"We have seen corporate landlords—who own a larger share of the rental market than ever before—use inflation as an excuse to hike rents and reap excess profits beyond what should be considered fair and reasonable."
We should make owning residential, single family real estate for commercial purposes illegal. You own it, you live in it, don’t live in it, don’t own it. That would make gobbling up houses and renting them out unprofitable and force cities to open up multifamily development
That sounds nice in theory but what happens when you want to sell your house?
The only potential buyers would be people who either currently rent or are ready to sell their old house as soon as they buy yours.
What if someone wants to fix it up first? Nope, they can’t do it. It will cut out the flippers but we’ve also just cut out all the renovators and restorers.
We could do something like this (and it may not be a terrible idea) but there will definitely be a cost. If we add that law, all the people who currently own homes (that includes both investors and owner occupiers) will see the value of their real estate holdings drop. In the US, over 65% of people own their homes and for most of them, their home is their single biggest asset. Richer people can diversify more so while this law wouldn’t hurt the 35% who don’t currently own homes, it will disproportionately affect the poorer end of the 65% homeowners (who have proportionately more of their savings tied up in their home).
If we don’t also address that problem at the same time we’ll create a cohort of people who can’t afford to retire because we killed their plan of downsizing when their kids move out and living off the difference.
We should make owning residential, single family real estate for commercial purposes illegal. You own it, you live in it, don’t live in it, don’t own it. That would make gobbling up houses and renting them out unprofitable and force cities to open up multifamily development
That sounds nice in theory but what happens when you want to sell your house?
The only potential buyers would be people who either currently rent or are ready to sell their old house as soon as they buy yours.
What if someone wants to fix it up first? Nope, they can’t do it. It will cut out the flippers but we’ve also just cut out all the renovators and restorers.
We could do something like this (and it may not be a terrible idea) but there will definitely be a cost. If we add that law, all the people who currently own homes (that includes both investors and owner occupiers) will see the value of their real estate holdings drop. In the US, over 65% of people own their homes and for most of them, their home is their single biggest asset. Richer people can diversify more so while this law wouldn’t hurt the 35% who don’t currently own homes, it will disproportionately affect the poorer end of the 65% homeowners (who have proportionately more of their savings tied up in their home).
If we don’t also address that problem at the same time we’ll create a cohort of people who can’t afford to retire because we killed their plan of downsizing when their kids move out and living off the difference.