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Indeed. Nothing about this addresses rental markets and general extreme cost of living. Rather, it finds new ways to prop up severely overvalued housing markets.

Housing costs are so high because it’s become an investment over a necessary place for a human to live. A correction is severely needed and long overdue, but the government works hard to keep values artificially high from zoning laws at the bottom to preventing corrections at the top.

At the very least, they should raise real estate taxes on empty units. This will penalize people for owning several vacation homes, as well as incentivize landlords to lower rates in order to fill the unit.

Difficult to enforce, but send a few people to jail for real estate tax fraud and the rest will fall in line.

Wouldn’t a tax hike only get passed through to the renter?

Never talks of raising taxes on landlords and empty units tho.

Canada passed this law in 2022 addressing that:

Underused Housing Tax

Why is the for profit house building industry involved in solving the problem they had a hand in making?

Reform the CPA and just build ourselves. Or use the army core of engineers. They are getting paid either way.

Don't be stupid. How else an I going to make money by doing nothing? Get a job? That's for people who don't pull themselves up by their bootstraps!

Raise property taxes 500% for property that is not registered as the owners primary residence.

That should do it

The solution is to build more housing where people want to live.

Don't get suckered into their blame game. This just results in everybody pointing fingers while the prices continue to soar.

Prices only go up because there's competition to buy them.

Not in my back yard! Think of all the poor and homeless. Crime rate always goes up around them! This is a nice neighborhood!

This is something I'm currently struggling with. I rent a house and the roof is leaking in two different rooms. Problem is that last time I had the landlord do any repairs he increased my rent by $300 a month. I know that having a leaky roof is damaging his property, but it's only a minor inconvenience for me at the moment.

I'm not about to spend an extra $6,000+ a year just to preserve his property when I can keep it from bothering me with a tack, some string, and a pitcher for the water to go into.

I mean he had to pay for the repairs somehow /s

Until we actually remove republicans and republican lites from the legislature I highly doubt we'll see any progressive tax reforms, like actually taxing the rich. You could probably find more support for expanding house buying programs. Stuff like lowering the down payment requirements, and or give a large grant for a portion of the house value if it is high and it could be clawed back at sale.

Correct. In capitalism one must profit off the necessities of life.

Also, when you buy a house, the cost of the mortgage is locked in...assuming you don't do an adjustable rate mortgage which were never designed for long term homeownership.

In theory I guess it protects against the costs of dealing with defaults or having people walk away from underwater mortgages. But on the other hand, all of that stuff could be insured against.

The downpayment requirements are much looser now then they used to be. Pretty much anyone in the US can get as low as 3 to 3.5% down, which means the down payment can easily be less than all the other home buying expenses (closing cost, inspection, title insurance, loan origination, moving, transfer taxes, ...). You also typically have a month before you need to make your first principle repayment, which helps offset the down payment.

Veterans, active service members, and people buying in qualified rural areas can get 0 down mortgages.

Depending on where you live, there might be further assistance available. Around here, the county offers (means tested) down-payment assistance loans that cover 100% the minimum down payment, and has an interest rate that is at least 2% lower than that of the main loan. They also wave all transfer taxes for all first time buyers.

It's risk mitigation for the banks. You don't have to put 20% down, but generally you'll have to pay an additional insurance (PMI) if you don't.

Its to keep us uppity poors on the down low

The sarcasm was lost on someone.

They'd still sit empty.

No. You make it so that they cannot hold single family dwellings period unless for the purpose of listing and selling them to non-corporate individuals.

they'd just make nesting doll structured holding companies with all profits going to the top but any losses being contained within each branch

actually this sounds like a great idea BRB gotta register some LLCs in Delaware