this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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The thing that bothers me is the shortage is completely artificial. There are approximately 28 vacant homes in America for every unhoused person. I live next to a housing development with an ungodly number of 4 bed 2.5 bath McMansions, most of which have, as far as I can tell, sat empty for the last two years. Not for sale, not for rent, just parked as an investment.
I deal with a lot of small business owners and it's amazing how many of them have second homes. These guys are well-off but not what you think of as ultra wealthy. I think housing has been such a high-return investment that both corporations and individuals have been buying up houses they don't need.
Most states in the US I believe have homestead exemptions for property tax on your primary residence. Maybe if they just jacked the prop tax way up on anyone or entity that owns more than one single family property that would make it a less enticing investment.
Honestly I'd scale it. There's a lot of people who don't sell their first home when they move into their second and it's helping them financially to rent it out. I don't want to go after these people...
Raise the tax per every house you're doing it with. Make it prohibitive at scale.
That's not a bad idea. Tax rate is X. First house is X. Second house is XY, third house is XY*Y, etc.
Problem is property rates are usually city, county, state so you're not going to see consistency between them.