• iopq@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Landlords follow market pricing, so if there’s enough housing the prices go down. Landlords are not the reason rent is high

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      Landlords are not the reason rent is high

      If being a landlord is profitable where do you think that profit comes from? Logically landlord’s need to be making housing more expensive so they can get their cut.

      • iopq@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Return on investment. Not everyone has money to buy a house. Home prices being high keeps rents high. Increase housing supply and it will resolve the issue

        • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          And where does this return on investment come from?

          To put it another way: if a law was passed that owning a property you don’t live on is going to become illegal, there would suddenly be a lot of cheap property on the market.

          • iopq@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            It comes from owning an investment. The stock market has similar returns to the real estate market.

            But the real estate market doesn’t need to keep going up. For example, after the increase in supply of housing in Austin, the prices are down 16% off the 2022 peak

            If this could be replicated for the whole country, it would improve the situation immediately.

            I don’t understand the law you’re proposing. Would it apply to hotels? Do you need to live in the hotel you own? Apartment building? Hot spring resort? Ski lodge?

            • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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              10 months ago

              It comes from owning an investment.

              Only if they’re selling the house. Owning builds equity but you can’t live off that unless you sell the asset to get access to the money. In order to live off of it the profit has to come directly from the renters.

              I don’t understand the law you’re proposing.

              It was a hypothetical to prove a point, not an actual proposed law. I would propose a significant tax increase on any residential land a person owns but doesn’t live on. This would have no affect on hotels, resorts, lodges etc. because there is a well defined difference between commercial and residential. This would affect apartment buildings by heavily encouraging the owner to live in one of the apartments, which would also encourage them to keep everything in the building running smoothly.

              • iopq@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                That would encourage investors to buy up property to build hotels on it, increasing residential prices by decreasing supply

                • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                  10 months ago

                  There’s a limit to how many people are interested in staying in hotels in a city.

                  There’s also the zoning issues between residential and commercial.

                  There’s also the fact that it’s far easier to buy a residential home and rent it than it is to tear it down, build a hotel, hire staff, and operate an actual business.

                  I realize you have a knee jerk need to defend landlords and reject anything that interferes with them making a profit of other people’s basic need for shelter, but try to take a moment to think if your argument sounds in any way reasonable before just throwing it out there.

                  • iopq@lemmy.world
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                    10 months ago

                    My kneejerk reaction is not to landlords. It’s to “there should be a law”

                    If you implement this, people will be living long term in hostels in 6 people dorms because the landlords are not required to live in them.

                    I suggest reading Freakonomics, it explains how similar laws created perverse incentives in the real world