Cool, my rent is still 70% of what I make in a month. It’s almost like it’s already too late, but I’m too poor and uneducated to be an expert. Got any other ideas?
5% is crazy talk when workers wages are going up 2.5% per year. Landlords need at least 20% more every year.
But if it pass, then it is first win. I fear that landlord are not going to let it happen without a fight
Is 5% really that crazy when the current rate is 20% as you describe?
Man this entire thread is just a perfect encapsulation of the perfect being the enemy of the good. What a bunch of useless chuds.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that phrase. Do you mind explaining what you mean? (Just to be clear, I’m not trying to be combative. I just have no idea how to read that)
“Don’t make perfect the enemy of good” essentially says that it’s better to do what you can in the short term to reduce harm or make positive change than to wait for the perfect solution and do nothing in the meantime. The idea is that the good is still going to help some people while we wait for the perfect solution to the problem- which, crucially, may never come, or come too late for a whole bunch of people.
One example would be letting a parent having their kid eat fast food instead of a perfectly healthy diet because their parents live in a food desert; not ideal, but it’ll keep the kid fed and alive.
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I stand corrected, this is the perfect encapsulation.
Also you are a disgrace to that username.
Lol it’s like you summoned the ancient spirit of not understanding incremental improvement, who then wrote a short essay to explain to you just how much they don’t understand the concept.
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we have several lifetimes worth of policies to change to fix the mess we are in. this is exactly what Biden should be doing, passing policy after policy in the next few months that have obvious positive results for the common voter. he’s not gonna run out of stuff to do if he’s re-elected, so he needs to stop holding onto this shit like it’s his last wild card of all time.
He’s not a dictator. Most of those would never pass in the Senate.
It’s not about that. It’s about building momentum for the idea. If it passes great, if not then it’s out there. People know it’s possible and it will never stop haunting the elites who the government actually serves.
That’s great!!!
Need to stop corporations buying houses next, and tamper foreigners buying up houses too (almost every country I’ve traveled to won’t let me buy so why not do the same?)
I feel like banning corporations from owning housing isn’t the panacea people expect it to be. It’s pretty impractical when you start talking about larger buildings and mixed use housing, and I’m not convinced it’s really a big driver of the problem.
I think a steep land value tax is a more workable solution. It incentivizes anyone who holds non-productive property (vacant homes in this case) to either make better use of the land or sell it. This also has the benefit of impacting individuals who own second homes or have mostly empty airbnbs.
Property taxes are insufficient for this purpose because they are generally based on the value of the home rather than just the land, so not only are they easier to game, but it disincentivizes improving the property.
I agree about taxes. Tax the ever loving bejesus out of vacant rentals or speculative residential real estate. That will keep them from buying in the first place or deeply incentivize them to keep them rented out.
Crazy idea.
How about instead of corporations owning the unit, maybe the person who lives in the unit gets to own part of it.
I know crazy.
Owning part of a larger building is actually much more complicated than simply owning a house. I’m not sure everyone would actually want that even if they could buy the unit they live in at a low price.
I almost bought a condo in a multi-story building a couple of years ago and I’m glad as hell I didn’t. It was a one-bedroom unit for $125K, which is fine except that the monthly condo fees are $1000 (which includes utilities, at least), property taxes plus insurance are another $400, and the last three consecutive years residents have been hit with a special assessment of about $10K - which means I would have been paying around $2500 a month to live in a one-bedroom apartment that I’d already paid $125K for.
I disagree. No need to force development to destroy natural landscapes just to avoid a tax. Simply tax multiple residential properties somewhat exponemtially.
100%, 133%, 200%, 350%, 500% or something
Generally it’s not destroying undeveloped land, but fixing up dilapidated houses so that they are livable.
Having a progressive tax based on number of homes owned may work, but you would need to rewrite quite a bit of real estate law to make it actually effective. Obviously corporations would not be allowed to own houses to avoid people owning through shell companies, but you would also have to draw a line so corporations could own larger apartment complexes and mixed use buildings. You also do want builders to be able to temporarily own houses for the purpose of building and selling them as well as corporate flippers.
Frankly, I think it’s too complicated to expect on a national level.
Right.
Owning one or two residential properties is fine, more is problematic.
I say “two” to handle the very common case of children putting their parents’ homes in their own name because Medicare clawback rules will take the home after they die if you don’t do it early enough.
The biggest issue with corporations owning low income multifamily housing is that they act like slumlords. When you have nowhere else to go and the landlord won’t fix major issues then it takes a toll on you. When a kid sees this growing up, then it leads to antisocial behavior. Investors think that “passive investment” means no input at all when it requires a great deal of active management if contracts are being followed. They just know that the residents have no reasonable way to enforce the contract.
Are corporations more likely to be slumlords? Pretty much everyone I’ve ever known who owns a rental property has been a complete asshole, but I’ve only known a few.
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Strong disagree. Can you imagine what red states will do with the power to demand proof of citizenship to own property? Or all the hell couples where one is a Permanent Resident the other a Citizen will go through?
You should be terrified of someone like Jeff Session or Kris Kobach able to just veto any random person from owning land. You can see it now in your head
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Them drafting letters on government stationary to real estate agents demanding paperwork from anyone with a Latino or Chinese name. Effectively making agents terrified of dealing with minorities.
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Random spot checks, having deputies show up to open houses asking for papers or waiting until after closing then interrogation of the family
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Activists courts arguing that all members of the household must be citizens based on vague feelings
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New rules that state that the entire inheritance path must all be citizens
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Non-citizens being forced to sell at a 1/10th the value
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The lawsuits from groups like the ACLU pointing out that it is a obvious violation of the civil rights act, which goes to the Supreme Court who then declares the Bill of Rights only applies to citizens
If you are interested the experiment has been run already. Go read up what Kris Kobach did when he got a town to pass a law requiring citizenship tests to rent. He not only near bankrupted the town due to lawsuits he personally sent threatening letters to Latinos who lived there.
ve traveled to won’t let me buy so why not do the same?
The standard is good behavior, not other people.
Have you traveled much? More countries do this than don’t. The trump nazis will abuse everything yes. But people not being able to afford a place to live is also giving us trump nazis in the first place
Have you traveled much?
Again
The standard is good behavior, not other people.
Must I repeat it again?
The trump nazis will abuse everything yes.
And yet you want to give them more? You don’t hand a gun to a person who went to jail repeatedly for using a gun.
But people not being able to afford a place to live is also giving us trump nazis in the first place
Assertion, please demonstrate it. Also demonstrate that your method of handing Nazis more power will make them less powerful. Lastly compare the US grabbling with fascists to other nations who have rules like you are advocating for and how they are also grappling with fascists.
It’s a little thing but I kinda want you to acknowledge that the one time this idea was tried in diet form in the US it not only didn’t work it also legalized racism. You are suggesting an idea that we tried and it not only failed in the task it was meant to perform it also created a host of new problems.
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I really didn’t mention a word about anything you are saying to me now. I am pro-development anti-nimby and admit I haven’t studied the issues of corporate housing enough to weight in on it.
My apologies if that came across as challenging your point with the nimby stuff. It’s like a fuselight, it wasn’t for you but just directed out in the open. Retracting the comment. Housing is something that’s sensitive to me because we just lost a family member to suicide, and while not solely that person’s rationale, among many factors housing was a significant one.
Housing and healthcare on the trajectory it’s pointed at today, robs our youth of their hope, and signifies quite loudly that we as a society do not love or value the futures of our children, however people may feel internally.
My only message for NIMBY people is that of hate and revulsion.
Right but I am on your side about this. I want everyone to have housing that is awesome and within their price range. I just don’t agree that finding ways to punish immigrants and minorities is the best way to go about it. There is a difference between me saying “I want X and don’t think Y is the best way to get X” and me saying “fuck your family, I hate Y and lets do X to hurt them”. Me discussing how to solve a problem is not me denying the problem exists or should not be solved.
Also you and me are good. I am sorry for your loss. I imagine I would be very sensitive to this subject in your situation.
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3 years of absurd rent prices and we are just now seeing legislation, wonder why…
Usually just need to see what Reps have blocked to find out.
I suppose he has to do something to signal to voters that he’s going to try to fix the housing affordability crisis, but this is pretty meaningless. But, what can he say? The truth? That the housing crisis is an extremely complex problem that will take decades to fix? Probably not going to go over very well.
Not allowing landlords to drive people into homeless on speculation and greed is a good first step to solving the very complex problem that will take decades.
That the housing crisis is an extremely complex problem that will take decades to fix?
No? There’s currently no cap on single housing investments, and at the very least private equity needs to be banned from buying housing in any form.
How is this meaningless?
Well, for one, it almost certainly won’t pass. So the chances of it becoming law in the first place are pretty low. But even if it were passed, I think it would be difficult to enforce. Even if it were enforced, landlords would just hike the rent 4.99% every year.
4.99% is way better than the 50% my previous landlord tried. You can always vote Republican if you want. See what they’re going to do for you.
You can always vote Republican if you want.
No thanks.
Not to mention that unless wages also rise by 5% per year, which mine haven’t recently not sure about others, then it’s still unsustainable for renters.
A sensible, too-little-too-late rule, probably full of carveouts and exceptions, that I nonetheless feel really relieved to see. Delayed and watery regulation is better than none, I suppose.
Hasn’t rent control been shown to be ineffective at making everyone play nice? I feel like it’s much more effective to put your finger on the supply/demand balance by subsidizing the supply side.
And not by just giving handouts to corporate landlords, either.
Hasn’t rent control been shown to be ineffective at making everyone play nice?
It’s proven effective at causing landlords to scream and cry and publish 10,000 word Op-Eds about how they’re going to do a capital strike if the rules aren’t changed.
But, when paired with new investment in public housing, its incredibly effective at keeping rental costs stable long term.
Just like with unions, you know it’s good for the common people, because the business and property owners speak out against it so strongly. If it’s pointless, they could just let it happen. But instead, they rally against it. So you know they’re lying when they say it won’t matter.
It will matter.
Yeah. It has but stuff like this plays well in the echo chamber. Like most attempts at price controls it has a lot of unintended consequences such as fewer apartments built and rented out, landlords charging obscene amounts to a new renter knowing they cannot raise the prices as needed later on, landlords raising prices whether they need to or not because they can’t hike them quickly when needed, worse maintenance.
Okay then let’s just drop an anchor into the market. Have the federal government commit to buying and managing 50,000 units in every major city. They’re available on the open market at cost plus 100 dollars a month. The 100 dollars goes into a fund and the city with the highest rents gets more federally owned apartments.
We just keep dropping anchors until developers provide reasonable housing at reasonable prices or housing is no longer a private market.
Government has a really big damn stick. If people’s needs don’t start getting met then those developers are going to feel it, right in their profits.
That last sentence is all that ever happens in supply side economics. It’s the entire handbook.
They’ve had enough carrot. It’s time for the stick.
I think the problem is that once the government subsidizes anything it becomes all hands on deck peak business interest to exploit and steal said subsidies.
Some sort of enforced regulation might work, but the government doesn’t really like to do that.
I’m sure this comes with a guaranteed 5% increase to minimum wages at the same time right? … right? Any amount of minimum wage increase from the last increase 15 years ago?
Let’s build a million new homes and sell them to people that don’t currently own any homes.
Let’s
buildseize a million new homes and sell them to people that don’t currently own any homes.FTFY
Fuck these ogres hoarding real estate.
There’s no shortage of homes in the US. They’re just being hoarded for their increasing value.
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Cool, but also cap property tax increases as well. Mine have increased over 10% for the last 3 years.
Can they even cap that? That’s a state tax, I feel like that’s one that you would need to deal directly with your state to resolve. As someone who lives in one of the highest property tax states, I also wish this could happen…
Is the property tax rate that’s increasing or your home’s appraised value? My home has doubled in appraised value since we bought it in 2016, so our taxes have doubled as well.
No, property tax is basically the only direct motivation in place for home owners to vote for politicians and policies that will keep housing affordable for future generations and people who don’t already own a home. Otherwise why wouldn’t home owners want to see housing prices skyrocket in value if there’s no financial downside for them (and a giant payout when they do sell)? As mentioned in other comments, some states have tried property tax caps, and the result is creating a system of haves and have nots based entirely around who was lucky enough to buy into the market before it shot to the moon.
I agree that’s the problem. Property taxes go up, rent has to go up to cover it. If property taxes go up by X amount but you can’t raise rent the appropriate amount then there’s a problem.
We need to cap both.
You could just make slightly less money. It is allowed. It isn’t like chemical reaction balance thing. It isn’t even that they are losing money, they are just making less than they want.
Make slightly less is one thing. Going negative is another. Many landlords work on a shoe string budget.
I am sure with all the lawyers and accountants that work in Washington DC they can easily structure it to deal with a few edge cases. I am pretty sure my dumbass could figure it out. Maybe a tiered system looking at the last few years, ones that are on there verge of failure have more control compared to ones doing well.
Timely.
That’s still way higher than anyone’s raises each year…
Raises have nothing to do with inflation or cost of living. Companies that pin raises to those things are severely underpaying employees and hoping they don’t seek greener pastures.
Market rates set compensation. The best way to know your market rate is to find a new job.
If the company is doing COLAs right then their employees wouldn’t need to seek greener pastures.
COLA is almost always lower than what you’ll get by job hopping
I didn’t say they were doing it right.
what the fuck? you get less than 5% raise in a year in the US?
edit: in light of responses, I’d like to reiterate, what the fuck… this is the most obscenely wealthy country in the world.
People are lucky to get a raise at all. Much less 5%, usually it’s 1 or 2. For at least a decade the only way to significantly increase your pay has been to move jobs.
Most people are lucky to get 2%… my company set the max at 2.5 last year and you only got that if you were IT Jesus
This shit never works out as simply as you expect it to. With any public policy change there are layers and nuance. If you restrict rent increases then every year you’re gonna see the majority of landlords including the ones who do not increase rent yearly suddenly change course to always up the rent 5% per year, every year. Otherwise as a member of the ownership class who doesn’t increase rent your are losing out on equity compared to those who do. Compound interest never catches up.
If you want to make renting profitable and homeownership obtainable for nearly everyone you need to setup a system where renters gain a share of ownership proportional to the money they put in. Make it so ALL renters eventually own the place they rent if they stay long enough. Ownership increases for every dollar spent towards rent. Evaporate the double dip appreciation for landlords and punish the income so that you gain money but at a slower rate than an index fund.
You also need subsidized lending for individuals who own no home. Possibly make it so 100% of rental income tax goes into a fund that provides mortgages to someone purchasing a primary residence when they do not own any current properties or are selling their primary residence to purchase another one (e.g. moving, not hoarding housing.) Make the application process for these mortgages prioritize families without any owned homes in their direct lineage (e.g. those with parents and children which do not own homes get a higher priority than the kids of wealthy homeowners.)
Something like this can bring homeownership to the masses and bring prices down as investment income from housing is no longer as valuable as other investments. Prices may still stay high, but subsidized mortgages would keep monthly payments affordable for those who qualify while minimizing profitability for hoarders.
Finally if you are still in love with rent control, then do it concurrently with a program like the above. Balance the scales.
Why would someone buy a house so someone else could slowly buy it from them? They would essentially be acting like a bank.
Who keeps up with the house maintenance?
Landlords are unneeded middlemen. A good system doesn’t use them.
Your idea is “rent to own”.
You can rent to own a Playstation that’s 300 dollars for a small monthly price but at the end of the loan you’re going to pay 600 dollars total for the Playstation.
Why am I going to go to Best Buy, buy a Playstation for 300, then let Jimmy down the street play with it while he slowly pays me back my 300?
Why am going to buy a house for 100,000 and let Jimmy rent to own it?
600 a month for 15 years. He’d pay for it.
If I put 100k in the S&P500 for 15 years, I’d have 415k.
Would I rather:
A. Help Jimmy get a house
B. Make ~300k for just sitting
If you think landlords are bad you should see how much the bank makes.
My 500k 7.5% mortgage if I only paid the mandatory payment would end up costing me something like 1.6 million dollars. My PITI is something like 4k/mo and only like $500 is principal.
Edit:
Why would someone buy a house so someone else could slowly buy it from them?
Imagine if you can’t make your mortgage payment on a home that you will not be living in due to whatever personal reasons you have, so you want to pause payments. Instead of selling the home you choose to rent it out… barely losing equity thanks to the kind renters who take on the interest and tax payments for you so you don’t have to pay.
The renters are not getting a worse deal than buying and they get the benefit of having a home they are gaining equity in. The landlord is not losing the home they otherwise could not afford to keep given whatever factor is going on. (Parents need short term care? traveling? going to college for a year or two? just don’t want to work?) Bottom line, it’s far more equitable for everybody.
Anything that just rips away equity from those who currently have it is going to be wildly unpopular. In gaming terms, nobody likes nerfs, you need to buff the curve for people who do not have equity. If you are perceived as taking something away it is so hard to convince anybody that the change is for the better or needed.
What you’re saying
Say my mortgage is 1k a month.
I can’t afford 1k, so I let you move in and pay me “rent”
You pay me 1k each month.
After a year, I kick you out and move back in.
Where’d your 12k go?
Bank going to give 12k in cash to you and increase my mortgage by 12k?
So let’s say your mortgage is 1k/mo. We’re not talking PITI, just mortgage.
Let’s pretend the house is worth $30,000 and the landlord has $7200 in equity at the beginning of the lease (20%.)
Let’s also say of that mortgage 700 is interest and 300 is principal. So a renter pays you 1k/mo rent for 12 months. They get 300/mo principal totaling $3,600 after a year.
At this point there are a few different ways of handling it.
Option 1: The tenant is buying debt from the bank with the principal payments over the course of the year. So $3600 of the debt they now own, when you pay the bank the payments go proportionally to the tenant which actively reduces their equity, but they collect all the interest income for the share they own.
Option 2: You could have shares of the home. As money is paid in against principal the tenant gains share of the overall home - so in this case a bit over 10% over the course of the term. Since this is shares as the valuation of the home increases so do the share prices and the typical compound interest applies. This can be very messy because when you want to cash out the principal owner either need to buy you out by taking another mortgage or paying you, but it could be done.
When you factor in things like the appreciation of the home the first option gives the appreciation to the landlord without reducing their mortgage. They would gain in net worth because the home is worth more money, even though they still have a mortgage that hasn’t decreased in price.
The second option takes the equity gain away from the landlord proportional to shares owned. Although harder to track it’s still possible.
This is ignoring the real world scenario where the mortgage is really only $500/mo for a lot of long time landlords who bought 20+ years ago or refinanced in 2020 and the rent is $2000-3000+++ There would have to be something that takes into account excess paid beyond the mortgage/taxes. This also doesn’t make any sense at all if the house is paid off either since there would be only taxes, no mortgage. Obviously there would need to be some nuance in implementing a solution but it’s not impossible.
I like the idea of rent to own condos from the federal government. That removes the profit incentive and allows tenants to immediately form a council for their building to manage maintenance and such rather than having a landlord (or 10 who own single units in multiple buildings) run the building council.
It’s easy as pie too, federal government buys or builds, (doesn’t matter), then divides the cost by the number of units. That number is the magic number at which you own the condo free and clear. Divide the magic number by 30 and you have base rent that must be paid monthly. You can pay more if you want or you can just do the base plus fees set by the building council. If you need to move before 30 years then someone can buy you out of your unit by paying the amount you’ve already paid or more. Otherwise the government will buy you out and start the process over with the next tenant.
Build enough of these and we can drop an anchor into the housing market that naturally prevents things from going too high. After all why would I mortgage 800k when I can pay half that over 30 years with no interest?
