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?
Do your boots have straps?
Move to another country
If only it were that easy I totally would. Trust me I’ve tried looking into it before.
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
You gotta get something that will pass
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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Interesting. We all have the same feeling about you. The sad part is that you might actually know something. Maybe you could say something constructive, if only you cared to do so.
You could have made an argument about how aiming for perfection is a bad strategy here. But you didn’t, so let me show how you’re wrong. The proposed solution doesn’t address the underlying problem, and it adds complexity. Rent can only go up by 5%, sure, but what happens if you sell the property you move into it or other exceptional circumstances happen? Then you can raise the price. Or perhaps you rent it through Airbnb, so the rules don’t apply either. It doesn’t really matter what the special cases are, because finance folk love complicated solutions. They’re always going to find ways to game the system at our expense.
But let’s suppose the 5% solution is somehow good. If it’s good for rent then it should be good for other things too, right? You can’t let electricity or gas prices go up faster, or people won’t be able to heat their homes. You can’t let food prices go up faster, or people won’t be able to eat. Oh, and you certainly need minimum wage to be going up 5%, for any of that to make sense.
So if we consider all of that, and we find the aforementioned proposal slightly lacking, maybe it’s not because we’re seeking perfection. Maybe it’s because you have no idea what problems we are trying to solve.
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.
I also stand corrected. I thought you might actually know something. But then you double down with a witty empty response: two sentences with zero information. What good is that? Grandstanding is boring and pointless.
And then you want to trash talk my username? Jesus. Have fun with that.
Some people are here to learn, some people are here to teach, some people are here to share, some people are here to build community. You’re not doing any of those things. Meh.
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.
But that might upset his owners, I mean campaign contributors.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
— some guy
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.
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 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.
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.
Look up Monarch Investment
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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
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.
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.
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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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.
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.
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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Doesn’t help if there is housing available but it’s 3 hours from where my work is :/
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Prices are already jacked up to an insane level compared to wages, the horse is already out of the barn: This is not going to fix the problem renters face.
A soft cap works as a ratchet. Downturns in the rental market are sticky while up turns are slow and marginalized.
It’s effectively the opposite of the way things are now, with cartelized units staying artificially high through downturns and prices skyrocketing during every shortfall.
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…
Be careful what you wish for. California capped property tax increase since 1978 with prop 13 and most experts say this is a major factor in their insanely expensive housing market. Most people are heavily incentivized to never move to keep their low property tax rate, but this in turn prevents most new development and upzoning while simultaneously leading to the worst sprawl in the nation.
It also starves the state of tax revenue requiring them to levy the tax further for new buyers and seek other income streams like heightened income and sales tax. Policies like this somewhat unintuitively only benefit those who are already well off. Renters and younger people gain no benefit and ultimately pay higher property taxes than those who already are financially established enough to own a property.
A healthy property tax disincentivizes housing as a speculative investment, improving the overall market for people who actually live there. There should certainly be breaks for poverty and financial distress but capping or cutting rates broadly encourages speculation. For a basic human need such high degree of speculation benefits nobody.
Isn’t that due to the reassessment of property tax when a new owner purchases the property? And wouldn’t that be solved if the cap persists regardless of ownership change?
That just puts an insane value premium on older housing stock
Did those “experts” note that the rest of the country, that people want to live in, have the same insane high prices and yet don’t have that cap? No, don’t bother I already know the answer and so do you.
Economics isn’t a science, it is playtime daydreaming. Which is fine, I enjoy my weekly D&D session. The thing is I know I am not a lvl 12 mountain dwarf fighter.
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.
These two things are not linked. Rent already is as high as the market will bear, property taxes will come out of landlord profits.
How are they not linked? The taxes have to be paid. The money comes from the rent.
Likely not, I think if taxes go up 10% rent will go up 10%+ percent.
Yeah, that doesn’t math out.
Also, my rent got hiked 13% last year, despite the taxes remaining the same. Which is why I threw everything I had into getting out of renting.
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.
Yep, company loyalty is dead here. The only way to get a significant raise is to switch jobs.
i mean that’s what happens if you don’t give a raise. what a stupid market.
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
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.
Acording to this report: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/eci.pdf
The average Wages and salaries increased 1.1 percent and benefit costs increased 1.1 percent from December 2023.
Oh and then people that did get raises averaged 4.4% last year. So its really raises for some and poverty for most.
Timely.
