophole is that Airbnb is profiting massively by renting all of these properties, but each property owner individually is not making significant profits. I would guess the intention is to tax Airbnb appropriately as one of the biggest hotel services out there, without affecting actual independent BnBs.

> I think the loophole is that Airbnb is profiting massively by renting all of these properties, but each property owner individually is not making significant profits.

While I do think that the government would like more tax revenue from AirBnB and other "foreign tech", I think that in touristy areas property owners are making a killing.

Aside from the "loophole" discussed here, another one is that, for example in Paris, these rentals aren't covered by the rent control laws. So even though you need to put in a bit more work for short stays compared to long ones, you're practically guaranteed a good occupation rate for your apartment and can cash in on the much higher rate you can charge.

I don't know how true this is, as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction by locals, but it would seem that in other touristy places there's been an influx in "holiday-rentals" pushing locals who can't afford the rising prices out of the market. These areas have more of a season effect (think seaside resorts, only popular in the summer). So, the way they "measured" it was that during the low season people would find rentals, but no-one would want a long-term contract covering the high-season, when all the properties would be put on the short-term market.

Another regulation which these rentals can side-step is having to provide an apartment with a certain minimum "energy grade". The goal of the scheme was to push landlords to improve the insulation of their properties to lower heating costs (broadly speaking). The issue is that rents being fixed, this had to come fully out of the landlord's pocket. Which, of course, they'd rather avoid. Bonus points for having to add this insulation on the inside, which reduces the area of the property, so the rent they can ask. This is compounded in "tense" markets, such as Paris, by the fact that many of the flats are concerned by this, or will soon be.

A loophole is when something is used for something other than its intended purpose.

France wanted to subsidize b&bs, Airbnb, despite its name, doesn’t actually provide b&bs as a significant part of its business.

In this case it is used exactly for its intended purpose, which is to encourage furnished holiday lets.

AirBnb does not directly benefit from this. The property owners do.

The issue is that the number of holiday lets has exploded thanks to AirBnb so now they no longer want to encourage them, or at least not the purely AirBnb type.

It is another tax but without the tax label. Now we call it "Closing a loophole for the greedy Tech companies".

If true that's even more convoluted than I would have guessed. And I agree with the other comment; if you want to subsidize b&bs but you instead subsidize furnished rentals, it's on you when it's treated as a furnished rentals subsidy.

I used to think that

But I’ve seen single words changed in budget appropriation bills that completely altered a tax reality in any observer’s favor, that no politician read

Fun game, hard for me to draw a clear distinction on what’s a loophole or not. If the government says my “fair share” is 0% fine by me.

I think it is a usual case of "This is why we can't have nice things". The "loophole" was created for a reason and then it got abused to a point of becoming its own issue.

This does not benefit AirBnb, though, but the people who let properties through AirBnb or any other way. Basically this is for the benefit of anyone doing furnished holiday letting.

This also does not sound like a "loophole" but a tax break specifically created for this, probably to encourage holiday lets. Now that AirBnb has made them explode the pendulum has swung back to wanting to discourage some of them and so they want to change the tax rules accordingly.

Doesn't it benefit AirBnb indirectly though? Lower taxes -> AirBnb is more attractive for owners -> more properties on the platform -> more profit for AirBnb

A close translation is: "The renters of furnished tourist accommodations that receive ratings (between 1 and 5 stars), like Airbnb, currently benefit from an "abattement forfaitaire" [a tax deduction [1] that corresponds to professional costs incurred by a micro-entrepreneur] of 71% for up to 176,200 euros in revenue, in contrast to a deduction of 50% for traditional furnished accommodations, and 30% for empty [non-furnished] rentals with a limit of 15,000 euros of rental income."

The full source of the excerpt is also a news report in Le Parisien, a daily newspaper (co-written with the AFP): https://www.leparisien.fr/economie/bruno-lemaire-veut-reform...

[1] https://www.legalplace.fr/guides/abattement-auto-entrepreneu...

in india, if you are owing a second or third home, you can deduct 1/3 of the income as "expense" flat. its auto calculated so you don't even have to claim it or can claim more than that.

if you are a business, (as opposed to individual owned) (a guest house or bnb or whatever), you are treated as a normal business so on all incomes you can claim expenses which you have actually paid.

this is a stupid rule to let businesses treat their business as "home" and then claim flat rate expenses (why did nobody think of fixing this till now?)

>Nearly 20% of people in the greater Paris region that do not already rent their home or part of it on AirBnB plan to do so during next year's Olympic Games in the French capital, according to a survey the platform commissioned from pollsters Ifop.

Crazy stat. Greater than 1/5th of Parisians plans to rent out their places to tourists?

During any big sports event, it is surprisingly common for locals to find ways to make money. For one where you have a lot of fairly well off people traveling into the place, renting out a room makes a ton of sense.

Indeed, folks in Blacksburg rent out their yards for football traffic parking :P

Parisian homeowners. I wonder what fraction of them have a second home already. I'd say 10% is highly believable, Edinburgh achieves about that much during the Festival.

Even if you don't, you could take a vacation for a quarter of what you'd make from AirBnBing out your place.

Kind of classic economics — some people care a LOT about the olympics, and will pay a lot to be there, so they should trade with the people who would rather be in Mallorca.

I don't think that's crazy. I live in a small city that gets about 500k people for the first week of July.

A lot of locals try to be out of town that week.

I live in Paris, and I plan to be as far away from the city during the Olympics. That'll just be a mess of a place given the state of disorganization Paris is in (and in true French fashion, it'll not be ready in time). Things like commute and just getting around will be a pain. Not to mention the crowds. So yeah, if I can rent my place to somebody during that time it'll be great. Making money is a bonus, but not a requirement.

I can count on my fingers how many people I know that want to stay there during the event.

I’d expect the figure to be higher. I didn’t want Boston to get the games, but if they did, I was 100% chance to rent our place out and get the hell out until it was over.

A good portion of them must have been doing it for a long time, last time we were in Paris (2005) there was no shortage of owned apartments for rent because the usual occupants were somewhere else for the summer.

I don't think people were as likely to be buying properties for the explicit purpose of short-term renting (i.e. never intending to actually live there) back then, but I have no actual facts to back that up :P

The Olympics falls right in the time period were Parisians flee Paris for summer vacations elsewhere, so it's perfectly timed for a lot of people to rent out their place.

Makes sense. Get away from the chaos of the city and make a good amount of money to boot. At a smaller scale a lot of people I know do this in SF during large conferences (e.g. Dreamforce) and make upwards of $500/night, more than enough to cover a luxury vacation.

Paris infamously "empties" of locals in August anyway, because it's hot and miserable and full of tourists, so given the Olympics will drive prices through the roof it seems believable that more people will leave and more of them will rent out their place.

Every year, Paris and large parts of France empty out ~July 15-Aug 15, which overlaps nicely with the Olympics. A ton of French people, who would be going on vacation anyway, will have their vacation paid for by people coming in for the Olympics.

Ban Airbnb. Terrible company with no ethics.

Prudent move, especially in a view of upcoming Olympic games in Paris.

Is it? I would let locals profit off the Olympics then institute the rule.

Airbnb revolutionised people travel and live — personally, I've been living in airbnbs full-time for the last two years and loving it. I only had a bad experience once, and got reimbursed, with $400 bonus on top, 20 minutes after opening a support ticket.

Honestly, I don't understand audacity of people who are trying to dictate to real estate owners what they can and can't do with their property, or people who think that a city or neighbourhood is "theirs" just because they happen to live there for a long time — without actually owning anything. While Airbnb violated local laws, I haven't seem them violating laws that I would ever consider moral or justified.

You can't even imagine buying a house in a neighborhood in your city and then having some dentist from Ohio buying the house next to yours and operating it as a 24/7 party house and you have the audacity to question the morality or justification of complainants? Forgive me if I write you off completely as a serious person.

If the party house isn’t causing a nuisance who cares? What people decide to do with their property should be their choice.

Do you think I used the terminology "24/7 party house" to cover properties that are not a nuisance. You're on the list of unserious people as well now.

Real estate owners are already limited to what they can do with their property.

How is regulating airbnbs any different from zoning laws?

Usually airbnb is working around zoning laws. The essence of airbnb is to rent out regular apartments in regular apartment buildings. Which are not designed to be hotel-like short term rentals.

Oh, so you do believe in restricting what people can do with their property?

The issue is that it becomes a nuisance, a 24/7 party apartment is exactly that in a building: a nuisance.

Also, freedom to do whatever you want in your property is not how most of the world operates, if you share a building with others in most countries you have to abide to certain rules. These rules are more commonly disrespected by short-term guests who don't have to care about long-term relationships with neighbours.

If it's not a nuisance, then no one would complain, but it eventually becomes a nuisance. As an anecdote: a month ago I stayed a few days (5-7) at a friend's place I was visiting who lives in Lisbon, just on his floor there are 4 AirBnBs (owned by the same person). Not only it was a nuisance with noise for most of the days I was there it was also a nuisance to have drunk British girls banging on your door at 02.00 in the night when they don't remember the fucking apartment they are supposedly going to. My friend mentioned it's not uncommon for that to happen, or to have a gag of people show up to a party in one of the apartments. Other people living in the building have complained to AirBnB, to the police, to the housing association, nothing really happens.

This is just one building, in one city suffering the bad sides of tourism, I can't imagine how many of these instances repeat throughout AirBnB-listed properties in similar places...

In my experience, Lisbon really is the worst case scenario of gentrification and tourism gone absolutely wrong. A fair amount of Portuguese are profiting from it, but I can imagine how much of a burden it is for the ones who don't.

> These rules are more commonly disrespected by short-term guests

So enforce them, it's one five minute zero-interaction phone call to have a cop deal with a noise complaint. I can, and do, throw loud parties at my apartment, stumble through my hallways drunk, and host rowdy out of town friends and no one dares question my ability to live there.

Trying to enforce social norms by not allowing "certain kinds of people" to sleep there is grade-a bullshit. Trying to get outcome A by making a rule about B is unfair to everyone who is B but not A and A but not B. This kind of reasoning is why it's so hard to get multi-family housing approved. A nice suburb in my city forced the development of new desperately needed apartment complexes to be on the the border because "less desirable" people live in apartments.

> So enforce them, it's one five minute zero-interaction phone call to have a cop deal with a noise complaint. I can, and do, throw loud parties at my apartment, stumble through my hallways drunk, and host rowdy out of town friends and no one dares question my ability to live there.

"Just enforce them" is a non-solution, I mentioned that my anecdote included calling cops and bringing it up with AirBnB and housing association, the apartments are still listed, as they've been for 3 years. You can't just say "enforce them" and expect that magically it will happen, even less in a city where tourism has become a major economical backbone. The world is not that simple, these negative externalities can't be shoved under a rug when they start affecting a whole city's living population like is the case in Lisbon...

> Trying to enforce social norms by not allowing "certain kinds of people" to sleep there is grade-a bullshit. Trying to get outcome A by making a rule about B is unfair to everyone who is B but not A and A but not B. This kind of reasoning is why it's so hard to get multi-family housing approved. A nice suburb in my city forced the development of new desperately needed apartment complexes to be on the the border because "less desirable" people live in apartments.

Please, don't soapbox, the issue with AirBnBs in overcrowded touristic places is very, very different than whatever bullshit zoning laws happen in the USA, don't conflate those issues as they are not the same.

This is what an HOA is for. If you don't have one then you should make one. If you don't want to make one then you can move somewhere else.

AirBnB does not allow hosting parties. The page https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/3290 tells neighbors how to report disruptive parties.

I can promise, anecdotally, that is not followed. You know where the AirBnB houses are in my Mom's neighborhood in La Costa/Carlsbad area because they will always have loud people/parties. Neighbors are polite enough to give a heads up if they're going to be loud generally.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm saying that you can report it to AirBnB if it does. Anecdotally, they take these reports seriously.

That would be easier to do if all of the AirBnB hotel-alikes had signage indicating they were AirBnB. After all, I'm not going to report all parties I find objectionable to all of the house rental companies.

If I would be buying a house, I would be looking for a HOA which would have an explicit, contractual obligation of keeping the noise level low. So when this dentist would do this, I would be delighted to get compensation from him.

Government's laws and regulations are not contracts. People don't enter them voluntarily and they are not known ahead of time — it's simply the will of the voting majority, or worse, imposed on everybody with violence.

If you think about Airbnb like the "Ticketmaster" of real estate, all the hate makes sense. There's all sorts of things wrong with real estate, landlords, etc but for the most part there's no single thing to blame. Airbnb is an easy target, both for politicians and anyone upset about the status quo but unsure who to be angry at.

I mention Ticketmaster because I think its actually intentional that they exist as the "bogey man" of live events. They take all the hate, all the flak, related to how ridiculously expensive it is to see a concert and thus shield all the other people and companies profiting off that status quo.

"Lightning Rod" is the term I've seen.

Let's not make Airbnb some innocent party here. They're an awful company overall.

the only reason they get so staunchly defended by the tech establishment is because of how much money they've made for people like paulg and the early investors.

This comment feels like it barely makes sense, both of these are hypercapital companies who distort local markets big time. My local music scene is butting right up against LiveNation/ClearChannel and it definitely affects musicians and promoters in my city to the point that these venues will shamelessly rip off events that have their own following. Needless to say there are not enough people to go to both and so the local promoter who is often running at a very thin margin ends up having to stop.

Of course, I digress, but this capitalist law of the jungle model applies in many places.

The idea that merely owning property gives you total unilateral power over what can be done with it is I guess common but it's certainly not the only conception of private property that exists.

Land is what it is because of where it is. Models exist along a spectrum of where they distribute powers over land, but placing them all with the owner with no input from the surrounding community or state is fringe, even freak.

> people who think that a city or neighbourhood is "theirs" just because they happen to live there for a long time — without actually owning anything.

God forbid poor people feel a sense of place, community, and pride in their hometown.

> God forbid poor people feel a sense of place, community, and pride in their hometown.

I agree with a majority of your comment, but I don't think this is what parent meant here. I have a similar gripe with a lot of the "this is our neighborhood" arguments I hear online and elsewhere as parent. People seem to simultaneously claim membership/ownership in a community as well as estrangement.

I think everyone should feel a sense of pride/community where they live. However, if they don't feel that, it's also the community's fault, not Airbnb's. Providing an opportunity to people is not what changes a community for the worse, it's how the community chooses to use it.

Yeah, there's nuance there and I definitely agree it's not airbnb's fault or responsibility. But the comment was assigning the right to have input on the character & trajectory of a place solely with property ownership, which is foul.

The thing is that few bad actors, who maybe don't even live in a given community, can ruin it for the community.

What are the options for the community to prevent this? Or does community have no rights to preserve itself, given someone with deep enough pockets come?

> people who think that a city or neighbourhood is "theirs" just because they happen to live there for a long time — without actually owning anything.

Are you saying that only owners can decide what happens on a given neighbourhood? This is a really narrow way to define a community: suddenly people who do not own become second-class citizens.

> While Airbnb violated local laws, I haven't seem them violating laws that I would ever consider moral or justified.

That is not how local laws work. They are contextual, not absolute. And they are definitively not written while thinking "would golergka think this is _cool_?".

>Are you saying that only owners can decide what happens on a given neighbourhood?

I think they're saying owners should be able to dispose of their own property as they see fit.

That’s an absurd view if we are talking about real estate that probably has never been true (in complex societies but maybe also beyond) and probably cannot ever be true if we are talking about non-dystopian societies.

> non-dystopian societies.

I would say that your view is extreme or at least hyperbole.

A lot of people believe they should be able to do things with their property so long as it doesn't impose on others.

Whether I live in my house or a guest who is paying me shouldn't be a legal concern. All this talk about party houses or too much parking, or other externalities pushed on neighbors are misleading. There are laws or could be for all of these.

Instead we have cities which have de facto taken ownership of other's property. Sure, reasonable things will be mentioned like fire codes or proper sewage. But then there are things like not being able to paint your house a certain color. Or have tenants.

Then you have workers who end up sleeping in their car because there is no place to rent

Leisure and travel, at what 'price'?

One of my friends have spent a couple of months severely depressed because his girlfriend left him. While I sympathise with him and spent a lot of time supporting him in this hard time, neither him nor me doubted her right to break up with him.

Why would our sympathy for poor people would affect our view of what real estate owners can do with their property?

> or people who think that a city or neighbourhood is "theirs" just because they happen to live there for a long time

If they pay taxes there, it's their money poured into the location, so yeah, it really is theirs, don't you agree?

If they pay taxes there, they merely cave in to government's extortion — nothing more, nothing less.

I’m curious to see how that turns out for you

Why do you think enforces property rights?

> I don't understand audacity of people who are trying to dictate to real estate owners what they can and can't do with their property

I don't understand this argument. If you live in the middle of a desert or if you own an entire building in the suburbs, sure, do what you want, that's what it's allowed in those places. But if you own a flat in the middle of a very densely populated city, with rules, where even buying a home is regulated and taxed because society wants that, then this argument doesn't hold. You literally can't do what you want with your property. In Europe at least we have regional building regulations, town taxes to pay for garbage we produce, natural disasters dictating how things are built, and we even have specific rules for each building where your flat is located in. For example in my flat I can't have BBQs on the balcony where other people might do their laundry, or I can't smoke in the elevator, etc, etc... basic rules and compromises for basic societal well-being. It's very far from being able to do whatever we want.

That's a individual vs. group question.

For a society to function well, there should always be a balance between indivual interests and group interests.

There is no functional society that does not impose massive limitations on property owners for a simple reason: What you do with your property significantly impact the ability of others to enjoy their property.

Maximising the utility and liberty for all requires limitations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com