1. Homes that are vacant for more than 6 months out of the year 2. Homes that are short-term rentals for more than 6 months out of the year
Incentivize owners to either get long-term tenants in, or sell.
AirBnB is making things much worse. Landlords have discovered that turning a house into a short-term rental property is more lucrative than having a long-term tenant. That's horrible for the long-term rental market when everyone does that.
We don't need to make it illegal. Just tax the shit out of it and disincentivize it.
Another pertinent question would be the overall supply of housing: one obvious factor that could help explain the graph I just described is that the overall supply of US housing has gone down, meaning that fewer owners are in a position to rent out property at all. Hence the supply of rental properties is significantly decreased, which will drive up the price.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/187576/housing-units-occ...
Edit: I'm also not sure that their definition of owner occupied excludes second homes. From the linked page:
> Owner occupied housing is where the person who owns a property – either outright or through a mortgage – also resides in the property. Excluded are therefore rental properties, employer-provided housing and social housing.
Hm, yes, you're right, I was misreading the y axis.
> I'm also not sure that their definition of owner occupied excludes second homes.
"Resides" generally means principal residence, which excludes second homes. However, it would be nice if the site would clarify that.
Just as an example:
Assume a baseline property tax level of say, 6%.
Primary residence - 2% discount to 4% Non-primary residence, in same region (county/city) as primary = 6% Non-primary residence, not in same region as primary = increase 2% to 8%
Non-primary residence owned by a corporate entity rather than a citizen = increase 4% to 10%.
You do that, it should make doing things like this much harder.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/21/how-wall-street-bought-singl...
So your idea is fine, but the numbers are way off.
My proposal would be more like:
Primary residence: 1%
Rental property with 1y+ lease: 1.5%
First secondary residence, owner-occupied seasonally: 2%
Third residence, vacant, or full-time short-term rental: 5%Isn't that going to push up the price of lower end apartment rentals? Why would we try to squeeze more money from poor people to the benefit of richer home owners?
As you own more of a scarce asset, margins on rents are driven toward zero.
An aside, I often see worry of corporate ownership of property. While of course this is an issue, the bulk (72%) 1. of the problem lies with simply affluent people who own (fewer than ten) investment properties. I do think however, a fair penalty is to just tax based on the degree of rentiership from property investing, therefore a marginal tax on number of properties owned seems reasonable.
1 https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/08/02/as-nation...
Unfettered use of housing stock as an investment is inefficient and frankly undemocratic as the delta between ownership and renting entrenches inherited wealth. Ideally, although up for debate, would be to use marginal tax to fund creation of low income housing units as Santa Fe NM has recently implemented as a luxury tax on new home purchases.
I do agree, there is really something weird about owning 'extra' houses that you may only use a few weeks a year.
Reductio ad absurdum... if rich Chinese businesspeople buy every home in Vancouver (strictly to park money, not live or rent), nobody who works in Vancouver can live there and everybody has to commute from the suburbs.
Edit - at an indivual level, you're right, who cares. At a policy level, ensuring reasonable housing for the general public is a good thing.
Manhattan only exists due to Manhattan schist, exceptional bedrock due to old volcanic flow.
Many locations have poor subsoil for tall buildings, even with the best foundations there are other limits to building height.
There's a lot of potential space, sure, but not infinite space - it's finite on planet and bottlenecked by transport and terraforming off planet.
Nowadays though, it's common to own that second dwelling in a city or other built up area.
Just last week I was talking with a family member (mid-60s, about to retire). They are planning on buying a small apartment in the city their son and grandchildren live in. They are not selling their existing house in another city to do this. They plan to use it only while visiting and have explicitly stated that they see it as an investment. They are by no means 'rich'. 30 years ago this would have been unheard of for people in their position.