Especially when those 2nd, 3rd, + properties are being used as passive short term rentals. Observing the state of the housing situation “Hmm there aren’t enough homes for normal families to each have a chance, I should turn this extra property of mine into a vacation rental.” does this make said person a POS?
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Perhaps it could be alleviated by some kind of legislation which prevents anyone other than citizens (individuals or families) from purchasing residential zoned property. I’m sure industry would find a way for incorporated entities to then count as “citizens”.
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afford a brand new EV
Careful! There are people here who are redy to accuse you for poisoning the environment because your EV consumes electricity from unclean sources. As if it was your fault.
Those people are called “idiots”.
Not ethical, yes pos
Fuck what anyone else think mate, if you can do it go for it. 99% of people spend a lot of time complaining about everything, let them alone with their protagonist syndrome.
The problem isn’t people owning an extra house for a nest egg. It’s companies owning hundreds of them.
If housing is an investment (“a nest egg”) then the people and policies that support it as an investment will stand directly opposed to people and policies that want housing to be affordable and a right.
Housing cannot be an investment vehicle akin to stocks in a society that meaningfully values housing for everyone as an objective to strive for.
Real estate as an investment, retirement provision or object of speculation is precisely the problem. Every home that gets bought as an investment in an inflated housing market directly contributes to the problem, by cutting people out of the opportunity of ownership and making them dependent on paying rent.
It depends.
I think 1 home per adult is fine, for instance.
I also think some places are designed to be short term rentals and have a heavy tourist local economy.
I personally would like to tie some extra taxes to people that own more than one home.
I’m thinking of buying a property near a lakeside town. Ideally it would be a townhouse or have 2-3 separate houses or cabins on the property; one for me and my SO to live in 2/3rds of year, the others for rentals or guests.
Does that make me an asshole?
Tax multihome owners on an exponential curve.
Curve gets relaxed as the housed proportion of the population nears 100%.
We have a second house (a trailer, really) and rent it to my mom for way under market rate. 100% of the rent goes to paying off the debt from rehabilitating the trailer and paying off her utilities. It’s not like we’re out here just raking in the dough, we’re just trying to keep my mom from being homeless. I know for damn sure we’ve got to do it, because the state is way happier spending its money bashing homeless people instead of preventing homeless people.
I own a 2nd property but bought it for my son to live in. I figured that if I was going to be providing that much financial assistance that I’d rather buy a condo than pay rent.
Are you denying another family a house they would’ve otherwise been able to buy? Then yes.
In healthy system they should be able to afford to build it.
How do you answer that question honestly though? Say I’ve got enough liquid cash/ income to buy a second home, if I decide to just sit on this money or throw it in the stock market, does it magically make the family of four able to afford it? No, the house remains the same price, the family has the same amount of money, and the seller moves to the next buyer and sells it to them instead of me.
If anything I’d rather my landlord be someone who owns 2 or 3 homes and rents them than a huge real estate company
Not necessarily. We were a young family that had to move quite a bit for my job. We made due with apartments, but we preferred renting a house. We were in no position to buy, and we knew we were only in the area short term, so we appreciated house rentals.
Honest people with a second or third home for rent aren’t doing any harm.
No
Edit: to clarify, no it’s not ethical. Yes it makes person a pos.
I agree with you that it makes a person a POS, but it’s also necessary in our current system. It would take so much change to fix this.
I have a second home but I inherited it. It would need 100s of ks in renos to rent out. It wouldn’t bring me much money to sell it - would probably need to sell for land value only.
But - it’s a place of refuge for my family member in an emotionally abusive relationship, a friend struggling with her marriage, a crash space if anyone I love is in a rough spot. It’s brought my family together and it’s where we gather.
I don’t think this is wrong because I am using it for net positive purposes in the long term, and someone otherwise probably couldn’t use it - it would be a tear-down.
If it’s legally habitable, someone could be living there imo. Just price the rent adequately low for the value. I’m not saying it’s morally evil for you to have it, but it’s definitely a luxury.
It is likely not legally habitable. And to make it so for a renter would be beyond my current financial capabilities.
Ah, in that case I think you’re looking at it the right way.
Every restaurant and store that fails fails because of rent. Owning a property you’re not living out of or doing business in should be illegal.
There are three aspects of the economy. Labour, capital, and landowner. Of the three only landowner contributes nothing.
Idk, I think the restaurant Don Pancho owned failed because of the roach infestation my comadre reported.
Yeah, a second house for traveling workers or seasonal migrants is fine, bit luxury but fine, but renting them out is where you’re starting to be a dick.
I hope you are aware that people exist who can’t afford home ownership, and rental is their only option. If nobody owns a rental house for them to occupy, they have no chance of living in a house whatsoever.
Can’t afford or simply don’t want the trouble that comes with it
Oh sure, like myself. I hate the idea of ownership. Ties you down and comes with a ton of extra bills and upkeep… I prefer the flexibility and ability to f-off if something bothers me at any given time. But that’s not the point the OP tried to make, so I didn’t even want to bring that argument :-)
I hope you realize that they only can’t afford housing because land lords create artificial scarcity.
There’s more empty units in this country than unhoused people.
Basic Supply and Demand says people ought to be paying people to take houses off their hands because they’re an oversupplied product.
Rent collectors are literally the only reason housing is unaffordable to so many right now.
Housing is unaffordable because someone has to pay the construction.
Check out this breakdown of a fairly low-end cost estimate: https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/cost-to-build-house/#financing
Excluding land, you’re looking at about 135k USD. Land, whatever. Labor estimate is 30-50% according to the article, so let’s say around 190k (using ~40% and some rounding).
And that gives you a bare-bone structure without a lick of paint, furniture, carpets, curtains or any other interior (and exterior) decoration.
So even if you do everything by yourself on a gifted piece of land, I hope you can somehow understand that there are people out there who simply don’t have and/or qualify for a loan of >130k USD.
TL;DR: Rent collectors are
literallyfar from the only reason housing is unaffordable to so many right now.Love how ya just skipped right over the whole part where there’s more empty units than there are unhoused people to fill them.
You literally just completely ignored the actual substance of what the landlords are doing that makes housing unattainable in an oversupplied market.
Building entirely new houses is a luxury for people who’ve lucked out big, we’re talking about the supply of housing that already exists, which in numbers alone, should be providing an all time low of prices adjusted for inflation.
The “shortage” is an invented crisis to not acknowledge that we’d have no problems if we took a closer look at how much those landlord parasites actually need that fifth unit they also don’t live in.
I think the question should be: Are artificial barriers against increasing density of residential areas and other limitations on new housing ethical. The answer is no.
I’m always astonished when I read another news about housing getting even more expensive.
Block apartments, are mass produced goods. In the free market economy they have no right to appreciate in value, for the same reason your average car doesn’t - as building houses gets more profitable, the construction industry should ramp up.
Where? In areas with tight housing markets, maybe. In places with houses in abundance, I don’t think so.
One aspect not mentioned is that sometimes, second homes are in places that have a good supply of houses available. This makes them cheaper, and easier to afford. It also has more potential to grow in value down the road. If that’s the case, no issue. If not, it’s complicated.
Yes
