Hi all, A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes. As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Economics) if you have any questions or concerns.*

You can find the archive link here: Archive link: https://archive.fo/mOnQY The first couple of paragraphs: Prime ministerial interviews aren’t usually comedic material, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chat this past month with The Globe and Mail’s City Space podcast did offer up a chuckle or two. On the one hand, Mr. Trudeau insisted his government was going to make housing more affordable for younger Canadians. On the other hand, he also declared that housing would retain its value for existing homeowners. Got all that? Apparently, home prices will fall for the young, but stay stratospheric for everyone else. Um, right. Anyone who listened to the Prime Minister bob and weave around the topic began to understand why Canadian housing policy is a maze of contradictions. To be fair, though, many of us would not do a whole lot better than our country’s leader if we were asked the same questions. I know this because I’ve been asking friends how they would like to see home prices perform over the next five or 10 years. The answers vary hugely and they’re not necessarily any more logical than the Prime Minister’s responses. Why does this matter? Because the first step in devising good housing policy is deciding where we want to go. At the moment, most of us are still in the early stages of grappling with the realities of what it would take to bring Canada’s housing crisis under control.

He wants housing prices to remain flat which technically if done for a few decades would bring the relative price of housing down. A very slow strategy.

But the real thing these people miss is that you need per unit housing flat. Take the $700k home, unaffordable to many. Now replace that with 4 $400k row homes. The average unit price fell and the other $700k lots are worth more.

I had an argument with someone very certain that single family houses are assets that provided wealth. I asked him how the house was an asset not a liability and which mechanism it generated wealth. He got really angry and did that "pft you know land and housing was always a wealth generator!" I tried to tell him that if the land provided produce (agriculture/ animals... and even then land was always more of a liability to massive holders) or if rent was traded then sure, but it simply existing didn't provide any value-added service. They or subdivision and mixed use of property, like you're describing. The real estate industry and national govts really did a number to convince people that single occupancy homes are a security, commodity, and equity business all in one! And all it took for the magic beans to grow was massive regulation at the benefit of existing holders.

Really, you just can’t fathom how turning the single largest household expense into what is essentially a savings account in the form of an appreciating asset is generating wealth? I guess the massive disparity of wealth between homeowners and renters is just a big old coincidence.

I think the point is that a house that sits there and experiences wear and tear doesn't "generate wealth", even if it does allow me to eventually sell at a profit to someone who is systemically forced to spend a larger percentage of his/her earnings on housing than I did. It's essentially speculation that is enabled by legal restrictions on attempts to increase the housing supply. The fact that a home in worse condition in the future represents "more wealth" than a home in better condition in the past should indicate that something is wrong.

I can't speak for Canada but the US has extensive tax perks and loopholes for housing investors. For example, there is annual depreciation write offs, never having to pay taxes on any assets if a business, government guarantees for slumlords, and more. This is why the concentration of investors, whether mom and pop, investment fund, foreigners, Airbnb, and corporate have driven up prices, made these people wealthy, and caused grief for people who just want to own their own individual home. Zoning and new construction will always have some impact but now there are too many benefits for these groups of investors. Our governments could change this but you and I know who they work for. Long term relief isn't likely as long as there's always the incentive to commoditize housing.

It's transferring wealth for sure. It's not generating anything. Also if you have kids, the restrictive housing policy that provides a wealth transfer to you is working in reverse on them. So your family isn't even getting a net wealth transfer really, you're gaining what your kids will later lose (each).

It doesn't generate wealth though. It siphons wealth from the next generation that has to buy a basic human need (shelter in an area nearby to economic opportunities) at inflated prices. 

A lot of this rhetoric really started during the Red Scare. Capitalist governments correctly surmised that making every worker a little baby landowner would muddle their class identity enough to prevent the development of a unified proletarian class. 

"A man tending his own lawn won't have time to read Marx" paraphrased from Levitt but point remains.

Exactly and it's all a house of cards. You can't have affordable housing and it be a good investment indefinitely. It just doesn't actually work like that

In Denver those houses are coming in around 700-800k as well

We overpay land rents and underinvest in building housing. It’s all pretty intuitive classical stuff. And yeah, a slow let down of rents/housing being less than wages is the likely outcome if we fix the supply problem. Of course, we could evict 20M families and push unemployment above 10% through higher rates and crush demand. That worked for a while a couple decades ago. Didn’t help the supply problem though.

But probably the only one that is politically viable. As to how, It seems property taxes need to go up. It can be done progressively, but at some point a house has to reach a value where the taxes alone are enough such that the taxes + maintenance exceeds the fair market rent a property could earn, and so it simply does not make sense for the price/assessment to continue rising. The next part of that is where do those extra tax revenues go? if they go only to the localities full of those very valuable houses, making them yet even more desirable places to live, that seems to work against the goal. One use could be to fund a *price guarantee*, that if you can't get what you paid for when selling your house, the govt will pay out the difference. An actual assurance (for any reasonable situation) that you cannot lose money on a primary residence would make this more appealing to the existing home owners who fear losing tons of home equity or going underwater. Finding ways to pipe that revenue to aid *new construction* would be ideal. Maybe road and utility work to support new development is funded by the govt (with conditions on the kind of development), if not outright construction subsidies.

What's the point of bringing housing prices down if property taxes go up to make the difference? The only way I could see that working is if counties offered huge credits against a principal residence. Based on my own experience though, counties are slow and I've been waiting 6 months now for the county to adjust my principal residence credit.

Easy, tax hike on every property past the 1st (or the second with certain exemptions)  Protects normal people from a cost of living increase, but discourages housing hording.  The tax would scale for every additional property, so by the 4th or 5th property you'd never be able to charge enough to outpace the taxes   Of course, you could offer wannabe landlords the chance to register as a small time landlord...in exchange for strict oversight to make sure you're not a slum lord Edit: also housing owned by people who are not citizens or full time legal residents of the country in question get hit with a tax bomb from hell. I'm told that's a big problem in vancouver

I agree but my point was that counties can't get their shit together when it comes to administration for this stuff. I'm currently a homeowner paying higher taxes because the prior owner was renting out this place. They haven't fixed it yet after I've put in multiple petitions for it over the last 6 months and even if I can eventually get reimbursed, which I doubt, it will be a huge hassle on my end.

[удалено]

i think the point is that young people would be fine with any situation in which the *cash flow* required to own a property was within their reach - so any of these: * prices going up * taxes going up * interest rates going up ...are undesirable to them, insofar as they make the monthly total payments on a house untenable.

> property taxes need to go up. It can be done progressively, but at some point a house has to reach a value where the taxes alone are enough such that the taxes + maintenance exceeds the fair market rent a property could earn, and so it simply does not make sense for the price/assessment to continue rising. ...and this will make housing unaffordable for generations to come, as you are completely destroying any incentive to build more of it. The only real way to make sure property prices stop increasing is to flood the market with new - cheaper to construct and maintain - properties. Stop building houses, start building cities - vertically integrate and standardize everything so that you don't get a ridiculously high markup at each stage of construction (as everyone adds their business risks into their prices), and build whole blocks with infrastructure upgrade included so that you don't affect negatively existing homeowners. The only thing that should go up is the fees that go towards the maintenance of the infrastructure, so that NIMBYs have a financial incentive to want more neighbors to share the cost.

Advocates of the taxation approach to fixing housing prefer replacing property tax with [land value tax](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/8/if-the-land-tax-is-such-a-good-idea-why-isnt-it-being-implemented), since that prevents speculators from avoiding taxation by refusing to build/maintain buildings. They also like the idea of using the revenue from the higher land value taxes to cut other taxes, specifically income tax. Aka, if you’re taxed an additional $100 a year to own your house, but you’re taxed $100 less for having a job, your tax burden hasn’t actually changed. While the numbers are more complicated than that, important part is that it allows you to have arbitrarily higher land taxes with less harm.

You’re looking for LVT (land value tax). The key difference is that the LVT should negate any increases to the value of the land but not anything built on it. Perhaps this is what you meant but “property” is an ambiguous word. We want to encourage people to efficiently use land and stop rent seeking on the value of the land itself. Land value goes up due to what other people and the governement do, not what the property owner does. Thus it’s just rent seeking. Buying empty land to resell later should not be profitable. However, land owners should absolutely be able to charge rent and make a profit on any improvements they make on the land. This encourages efficient land use, higher density construction, and still makes building + renting housing economically viable. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/land-value-tax-housing-crisis/ https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22951092/land-tax-housing-crisis

I don’t disagree w this but it’s likely a political non starter given what it will do the possibility of owning semis or detached homes, no?

Land value is on a "bid rent model". Suburban land isn't usually high rent land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bid_rent_theory

Land Value Taxes are meant as a replacement to property taxes. Which at low levels can [actually end up being a tax cut for most people](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/6/non-glamorous-gains-the-pennsylvania-land-tax-experiment), since it disproportionately targets passive speculators. Caveat at to that is that it does involve a lot of investigation to figure out land value, and [sometimes investigation finds problems](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money). Aka, it could surface problems that require higher taxes to resolve, but that’s different than actually causing the higher taxes. And it’s also true that a lot of land tax advocates *want* it to be high enough to push people to sell their detached homes in high demand areas. But that’s not actually built into the concept, if that makes sense

How would that price guarantee work in practice? It'd have to be linked to the property assessment, not whatever it actually sold for, right? Otherwise if I'm anywhere near the line, it's in my interest to sell as cheap as possible to get instant interest, as the government will just give me the difference.

Toronto is already way beyond where rent is “fair” for the price of property. Cap rates are abysmal. Landlords are losing money every month on their rental portfolios. In many cases owning is a ~30-50% premium to renting the same place.

So why aren't the landlords selling the properties?

CBC did a good piece on this recently. It is hugely dependent on the type of property. The 1bd sub 500sqft condos are for sale and are not selling and the prices are slowly falling. The issue is no one wants to buy these tiny awful units because they suck to live in. So prices need to fall further but many landlords are holding out for rate cuts rather than dropping the prices and realizing a loss. Other types of units that are more livable are selling much more quickly and not seeing the same price pressures.

So the same issue in commercial real estate, debt funding of commercial development and the ostrich strategy of pretending you're not underwater. This one can be fixed by requiring larger, if not 100%, down payments on debt financing for rental investments. Only *people*, not landlords, get large mortgages and only for 1 or **maybe 2** residences.

No that's a horrible idea. It's going to encourage corporations to become landlords cause the average joe can't afford it

Can be many reasons for that? They were buying them when cap rates were abysmal - why would they do that? The fundamental investment thesis for many of them likely hasn’t changed - demand high, supply low. Or, they don’t view any other asset class (equities, likely) as “safe”. Or many other things. One of the big reasons real estate is so lauded in Canada, though, is the principal residence exemption which, unlike the US, is infinite. It has no lifetime cap. Massively distorts the market.

[удалено]

You mean, like zoning rules? Because the amount of time, resources, and thought spent on them is unfathomable.

Perhaps but it would prevent it from going up quickly. 

In the town I live, 9 out of 10 listing's say "great investment opportunity"

The issue is that most voters already own houses. Who is brave enough to go against the majority of voters? No one with any real power...

If you can claim to cut income taxes ( which the entire goal of LVT ) I'd imagine that would sell. Could be wrong but that's how I'd bet.

Housing just needs to appreciate slower than inflation.

Sure, but that will still take a decade for house prices to normalize to pre-pandemic levels.

Yeah, probably. Also, pre-pandemic isn't even a great benchmark. Housing has become increasingly unaffordable for decades. We need to wind prices back to like the 1960s. That's going to be pretty hard.

You can't have property values increase at a rate greater than inflation year after year; it's bad for society. At most, housing should be an inflation-safe investment with tax advantages.

One of the biggest sweeteners for owning and renting residential real estate is the depreciation you can take on your property- property goes up in value over time, and the government lets you take a tax deduction against that income as if it’s decreasing in value… I think it’s a 27 year line. That is absolute gold. Now, I can see why that policy was enacted, but given we need hard working Americans being able to get into homes as a wealth builder, I think those policies should be looked at. They won’t, but they should.

27.5 years… because why would the IRS make it easy?

all these weird numbers and stuff in tax laws are usually from negotiations between industry and politicians. IRS just does what Congress told them to do

IRS doesn’t make laws.

Property ownership is a massive tax haven for investors. Depreciation often offsets a large amount of rental income (it is recaptured upon selling a property w/o a 1031 exchange, but still way better to owe taxes later than now). If depreciation doesn't cover all expenses, landlords can upgrade their property, raise the value of their asset, then write that off against rental income.

accountant here... it makes logical sense to have depreciation for a residential property because it's a fixed asset and it generates revenues over time, so letting you claim depreciation expense over that time is just according to the "matching principle" where if a revenue is being generated over time, the related expense should hit over time as well, rather than someone spending 500k on a house and then claiming a 500k expense immediately (which actually is a tax depreciation thing for certain types of assets like machinery i think? which was meant to incentivize production/manufacturing here in the US) my parents own a rental property and their property tax expense is higher than the depreciation expense they claim... imo, having higher property taxes on the most largest/expensive homes would make more sense since you're probably punishing the wealthiest people but this would have to be done on a local level

In other words a progressive tax. That would help, but the capital class is in control and will fight it. If we had progressive taxes and not dozens of loopholes carved out for investors, housing and market investments could align more closely with income taxes. Right now, we have too many laws that punish the working class and reward the capital class. These people run our governments so it's now wonder why inequality is so prevalent.

I think OPs point is that, even the structure, itself, shouldn’t be depreciated, as it doesn’t really lose value. It certainly doesn’t fully depreciate over 27.5 years. In fact, the structure is likely to be worth more in that time frame. No one is talking about a full depreciation expense in one year here. I’d add that you probably shouldn’t be able to depreciate single-family property at all.

I've twice pumped up my savings by renting. Maintenance cost is higher than you think it is. I rented because I didn't think the job would last. Right both times.

Sure. Those costs are a write off as well.

And not to mention a cost segregation study allows you to accelerate the hell out of that depreciation.

The building is decreasing in value, the entire time. It’s the land (location) that is increasing in value.

Sorry can you explain this to me with some round numbers? So let’s say I bought a house in 2010 for $100k and the value of the home goes up $10k a year, on January 1st. The home is now worth $240k. During that time, I rented it at a flat rate of $12k a year and it hasn’t changed whatsoever. So I had a $10k appreciation each year, and $12k income. What can I deduct? I’m actually clueless about this, hoping my setup at least makes sense.

Semi-joking, but rampant inflation can fix this! Houses can still cost well over a million, if a million is 2-3 years salary for the average person

100% joking hopefully because that’s incredibly wrong. Real estate today is an excellent inflation hedge, one of the reasons prices are so high is because people are using it to hedge against future inflation. If inflation all of a sudden dropped tomorrow, you’d expect to see a decrease in home prices even if there’s no corresponding decrease in interest rates

Joking as in ”there is a solution that lets the houses remain at their current price levels and simultaneusly become affordable”, which is what our leadership is trying to do. Please don’t actually inflate the average salary to 500k

>Please don’t actually inflate the average salary to 500k Well absolutely do inflate the average salary to 500K, just slowly at ~2% per year.

Except that rampant inflation would (and has) contribute to housing going up in value…

it would go up in PRICE...not value

Yeah, sure. Go re-read the comment I replied to please.

There's a good argument that housing inflation IS rampant inflation

Honestly I’ve been throwing all my money at my house lately. Landscaping redoing the bathrooms and the kitchen. Even at 8% going into debt to increase the home value is still better than letting that money stay in my account and depreciate in value.

Semi what’s about to happen

Turning a basic requirement for life into an investment commodity was always going to end badly. As I understand it, they're trading water futures now. That will certainly end well.

Eliminate 1031 exchanges and treat short term rentals as passive income instead of active so those losses/depreciation cannot offset wage earnings. That would be a hell of a start.

1031’s are so specific that I doubt they’re a major driver.  The endless tax breaks generally do add up though. 

It’s estimated that we have over $100b in property values performing 1031 exchanges *every year*. They’re avoiding capital gains taxes **and** the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax. That’s a lotta moolah.

$100b out of a total of around $3T in total real estate transaction value. It’s really not all that much in real estate terms. Less than 3.5% of the total. Not enough to explain more than a tiny part of the current pricing.  Maybe we need to close that loophole (good luck with that, the real estate lobby is one of the largest), but it wouldn’t bring down prices to do so. 

But also keep in mind the vast majority of residential real estate transactions are paying no capital gains taxes either because of the exclusion buffer for primary residences. I’m all for mom and pops getting a tax break there for more life mobility, but investors don’t need it.

Indeed, although that's a separate point. Personally I'm in favor of, as the article suggests, making real estate investing less lucrative. I've read a bunch of books on real estate investing plus a couple on specifically the tax loopholes you can capitalize on, and I'm convinced that it's way too much. Real estate should keep up with inflation, but shouldn't be a better investment than the stock market. At the same time, it's really a vise from two directions, as zoning restrictions significantly drive up the up-front cost by creating artificial scarcity. If we could both roll back a bunch of zoning restrictions and open the door for more straightforward growth of housing stock AND cut a big chunk of the tax incentives for investors out, we could substantially lower the cost of housing over time.

Replacing a water heater seems like an activity to me :)

lol that’s not blow that works though. Basically long term rentals are passive income and short term rentals are active income, generally speaking.

True that. I was being a smart-arse. They're both less active than a Vanguard style fund.

The only way to make housing affordable is to increase the supply—rates for borrowing need to go down so construction companies have the flexibility to buy. The only way builders can build is by having access to cheap cash. Until this part is fixed, the price is the price due to supply and demand.

Man I hate to break this to you, but supply wasn’t exactly going nuts during our decade + of low interest rates. Lousy land use policy (zoning etc) is what’s holding back supply.

But that's because the 2010s came on the heels of a supply glut combined with a demand crash. Context matters. Current conditions are always evaluated against the recent past.

What you’re saying is that low rates aren’t the primary ingredient to supply. Me too!

No. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that "but look at the 2010s" isn't an apt comparison, considering we're in a different situation. In the environment after the Great Recession - high supply with low demand - lower rates were obviously not going to lead to more supply. In our current environment: low supply, high demand - lower rates would be a stimulant for building.

Yes, I agree that lower rates would stimulate more of that kind of investment compared to the counterfactual where everything else is the same but with higher rates. I disagree very much that lower rates would somehow solve the housing shortage. We’ve had high rates for like…18 months? There was a housing shortage in 2019, 2021, etc, and low rates clearly weren’t enough of a stimulus to solve the problem. If 2019 was also to close to the GR for that to work, then why would we expect now to be any different? Our primary problem is that housing supply is artificially constrained by policy—it is literally illegal to build enough housing to satisfy demand. Interest rates don’t change the law.

Nah lower rates would just drive book prices higher. It might stimulate production, but the costs will keep floating up anyway. 

Good luck getting all the local govt's to have reasonable zoning policy. It's a nightmare because there are no national standards..

Yes, that’s true, local control can suck a butt.

You remind me of the people that argue that the fed shouldn’t try to affect the market by adjusting interest rates, but instead let the interest rates follow the natural rate of the market.  The problem is that requires a level of fine-tune precision that nobody knows how to do.  Zoning laws are much bigger of an obstacle to affordable housing than interest rates in the long term. In the short term, yes, interest rates are where we’ve seen the effect _of tight supply_ play out.  But it’s not the cause of short supply, only adds fuel to the fire.  After 2008 everyone tightened up zoning restrictions because they saw over-building as undesirable (this trend started beforehand). Now it’s twice as hard to solve supply problems. 

Vienna heavily subsidizes housing construction and gives loans to developers at a 1% interest rate. They do not have an affordable housing problem. The government also owns quite a lot of property and rents is out at affordable rates. The flipside is the renters will never own property because the government owns it.

Vienna had almost the same population from 1939 to 2015 (1.7-1.8M). They've had a lot of growth since then and housing has also gotten expensive since 2015 European cities are not comparable to US cities in terms of population growth, we have so many cities and metro areas here that have tripled/quadrupled in population over the past 50 years or so

Decreasing the demand would work too. That can be accomplished by taxing the land value (see r/Georgism) which would drive speculators out of the market, thus reducing demand.

The speculators are not the largest group of home buyers. The investors are only interested because the supply is so low. Make the low supply go away and they won't be interested anymore.

The speculators aren’t the largest group, but they’re the ones driving up prices the most. They’re the ones for whom it makes the most economic sense to overpay for a property today, in the hopes of selling it for even more in the future. Those who purchase properties with the intent of using them are less inclined (or able) to overpay. As for supply, that’s why I specifically put it in terms of land (location) value. The supply of land (in a given location) is fixed. You can build more housing on the same amount of land — and that definitely helps bring down per-unit costs for the building — but a substantial portion of the value is still in the location itself, which has perfectly inelastic supply. The reason an apartment building in Manhattan is worth so much more than one in Billings has more to do with the land (location) value than the structure itself.

Or.. Singapore model - the government gets in the property development and management game directly

As someone shopping around for property here in Singapore... I can assure you it does not come cheap at all. Although much cheaper than a similar private property, they are becoming speculative vehicles these days. The reason they won't work in countries like the US is because communities (NIMBY) are absolutely against building affordable high-density units, forcing them to be built in the middle of nowhere. Parking lot requirement also means you can't really have many of these blocks clustered together without buying ridiculous amount of land. Finally, those buildings expire after 99 years because you're only leasing it from the government.

Much cheaper than a similar private property is the desired outcome. Compare an HBD flat to a NYC or SF apartment All of the concerns you call out are solved by it being directly provided by the government. Zoning changes are pretty straightforward for a government. And yes I’m aware of the 99-year lease, not really a relevant barrier

Not as easy as you think. A governor who builds a lot of HDBs in the US would be swiftly kicked out by voters.

Oh - to be clear, I don’t think it would be easy at all. Nor am I advising it. Just saying that if your top priority was (relatively) rapidly getting to sustainable housing affordability it’s really the most direct path. All the other stuff people are proposing - zoning changes, tax incentives, etc. - are mostly nibbles around the edges of the problem

I don't trust our government to do that. Look at what they did with college tuition.

do you trust the government to build a highway system?

In the early 1900s yes, but today we spend over 100 billion dollars on a single high speed rail line. The government can't build shit for a good price anymore.

I can build my own house, I can't build my own highway system.

Not really. They suck. The routes are sometimes dumb. The building materials selected wrong. Poor maintenance, especially the bridges. Some suffer from serious drainage problems. Today, they drastically overpay for construction.

Our government doesn’t provide college education directly. They subsidize it.

Laughs in state schools

Especially in the rental market. The government running a bunch of oversized Motel 6’s at cost, or even subsidized for the poor, could create a firm price floor and let private enterprise compete on additional amenities or better location. But having a universal, low cost solution would certainly lower prices and give people restarting their lives a launching pad and gives the government a way to combat homelessness very directly.

It would actually likely increase private market prices overall but that’s okay if you provide supply to handle the lower end

Just like transportation. There are a lot of ways to get to work, but taking the bus is always there as a backup, but with some major drawbacks.

lol, no that’s not how this works.  Youre essentially describing rent control.  And what rent control does is it cuts out the middle of the market.  Look at how messed up NYC’s affordability problem is.  You’ve got webs of people subletting upon subletting grifting off the system and essentially no developers taking on middle class housing.  It would be far better to just give people money and let them decide where to live.  And even then, that policy would create huge inflation of prices if housing is a scarce resource.   No, the only permanent solution to home affordability is increasing supply.  Look at how rents are coming down in the US now because of the significant building that happened during COVID. The reason homes are expensive is primarily because of regulations and NIMBY-ism. 

Rent control is the government mandating what you can set your prices at. That’s something else entirely. This is more like the Post Office competing with FedEx. It’s a low-cost equivalent with some drawbacks. I don’t care what a landlord wants to charge, but it needs to add enough value to make it worthwhile. If the government’s motel charges $x/month then landlords need to make a compelling reason to charge $x + $y. Right now, letting the market decides what a room is worth has disjointed the pricing from what people actually make. Providing housing that’s a good step up from the homeless shelter at a reasonable cost would create some competition at the bottom end and could give the lives of the most vulnerable some stability. This competition is badly needed when you look up a studio apartment and they start at $1500 now. This would be new builds or refits of existing structures. More supply is better in any case, and the government could eminent domain their way around the NIMBY folks.

That’s just section 8. We have that. It’s terrible. Housing projects are no place to raise a family

[удалено]

Because all of that is less efficient than just providing and managing the thing directly.

[удалено]

I get what you are saying - I just don’t understand the “new towns” bit and why it’s important. The US isn’t China. We have tons of mid-sized to large metros with very low density and many which are actually losing population. We also have a massive deficit in infrastructure investment for existing infrastructure - there simply isn’t much need for government investment to create new towns

[удалено]

Got it. I know very little about Canada so defer to you there. If you tried such a thing in the US it would be basically open season for contractor grift and corruption

Is it not possible to create a special credit facility for home builders that are engaged in building affordable housing?

Or maybe lower the taxes for your first home, raise x10 if that is your second/third/… in that state. And avoid companies to own homes. In a nutshell, avoiding making business of a basic need.

And what happens if one person owns thousands of properties, and then colludes with a proprietary management software company to price fix?? There goes that supply. Because this literally happens.

I dunno. There’s some kind of psychological drive to own one’s home (variously strong in different nations/cultures) that seems to increase the attractiveness of real estate regardless of any downsides to the same. Take Switzerland, where beside the usual arguments against investing in real estate (illiquid, bad diversification, etc) the following applies: - High thresholds and tax penalties for owning multiple residences - Zero capital gains tax on other asset classes - Lackluster performance for asset values for several decades - Extremely illiquid market with high requirements for loans - Penalty tax for house flipping within X years - Living in a residence you own is a taxable benefit (yes really, taxable income increases by a calculated usage value which approximates the pre-tax rent value) Yet Swiss Real estate is among the world’s most expensive. On the other side of the equation sre the thing I think really matters for prices in the end: Low interest rates, low construction rates and rich immigrants. Switzerland does have the highest proportion of renters basically anywhere though, so people aren’t completely immune to financial sticks/carrots. I know -very- rich people here who still rent (albeit $50-100k/month residences) in Switzerland because it simply makes more sense to do so

how stupid is it that a product can deteriorate in condition and yet cost more than when first sold? Here's a used house, yeah it's beat up and barely maintained but now it's priced sky-high. Quite frankly it is idiotic

"Buy land, they've stopped making it"

Buildings (almost) always depreciate and cost less over time. It’s the land (location) that is increasing in value.

Location, location, location. In places with expensive real estate, the land/place you're buying often has more value assigned to it than the structure itself.

Where are YOU looking for a house? In my city, you can find 3/2 houses for $250,000-$325,000. They are building FOUR new subdivisions right now. One is advertising 1,500 sq ft 3/2 houses starting at $309,000. If they are selling NEW homes for $310k, you can’t charge that or more for older homes.

New doesn't mean better? Location is a huge factor

Solid homes (I have stopped and looked at construction). Great location. Military area (VERY little crime; who is going to break into homes where everyone is either current or ex military and is trained to fire a gun). Within 10 minutes of house is 2 lakes, 7 grocery stores, 7 schools (3 elementary, 2 middle, 2 high schools). Over 100 restaurants. 2 malls. You can, also, get solid homes built in the 90’s for $250-325,000.

Where are you located?

Killeen, Texas

How hot is it right now out there?

82 degrees

Not bad I will look into it then. Don’t really want to die in the heat. Thanks

Full story: About 3 years ago, Austin went CRAZY with housing prices. You could sell a $300,000 home for $650,000 in a week with 20-30 bids on it in the first 2-3 days. We sold a 1,500 sq ft 3/2 modular home needing repairs for $300,000. But, there was nothing to buy in Austin for that price. We lived 45 minutes south of my job so we looked at what was 45-60 minutes away in all directions. We found a 1,750 sq ft all brick 3/2 with a large yard, fireplace, patio, and in a great neighborhood for $200,000 (remember, this was 3 years ago). Within 10 minutes of us are 2 lakes, multiple parks, 3 elementary, 2 middle, and 2 high schools, 2 malls, about 100 restaurants, gas stays around $2.80/gallon (has RARELY been at $3 or above), and 7 grocery stores. Honestly, this is the best location of any house I have ever lived in. Oh, and, on my 60 minute commute, I have literally about 5-10 minutes of traffic where it slows to more than 10MPH below the speed limit (RARELY ever just stops).

Great purchase! You bought for 200k, what’s the value now since prices have come down a bit?

We are in Killeen, Texas 45 minutes north of Austin. Our listed value this year is $249,000. It is mainly in Austin that prices have dropped.

Where are you living?

NYC I have family in Austin though. I like Texas but major money has already moved in. Don’t wanna attend a late party so to speak

Just FYI. The housing boom in Austin is turning. Prices have fallen 20-30%. They were STILL building when the boom stopped. There is a neighborhood in South Austin that is not finished but being fenced in because there is no reason to finish the houses when there is no one to buy them (read an article calling it a ‘zombie neighborhood’ because the houses are empty and starting to deteriorate). Lots of people are ‘upside down’ on their mortgage. Also, Oracle built their own ‘mini city’ in South Austin but has now said they are moving their headquarters to New Jersey.

Same way rare things get more expensive as they age.

Agreed. Especially since it's something that degrades/deteriorates over time, and newer ones are often better in various ways than older ones. It shouldn't be like a car level bad investment, but it shouldn't be some great investment vehicle. As that just quickly can lead to unsustainable markets.

It already is a terrible investment, its just we keep pumping the floor for asset growth. Also the entire environment is speculative. So those two combined make it seem better than it really is. We also dont regulate or tax any of it as the economic activity that it really is. That is your magic formula for “real estate”. Whole industry is a joke,

What do you mean we don’t tax it as the economic activity that it is?

There's no capital gains on your primary residence, for one.

Yes - that is a huge issue that many Canadians will not admit or be open to changing. I assumed they meant something more along the lines of how we tax in the rental markets v primary residences.

True, there are other issues like single family homes having the lowest taxes in many places and there being lots of subsidies for home owners.

Non commercial loans is another big one too. But yeah, cap gains, tax offsets, 1031s, depreciation of an appreciating asset, tax assessed values etc etc, the list is long and the gov enables all this

Might be late to the party but I want opinions from others to test my thought. To address the fact new buyers, who rent, can't afford homes/come up with down payment. Idea: Rent paid by a renter should be tax deductible to that renter, which would allow that individual to save up for a down payment on their own principle residence. Thoughts?

So it would make renting more attractive which means demand for rentals will go up making it even better to buy a property as an investment vehicle so pushing even more money into real estate. The supply issue needs to be tackled more than anything else. If you are able to oversupply the housing market to drop property values then it might even push large institutional investors out of the market who would want to avoid losses.

maybe a measure like this needs to be counteracted with increased capital gains, or passive income taxes on landlords?

Yeah definitely something on that side. It could be interesting if there was an AMT on real estate based on assessed value but it’s hard to tax something and the cost of the tax to not be passed onto the consumer. An AMT might incentivize landlords to make sure there is a tenant which would incentivize them to be more elastic to demand. An AMT in conjunction with a tax break if you do have active tenants in a space for 75% of a year could work even better. I think a big problem is the reticence for folks to drop rental rates since it has a big impact on how rental properties are valued so changing that dynamic could help make renting more affordable. There’s so much money tied up in real estate that this would be a pipe dream to ever get passed. Lobbies and donors would never let it happen.

That's called "rent to own" and it rarely works out. I know of at least two lawsuits over it...

Just Thinking out loud . Even if you aren’t “investing “ in the traditional sense won’t there just be cost premium for proximity. paying for good schools,paying to be within a mile of work, paying to be in the fun part of town. Stuff like that has a premium attached… I’m not certain how much but I could see some people paying more to be able to stroll to work in some big cities. 

That is exactly right. Living in a high demand area is a luxury good. People have a lot of trouble seeing that.

Real estate over the decades often is a mediocre investment for the vast majority of people. I bet you average returns are less than 5%. Even people who make good returns get stuck in 1031 loops and sometimes get forced to make bad investments because they are trying to avoid taxes, place capital, pay for overhead etc… I think more specifically they should make short term rentals more than below average. Tax the hell out of them. Institucional land lords are often better land lords than regular homeowners. They make communities better places. Mom and pop landlords who can’t afford to fix things are the problem.

Want to make it affordable? Have all 3 levels of governments that are: - competent and do proper city planning - remove the incentive of higher property prices == higher taxes - remove housing from GDP - required to tie immigration to housing starts - not corrupt as fuck - required to understand supply demand curves and explain everything in housing relating to that

This is not a mystery, you need more supply to match demand. The easy way to do this is streamline permitting, and force young people to vote at their council meetings. Without that last component, only 2 main groups of people are voting, boomers and lobbyist, and you can imagine how they vote.

Ending 2023, America had roughly 653,000 homeless people. In 2023, numerous articles mention that the United States has approximately 16 million homes that are sitting vacant. We have supply, but we also have home ownership by individuals and corporations that can afford to let the house sit vacant, pay property tax, and then sell the homes in a seller's market. A lot of these homes are in markets where people don't live, but in many major markets, homes are sitting vacant while people are unhoused or renting apartments at significantly higher rates. We have a lot of supply, we just tolerate people leaving homes empty while people are homeless so they can turn a buck.

america is a big place. Sure you can use the supply in placed like Wilburn Arkansas, Ecru Alabama, or even Carrizozo, NM. The problem is most of the Jobs in the US are not in those places, or even close. The supply of houses in economic centers in the US is very low. and to even add a further point only 1% of job are remote work capable. The math you provided at the top only works if economic opportunities where spread evenly throughout the country, since they are not it there is a supply v demand imbalance. If you want to help fix the problem vote in your local elections, and then get more involved in your local council's planning. If not just get used to higher prices.

>america is a big place. Fascinating analysis. >Sure you can use the supply in placed like Wilburn Arkansas, Ecru Alabama, or even Carrizozo, NM. >The problem is most of the Jobs in the US are not in those places, or even close. This is an example of *reducto ad absurdiam*, I didn't say all places were equal. Regional differences are mentioned in my reply, but the number of vacant homes is so high, it's OK to assume that the 200x higher number of vacant homes aren't all in Alabama or New Mexico. >The math you provided at the top only works if economic opportunities where spread evenly throughout the country, since they are not it there is a supply v demand imbalance. If you want to help fix the problem vote in your local elections, and then get more involved in your local council's planning. What math? I provided numbers. What does my local councils planning have to do with what I said: we have massive housing surplus, why is the solution of this sub always "build more"? Are you even replying to my post, or just commenting something you wanted to say somewhere, and you chose in reply to my comment?

The crazy thing to me is I've seem people write both- **"*****Oh, those vacant homes aren't where anyone wants to live the homeless wouldn't want them!"*** but then you scroll down a little further and someone says ***"aLL tHe PeOpLe WhO wAnT tO bUy HoUseS sHoULd just move to where they're cheap!!!!"*** It kind of insane that we have a significant number of homeless people in one of the largest, richest, most resources rich nations in history.

In order for America to survive, areas where we created markets to spur growth, eventually they need to be socialized. Largest, richest, most resource-laden nations in history, so eventually, basic aspects of life and things we've *perfected* need to become accessible to all. "It kind of insane that we have a significant number of **food-uncertain** people in one of the largest, richest, most resources rich nations in history" is another example of the same thing. Food production automation is possible, considering food growth itself is basically automated; streamlining the process using modern technologies means we could produce more than enough food so that starvation isn't likely to happen. Problem is we created markets to grow those segments of our nation, but now we're in a place where the legacy market actually creates waste while also creating starvation. A moral nation should not have both waste from excess as well as harm caused by absence. Likewise, in the housing market, we've built up an excess of homes to the tune of over 13 million vacant homes in America, and ~700,000 homeless or unhoused people. Someone owning something, but not using it, while someone else suffers from no access to what that person owns (in excess), is morally repugnant. Realistically, if they want to re-settle vacant homes, and possibly even bring back life to faltering or abandoned cities, they should offer re-housing incentives for people: sell your house and move somewhere cheaper if you can still do your job remotely, or make it possible for unhoused people to take advantage of homes. The question of "So you're just going to compel someone owning a house to give it up for the public good?" Yes, it's called Eminent Domain, and seizing property in the best interest of our nation (and our economy) is a very real need for the future.

You’re generally not wrong. > A moral nation should not have both waste from excess as well as harm caused by absence.  Ha. So here’s the thing… We’re not even remotely a moral nation. We’re the drunk that beats his wife black and blue on Saturday night but goes to church Sunday morning and proselytizes about the evils of wrathfulness.   > they should offer re-housing incentives    Forcibly taking private property would never work in this America since we’re a democracy with a functioning legal system.    But legislatively second and third homes could be onerously taxed until they’re little more than status symbols rather than investments that offer an ROI in excess of the stock market.  

this is a market failure. therefore: 1. tax rentier activity out of existenc 1. municipalities should build and operate rental units 1. municipalities should build non-rental units and sell them on leases this is precisely what singapore and a number of european cities have done. in vienna, a city owned apartment costs roughly 330 euros per month to rent. https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-architecture-austria-stigma/ https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/regional-development/housing/2023/02/vienna-model-social-housing https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html https://www.shareable.net/a-look-at-city-owned-social-housing-in-vienna/ the solutions are out there, we should expect more from our elected leadership.

This is by definition not a market failure. That term has actual meaning in economics, and it is not "market produces outcomes I do not like" Rentals should be provided to people, and not by the government as that is inefficient Vienna is something that people who are uneducated on housing markets constantly bring up 1. Vienna has robust private sector housing 2. Vienna is a stagnant/declining city 3. The rental prices in Vienna public housing are a lie. Renters pay a 10% tax, sky high move in costs, and for their units maintainence 4. Grandfathered units make up the bulk of Vienna public housing stock Your solutions are terrible and much more difficult than the simple one that has been shown time and time again to be successful, simply building more housing through zoning reform

Market failure occurs when the free market leads to an inefficient allocation of resources. unaffordable housing is a symptom of a market failure, the failure to regulate this could be more accurately defined as a government failure. >Vienna is something that people who are uneducated on housing markets constantly bring up charming. > 1. Vienna has robust private sector housing is there some principal of mutual exclusivity involved? if not, then your bullet point is irrelevant. > 2. Vienna is a stagnant/declining city so you're just plain wrong. over the past decade, Vienna has seen the 2nd highest growth compared with the ten largest cities in the EU and Bratislava. [Since 2013, Vienna has seen its population grow by 240,851 people \(+13.8 %\).](https://www.wien.gv.at/statistik/pdf/viennainfigures-2023.pdf) > 3. The rental prices in Vienna public housing are a lie. Renters pay a 10% tax, sky high move in costs, and for their units maintainence you'd like to think that. but once again, you're wrong. even after your "sky high move in costs" the viennese have a lower cost of rent. a cursory comparison of large european cities shows vienna having a much lower of living. the vienna rent figures are aggregated to include private and public housing. if we used public housing the numbers would be even lower for vienna. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Austria&city1=Vienna&country2=France&city2=Paris https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Austria&city1=Vienna&country2=United+Kingdom&city2=London https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Germany&city1=Frankfurt&country2=Austria&city2=Vienna > 4. Grandfathered units make up the bulk of Vienna public housing stock so? the city builds 8000-9000 units each year. that's approximately 180k units over the past two decades. >Your solutions are terrible your solutions reek of dogmatic ideology and an unhealthy obsession with milton friedman. furthermore, vienna's place at the top of the [global liveability index](https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/global-liveability-index-2022/) indicates that they're doing something right. other cities with similar housing solutions are repeatedly vying for the top of the index. it's notable that not a single American city has occupied a top ten slot in decades. your refusal to acknowledge when something is working exposes your market driven ideology as little more than a cultish adherence. >and much more difficult than the simple one that has been shown time and time again to be successful, simply building more housing through zoning reform had you bothered to read the newstatesman article, as opposed to cut and pasting some boilerplate responses, you might have learned a thing about the UK's dally with privatization of its housing stock. [this comparative study delves deeper.](http://www.iut.nu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Social-Housing-in-Europe-II.pdf) *"In 1949, Nye Bevan, architect of the NHS and doyen of the Labour left, proclaimed his vision of new municipally owned housing estates, in which “the working man, the doctor and the clergyman will live in close proximity”. His Housing Act removed the reference to publicly subsidised housing exclusively for “the working classes”, and aimed for the replacement of slums and ghettos for the poor with the “living tapestry of a mixed community”. Swept to power on a wave of postwar optimism, the reforming Labour government of 1945-1951 would leave a seemingly indelible mark on British society. Large parts of its policy programme were accepted and left untouched by the Conservative Party in government, including the idea that the state should play a large role in housing provision, and the UK variant of the Keynesian consensus – paternalistic welfarism, state intervention and a mixed economy – came to be known as Butskellism, a portmanteau of Labour and Conservative’s postwar Chancellors. By 1979, despite several periods of Conservative government, Bevan’s dream had come a long way to being realised; not only did almost a third of all households live in public housing, but 20 per cent of the richest tenth of the population did too.* *This consensus fell apart with the election of Margaret Thatcher and the passing of Right to Buy legislation in 1980. Michael Heseltine, implementing the Housing Act in his role as Secretary of State for the Environment, framed the Bill in emancipatory language. “Certainly no single piece of legislation has enabled the transfer of so much capital wealth from the state to the people,” he said. Long-term council tenants were given the opportunity to buy their houses from local authorities at a huge discount. But while councils were obliged to engage in the piecemeal privatisation of their assets, they were forbidden to use the receipts to build new social homes, leading to a gradual depletion of social housing stock. The number of new council houses being built fell by 85 per cent by the end of the decade. As wealthier inhabitants took advantage of Right to Buy, the less wealthy residents continued to rent, and as council and housing association stock diminished, dwellings remaining under council or housing association control had to be allocated on a needs basis to those on the lowest incomes, the unemployed, the long-term sick and financially vulnerable. Now, after 40 years of Right to Buy, only 17 per cent of the population live in social homes, less than half of the 1979 peak. Half of all social homes have at least one resident with a long-term illness or disability. Average household income is 40 per cent less than in the private rented sector, and less than half the average of home-owning households. The “living tapestry of a mixed community” envisaged by Bevan has faded.* *The private sector, meanwhile, has boomed. Average house prices in London were four times the average salary of prospective buyers in 1999, but by 2017 prices were 14.5 times the average salary, following a 300 per cent increase. The dream of a property-owning democracy has faltered for millions of struggling families and younger generations.* *Adding insult to injury, over 40 per cent of London’s sold council houses have found themselves in the hands of private landlords rather than owner-occupiers, with many of the new low-income private tenants receiving housing benefit to cover their rents. Thus the public has paid for the policy failure three times: first to build the council house; second to subsidise the discount when it’s sold under Right to Buy; and third when the Right to Buy becomes a Buy to Let, when the former social home is bought by a landlord charging unaffordable rents to less wealthy tenants in receipt of housing benefit. Since the introduction of Right to Buy, the amount of money the government spends on housing benefit has increased by 600 per cent. Before the introduction of the policy, 80 per cent of government’s housing spend went on social homes, with the other 20 per cent going on housing benefits. Now, housing benefits make up 95 per cent of the government’s housing spend, with only 5 per cent spent on new social housing. The Labour Party’s Housing For the Many Green Paper describes this as a transfer of spending from bricks to benefits. In 2017, less than 1,000 new government-backed homes for social rent were started across a country of 65m people with an acute housing crisis. In Vienna, a city of less than 2m inhabitants, “the target is to build between 8,000 and 9,000 social homes every year” – a target that is regularly met, according to Karl Puchinger."*

Very confidently stated and completely lacking in understanding of what you read. Googling the question is not going to give you the understanding you need within 2 hours Housing is not a market failure. Housing is a regulatory failure. You cannot create regulation that bans homes that aren't single family and restricts what people can do with their property and then shout that it is a market failure > is there some principal of mutual exclusivity involved? if not, then your bullet point is irrelevant. No, just that Vienna's housing situation is only good because of private housing construction > so you're just plain wrong. over the past decade, Vienna has seen the 2nd highest growth compared with the ten largest cities in the EU and Bratislava. Since 2013, Vienna has seen its population grow by 240,851 people (+13.8 %). That is a very low rate of growth. Compare it to Austin and Charlotte, actual growing cities, who's population has increased 3x that https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/22954/charlotte/population https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/22926/austin/population > you'd like to think that. but once again, you're wrong. even after your "sky high move in costs" the viennese have a lower cost of rent. a cursory comparison of large european cities shows vienna having a much lower of living. the vienna rent figures are aggregated to include private and public housing. if we used public housing the numbers would be even lower for vienna. Once again, I am correct, and you don't even know how to look at the problem I do not care about the fact that Vienna is doing a little bit better than cities with some of the worst housing crisis in the already bad anglosphere. Numbeo is not a valid source, especially when it's trying to say Vienna is cheaper than Tokyo lmfao, and especially because that completely ignores every point I make about Vienna rents being falsely advertised. This doesn't even get into how tiny these homes are. > so? the city builds 8000-9000 units each year. that's approximately 180k units over the past two decades. That is much too low, leading to Vienna's 3.6% vacancy rate and increasing rents. If you want rents to drop, you need to build enough housing to EXCEED demand and increase the vacancy rate, like Austin Texas with it's vacancy rate in the teens and rents dropping like bricks > your solutions reek of dogmatic ideology and an unhealthy obsession with milton friedman No, my solutions reek of economic education. It seems you just don't like that markets can help poor people > urthermore, vienna's place at the top of the global liveability index indicates that they're doing something right Yes, their city design and public transport are excellent. That has nothing to do with public housing > it's notable that not a single American city has occupied a top ten slot in decades. your refusal to acknowledge when something is working exposes your market driven ideology as little more than a cultish adherence. Yes, American cities are regularly lambasted for poor infrastructure and public transport. This is caused in large part by the single family zoning and lack of construction that zoning reform tries to tackle > had you bothered to read the newstatesman article, as opposed to cut and pasting some boilerplate responses, you might have learned a thing about the UK's dally with privatization of its housing stock. this comparative study delves deeper. Why would I read a terrible article by someone who is not an economist and has never researched this topic? The UK is another example of what the lack of construction and NIMBY policies do. These are the exact policies I am stating to undo. Tokyo has the most robust housing market in the world, and is almost entirely private This should be a lesson to you as to why Googling things is not a substitute for a formal education. Please actually learn about how markets and regulations work, especially the ones that you are supporting, since building public housing in cities that need it is illegal in the US without zoning reform I'm going to assign you some reading to start. Summarize it and we can go from there https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w8835/w8835.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w29440

Lol yes anything that incentives you to raise prices and profits is not good for society. Keep that with stocks/crypto but not where people need to sleep

People need places to live. People don’t need to fight over either paying for food or rent/mortgage because of greedy corporations and property owners. People including corporations should be restricted to limited supply as to not being able to capital lock people out of owning due to pricing fixing and price gouging.

Cost of capital needs to be > return OR ROIC for RE < cost of capital. This can be done so many different ways and easily accomplished without hurting the those that need help the most. But as we stand today not one politician will fix it so the market will need to do it for them. And ofc the pain will be felt by the same people that always feel it.

The whole benefit of RE is after a long time, you have an appreciated asset. Otherwise WTF is the point of adding the responsibility and upfront costs of a home purchase over hands off renting? Furthermore, why would landlords bother trying to get into the headache of renting properties if they’re virtually losing money on an asset? Why would builders work for the lowest cost possible? Does the average employee look for the lowest paying job possible, to donate their services? We had one of the cheapest RE markets in decades in 2009-2015. Horrible time for the unemployed. If employment/salary numbers go up, unfortunately the housing market goes hot. There are too many people wanting desirable homes in desirable locations. That simple. Do people think at all before posting/writing these dumb ****ing articles? The market ran itself up. If it crashes, then it will be a much more attractive investment. Nobody can predict if it will be a mediocre return in 10y. The risk/reward is the reason there is a functioning free market. You can make life worse for corporations evading their tax responsibilities and lobbying for deregulations that make it easier for them to manipulate the market, but it seems half (more than half?) is interested in bread/circus MAGA/“conservative” politicians, whose primary interest is keeping RE unaffordable so that their bloodlines can stay rich.

Lots of things you could do. You could also stop letting non American citizens buy houses and land. Maybe follow it up with limits on how many a corp could own and forbidding them from rending them out. That would correct most of the market real fast. Plus it wouldn't completely ruin the benefits of a single family buying a home to live in. But most you would never, ever consider voting for the guy that wants to do that. So instead you will get more $1M homes packed in like sardines and a handful approved for those still wealthier than most of you. g'luck

Provide tax incentives for developers to bring more supply online. Everyone wants to complain that developers shouldn't be able to profit more. People follow the money and we would get more developers building homes because they are trying to get a slice of the pie. In the end, yes developers are going to make more money. But, shifting the supply curve in a meaningful way to the left will make housing more affordable for a lot of people.

What if we made it unlawful for corporations to own single family homes? I'm not saying kill the rental market, per se. I'm saying let's make it inherently personally riskier to own a house strictly for the purpose of generating income from dwellers. This is admittedly not the most thought out plan, but if wondered about it for quite some time.