Houses at unattractive places in poor condition might actually represent a negative value.
As such, even 1 EUR houses might be severely over-valued.
It should be interesting as tax code could also take that into consideration.
This reminds me of an incident in Vancouver, where the city sought to expropriate single room occupancy (SRO) hotels (read: slums). They felt that each property was worth negative value, but they estimated the value as $1 because:
> We are unaware of any instances of property being transferred with a negative value. Therefore, a value of $1.00 is concluded for the subject property with the knowledge that a purchaser would be required to assume the financial obligations with either holding or demolishing and redeveloping the property.
[1] https://council.vancouver.ca/20191106/documents/cfsc2.pdf
Of course you will be able to still an get a positive value for an (old) house if it's somehow an enthusiast's object, who wants exactly this: An old Italian small village house or a German architect's house from the 70ies.
> Unfortunately, lockdown came and your wife will be home for the next 60 days.
> You do not want this woman to show up at your house at all and try to pass this futures contract to someone else.
> Only you cannot sell this commitment because nobody can receive the escort at home anymore. Everyone is in full storage with wife.
> To make matters worse, not even the pimp (Chicago Mercantile exchange) has more room to receive girls because his house is crowded with girls.
> So you will pay anyone just to take the girl off your hands.
2020 copypasta, because its more relatable than futures and of course, "sex work is work" an inclusive phrase for the workers that choose that trade, immunizing us from criticism for making the analogy at all, hurray!
As an immovable asset's value cannot be changed in the same ways as a movable one's, perhaps there are different ways to tax it that are still fair, or encourage positive social effects.
That is likely to lead to moral hazard issues though so i doubt it would work in the real world.
IMHO this is a defect of the system as some houses has the value -50.000 EUR and should be sold on the market for that - I should get 50.000 EUR to take over the house.
In particular, as we develop building- and decomissionning codes, these impose a liability of people to decommission.
While radically liberal market forces told us that we can buy land and have full control, that was never really the case, and we are waking up to the issues of irresponsible and harmful pollution.