Building houses to solve the housing crisis implies that the crisis was caused by a lack of homes. Every single one of the 2 million houses would be picked up by a property firm or a Chinese millionaire just the way it has been happening for the last ten years. What you really need is legislation, but what you are getting is more food for the hounds.
Supply and demand. Corporate interests will only buy homes when theres a profit incentive. A housing shortage makes great profit opportunities.
If there are too many airbnbs so they don’t get rented, there’s no longer a profit. If there are enough houses that you can’t buy to flip at guaranteed markup, there goes the profit. If there’s enough houses that you’re not guaranteed a quick sale on your investment, there goes the profit. The point is there are limits on those ownership patterns so you can build your way out of it
The US had 3.1m houses sitting empty in 2023
property hoarding is a crime against humanity and should be treated as such, imho. Houses are for living in, not speculation.
I don’t think the US needs more single family homes, I think we need more, or at least more affordable, multifamily housing. Suburbs are expensive, inefficient, and bad for the environment. What we need to be doing is bringing down the cost of housing in cities, as well as making cities as pedestrian friendly as possible, with walking and biking infrastructure, and public transportation.
For us, the suburbs are cheaper than the cities. We basically have no choice. I have to work in the city but can’t afford to live there with a family. Mainly the rent/mortgage prices, and groceries. It’s all cheaper when I’m willing to drive 30-60 minutes outside of the city.
That’s rapidly changing all over the place. The question is now whether you want the suburb life and a commute or to live in the city with amenities. The prices are very similar now.
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I’ll always wonder what you posted…
Something off topic about not wanting to live in a city. One of the reasons I’m big on urban renewal is maybe it will get more people to move into cities so there’s fewer of them in rural areas where I want to live.
But whatever will poor Blackrock do with their real estate portfolio??
Yeah but also charge less than $200k for a 3b 2b with a 2 car garage.
A coworker just bought a 1.5 bath, 2 car garage, 3 bed for $500,000+ in Portland, basically no yard/outdoor area.
I’m in that city too. I’m sure it requires a lot of upgrading for that price.
Nope. Just need to force all landlords to sell. Make tax on rent ruinous. Tax additional homes. Make it illegal for corporations to own residential property.
And how many empty houses are there already?
15 million vacant houses. Around 600,000 homeless people. If only 10% of all vacant homes in the use were liveable we could still give every homeless person two and have some left over.
Cool, landlords can buy all of these up too!
The systems in place are broken. I work 12hr days, with overtime. Credit score over 750. And there is no chance I can afford a house in my area.
Have you tried uprooting your family and moving to a place no one wants to live? Something something bootstraps.
There are enough homes to house everyone, supply isn’t the problem, greed is.
It’s also probably a location issue, might not have enough houses where people want to live even though there’s empty ones in buttfuck nowhere.
Or empty ones in Detroit or Florida.
Don’t worry, those florida houses will be filled soon! With water of course, not people
Property hoarding could be solved by quadrupling propert taxes on any home that isn’t a primary residence of the property owner.
I was going to make a similar comment. Write into law that investors have to pay 4x property taxes to the town, if the town for some reason doesn’t want the taxes then it just goes to the federal government.
Or maybe billion dollar companies should be forced to sell so the average person can buy them
The volume held by investment firms and the like is large in a sheer numbers sense, but virtually nothing in terms of its percentage of the whole sum of residential real estate.
The fact is that we have been lagging in the supply side for decades and the Great Recession and then the COVID Pandemic cut new builds even more drastically. There simply isn’t supply available to address the demand at a reasonable and accessible price.
Even a small percentage is good. The situation is desperate.
The fewer first time home owners that get out bid by corps the better. Doesn’t matter if it is a drop in the bucket.
And that’s even before considering how it would help stop housing from being an investment vehicle.
Housing is always going to be an investment vehicle.
Right, and trickle down economics works. /s
This bubble will be disastrous beyond imagination once it bursts.
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And Geordi would probably canonically agree, at least with the second bit. Just finished reading Picard the Last Best Hope, and Geordi had no problem taking over the ship yards of Mars to build a fleet to save Romulans.
I actually think the best solution would be the government to build a bunch of extra housing and crash the rental market with a two pronged supply approach:
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sell housing to first time home buyers at 50% off under the condition they don’t resale for 5 years and the government gets any value gains over the sale price for 10 years.
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triple the existing public housing stock while slashing requirements to get into public housing
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