alt Hacker NewsHousing can not be both affordable and a good investment.
If we want housing to be affordable ie “limit them increasing” we have to stop people using them as investments.
There are many ways. My favourites are:
- one human can own one residential property. No companies or businesses can.
-or, property tax doubles (or 10x) with every residential property owned.
- no foreign ownership (Canada does this now)
- government can own and rent residential property at no profit. They supply plenty of other basic necessities of life, why not houses?
Replies
torginus • today at 4:23 PM
Why should housing be an investment?
brazzy • today at 2:27 PM
> one human can own one residential property. No companies or businesses can.
So, in other words, you want everyone who cannot afford to outright buy a house to be homeless?
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It can be both affordable and an investment - it cannot (and will not) perpetually be a market-beating top-tier investment.
All of the items above can have drastic unintended consequences; the way to keep prices affordable is to make sure that supply is always outstripping demand by a bit.
Some examples of unintended consequences:
* I can't add an ADU to my existing property which would add one more dwelling unit
* Subdivision of property is discouraged; combining parcels reduces tax even if no new dwelling units are created
* This might be the closest to doing something though it could substantially discourage non-citizen immigrants (legal or not)
* This has been tried before and had well-documented issues, but might be doable if they can provide a "floor"