Two laws will solve a lot of problems
1. No more non-human purchase of houses. No companies, corps, trusts, funds etc. should be allowed to buy houses.
2. Ban Airbnb and other short term rentals less than 30 days.
1. No more non-human purchase of houses. No companies, corps, trusts, funds etc. should be allowed to buy houses.
2. Ban Airbnb and other short term rentals less than 30 days.
The problem is with the supply. Fix the supply and the market will balance itself.
The property market has too many inherent and imposed monopoly conditions that prevent it from acting as a hypothetical free market where supply and demand are the only factors that influence price.
Actors not motivated by profit can increase supply faster than the private sector's preferred absorption rate (e.g. mass state housing projects like in Singapore and Vienna), in which case sure, if the government massively increases supply consistently above demand and only rents or sells in a manner preventing monopoly acquisition then prices (rents or purchases prices) can be pushed down. There are other alternatives (e.g. Georgist style land taxes combined with liberal zoning laws, so efficient use of desirable locations is encouraged and enabled).
Cities with higher densities exist and they're not as nice as suburbia, but it's much better than no housing at all.
The highly parts of existing cities are limited, but as history shows - you build new cities. Population has moved from one place to another for centuries and new cities sprang all over the world. If this was done before it should be done now. Overregulation may be the culprit.
The main "successful" new cities these days are when governments create one for their headquarters (or move their headquarters to an existing smaller city), like Sejong in South Korea. This is because it induces demand quite successfully for government employees to move there. You need a strong inducing of demand to create a new city; existing cities already have strong demand via jobs, other people, and services, so new cities need to outcompete them.
I don't say that we represented the most common case, but I do think that such rentals reduce friction in the housing market. Towns with decent economies will have such transients who need a roof but aren't ready to commit to staying.
Of course, that's assumed. No-one seems to be saying otherwise.
It's funny because I used to work for one of the largest corporate owners of real estate globally.
Companies should be allowed to own properties, sure. What doesn't work is bringing corporates into the residential rental market. Housing cooperatives should be allowed though.