That’s not how this works. A better solution would be to tax more aggressively second+ homes and severely limit what corporations can invest into.
Why should a company be able to profit off of second hand housing? This isn’t a commodity, but it’s treated as such. Companies should be able to build new housing (for sale) and own housing only for the purposes of, say, housing their employees if they so wish. I simply see no benefits to allowing companies trade living spaces like stocks.
The whole point is that you get to decide how much the property is worth to you. If it’s worth more to someone else, you’re both better off for the trade. The only losers here are people trying to cheat on their taxes by giving a “low” appraisal, and people trying to hoard multiple properties.
Plug some numbers into that formula.
If you own a $100k property, you pay 1k in taxes/year
If you own 10 of those properties, you pay 100k/year. This would mean you have to charge more in rent than a mortgage would cost to buy the same property. The business model would become unprofitable.
I understand the logic of it, my point is that this is a trust/honesty based system which leaves you cornered. Here are some problems with it:
placing a low value on my house to pay less taxes exposes me to a hostile buyout
placing a realistic (e.g. around average for the region) price doesn’t solve the previous problem. I’m still in danger of a hostile buyout, while also paying higher taxes. What’s more, even if everyone else plays fairly, this additional % someone else paid to take my house is now the minimum added on top of their own valuation, driving prices up.
placing an unreachably high price would bankrupt me as I can’t pay the taxes, so there is no scenario in which this works out for me
given a realistic and unequal economy, there will be those who can’t afford to place a higher price on their house, i can just go and buy them out on sale, then rent them back to them (that one might sound familiar)
The fault in your assumption is 1. that this would discourage corporations from buying up; and 2. That you live in an equal and just society;
That’s not how this works. A better solution would be to tax more aggressively second+ homes and severely limit what corporations can invest into.
Why should a company be able to profit off of second hand housing? This isn’t a commodity, but it’s treated as such. Companies should be able to build new housing (for sale) and own housing only for the purposes of, say, housing their employees if they so wish. I simply see no benefits to allowing companies trade living spaces like stocks.
The whole point is that you get to decide how much the property is worth to you. If it’s worth more to someone else, you’re both better off for the trade. The only losers here are people trying to cheat on their taxes by giving a “low” appraisal, and people trying to hoard multiple properties.
Plug some numbers into that formula. If you own a $100k property, you pay 1k in taxes/year If you own 10 of those properties, you pay 100k/year. This would mean you have to charge more in rent than a mortgage would cost to buy the same property. The business model would become unprofitable.
I understand the logic of it, my point is that this is a trust/honesty based system which leaves you cornered. Here are some problems with it:
The fault in your assumption is 1. that this would discourage corporations from buying up; and 2. That you live in an equal and just society;