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Comment by gloxkiqcza | Hacker News Reader

The issue is skewed supply and demand. If it’s profitable to buy housing as an investment, lower to middle class folk can’t compete with the upper class and businesses in the purchasing power, no matter how much housing gets build. I’m not sure whether there’s a good solution to this problem.

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Here in Norway they've tried to curb this somewhat by eliminating the wealth tax value discount you get on secondary homes. Your primary gets a 75% discount up to $1mill, then 30% on anything above $1mill, while secondaries count in full. So it's much less favorable to own multiple homes now as an investment.

Of course, most of those who did own extra homes as an investment rented them out as well, so rental prices here has gone through the roof as landlords and common folk with an extra apartment or two has sold the homes.

It's profitable for investment because of low supply.

There is. Progressive taxation. Your first purchase is tax free. Second is a percentage and the more you accumulate the higher the percentage.

I'm trying to see how this would work. Would this be single family homes only? Duplexes and triplexes? Apartments/condos?

It doesn't matter, any residential property.

If I build a 40-unit apartment building (provides housing for 36 families on average), am I taxed as if that’s 40 residential properties? Do we want to use tax policy to punish this construction?

No punish people buying multiple properties as "investments".

Tax the purchase not the construction.

If I build a 40 unit building and sell it to my wife (or my neighbor) or sell it to BlackRock, there’s no difference in how many units exist nor how many families can live there. My tax treatment should be the same as theirs.

If you restrict or punish the purchase of housing via tax policy, you simultaneously restrict the sale of it by original constructors, which serves as an impediment to that original construction.

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