Houses are for living, not for speculation

So the 2nd, 3rd house taxes could be relatively low but for the 10th they would be ginormous.

If you take speculation out of the housing market, storing net worth in your main house becomes a lot less attractive.

In the Uk, at least, stamp duty is an obvious and infuriating driver of either buying big early or never downsizing. I did the former, parents do the latter.

Easy to solve the incentive problem yet we never will

If someone lives in a modest house and have further assets, there are many many (speculative) stores for that net worth that isn't housing.

You tell people: You have 20 years to sell your second/third residential properties, even at a good tax premium. But in 20 years you MUST have sold or you Will pay lots.of.taxes.

Edit: anyhow... I dont pretend to try to solve this complex issue in a couple of HN comments. It's just a general sentiment I have that the.only way to remove speculation from residential property is by government mandate.

I'm all for this. And I am "part of the problem " as I own 2 houses in 2 different states, and rent one at a freaking high rent price, because the market in that area is crazy.

The problem is the scale of investment. For example, 3 companies own 19,000 houses, or 11% of the rental market, in the Atlanta, GA area[0]. The market is being "manipulated" in that investors with vast amounts of cash are outbidding folks trying to buy a primary residence, and by owning tens of thousands of homes, you exert a measure of control over the housing supply (i.e. "manipulation").

I don't believe that companies should have the ability to own so many houses, and the easiest way to curb this is to progressively tax investment property to the point that isn't financially feasible to own tens, let alone thousands, of homes.

0: https://news.gsu.edu/2024/02/26/researchers-find-three-compa...

Setting aside the "I know it when I see it" definition of speculation used by most people that changes as needed during a discussion and all the negative side effects that come with that, is telling people who produce a scarce asset that they will make less money when they sell it a good idea, or a bad idea?

Why do you assume that prices increasing faster than inflation is manipulation, and what is the definition of "normal changes in demand"?

Real estate historically hasn't appreciated faster than inflation over time. Supply constraints, historically low interest rates, and a couple other factors have changed that in a number of areas in the last couple decades, but not all. The Rust Belt is a prime example, yet for some reason that isn't relevant in these discussions.

Same goes for commercial, but in that case, I'd even suggest forefeiture if you are not reducing requested rent within a year of vacancy. Let someone else take over if you overspent.

All data would indicate otherwise, and why shouldn't short term rental or vacation properties exist?

The other problem is this, if you banned short term rentals _entirely_, which NYC basically did, you have not changed the fundamental supply vs demand structure. You still have X people who want units and Y units. Rents did not go down _at all_. House prices did not go down _at all_. The primary change was that hotel prices went up because of lack of competition.

That's the fundamental problem. This was recognized for a long time in the west, we banned usury, but now if you use that word people either have no idea what you are talking about or get mad at you because they make good money off it.

Didn't the Christian phase in Europe effectively restrict meaningful lending from most of the economy for a really long time?

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

you can read up on social credit (the western version, not chinese) if you want an alternate perspective

EDIT: On reading it, this is actually a reasonable description of how it works. But the idea that it's not managed by anyone is silly: the banks manage it by scrounging as much debt as they can, productive or not, and charging as much interest as they can on it (and getting bailouts when that inevitably goes sideways, which transfers the issue to the public purse). That's the problem: the money needs to be created to match the productive economy and be placed in the hands of everyone, interest free.

Yes, obviously I think that having a 100% capital gains tax on housing would be pretty absurd, and would not lead to the types of outcomes we actually want. We often do want developers betting housing, which incentivizes improvements and reselling the places. But my point here is that -- for those who truly want housing to not be for speculation -- you need to completely eliminate economic gains from buying housing. They way you do that is to tax the capital gains that come from the sale of housing to the point where they no longer exist.

A land value tax is probably the best option for what we want to happen which isn't "eliminating speculation" but is instead to prevent land hoarding. We actually want people to speculate on properties, but in doing so, to develop them in to efficient uses if that future value.

I think the 'plumbing' for sewage took me 2 days and $300 in pipe. The septic system was maybe $2000 in materials, you could easily replicate it with a shovel and a couple months of doing day labor on the weekends.

I take it for granted because it is extremely cheap, extremely easy, quite sanitary, and basically a footnote on building the shack. This ain't the 60s anymore, any tom/dick/harry can plumb a whole house using extremely forgiving pvc and pex with minimal cost or thought, though they're usually stopped by asinine licensing rules and the dumbass notion you need building plans (I had none).

Because of how tightly coupled local taxation is to the real estate market, the political risk associated with angering local homeowners, and the regulatory capture performed by local government employees and supporters of the status quo, it's highly, highly regulated already in nearly every populated area of the US.