Real estate investors, both individual and institutional, bought one-third of all single-family residential properties sold in the second quarter of 2025.
Solution: A tax on residential property that isn’t someone’s primary residence for more than half of the year, that scales up exponentially with the number of such properties the owner owns, regardless of whether the owner is an individual or a corporation.
Take the money this generates and put it towards helping the homeless and low-income families.
Make it cheaper to put someone - anyone - in a home (even for free) than to keep it unoccupied.
I don’t think this will work simply. Probably, they’d just have a individualized RIT (Real estate Investment Trust) for each house, and then have investors buy shares (up to 100%) of the individualized RITs or a “master RIT” that doesn’t own any property directly, but just all the shares of the indivudalized RITs that aren’t sold to an investor.
Disclaimer: I do make the problem slightly worse buy investing through https://arrived.com/ (Slightly because I don’t have that much money to invest, and only a portion of it is invested there.)
personally, I’m just raiding this everything bubble for all the $ I can get my hands on, in the hopes I can get enough capital to start throwing down massive high-density high-quality affordable housing projects for sale to long-time local renters/first time home buyers exclusively.
i have a theory about crashing localized housing markets via over-supply I want to test out. my hypothesis is that the parasitic renter-speculators, who probably took out loans or otherwise leveraged themselves to throw $ into the casino we call the stock/futes market, should end up distressed when they no longer have renters/are forced to lower rents due to competition.
at which point I step in, buy their properties for cheap, then throw down more high-density, high-quality, affordable housing for local residents.
That scale should be very steep. I’ve always advocated for a limit around 3 independent homes. That gives you a primary, a vacation home and a potential rental. Beyond that, you would need to operate as a business.
And even that would be limited to something like 5, across all related businesses, no loophole by creating a ton of shell companies under a parent company to operate them. You want to be a larger scale landlord? You’re doing that with higher density apartments, not single family homes. Single family homes should be owned by families. Not hedge funds.
Likewise, empty residences should be taxed higher as well. None of this bullshit where there are a bunch of empty places operating as capital holdings for big business. Sometimes even intentionally creating housing scarcity in large cities to jack up rental prices across the board. Your rental isn’t going at the price you want? You’re priced too high, lower the price until they do. If that rental is fit for habitation, and unfilled after say a year on the market, then it gets taxed at an extremely high rate.
Disincentivize businesses sitting on housing as a means of cash storage with no intention of it being used.
I would be much more aggressive. Any home or residentially zoned property that isn’t someone’s primary residence is either surrendered, sold, or taxed at 100% of the property value per year. That would include high density housing. Homes should be owned by their occupants, not abused by the rich to exploit the poor. Landlords need to be abolished with intense prejudice. Corporate landlords, independent landlords, it doesn’t matter. Real estate as a lease or rental investment is unethical in the extreme and should not be tolerated by society.
Agreed. Even Adam Smith decried rent-seeking behavior as the bane of Capitalism. Abolish landlords, encourage more co-op housing, and renting rooms from your primary residence out, with just enough association / State provided housing to fill in the gaps.
You seem to forget that some people actually prefer to rent than own. I know people who have sold their houses and moved into apartments because they were sick of the hassle, risk, and expense of home ownership.
What’s your solution for folks who need short-term housing (for example someone relocating for work for a year, or someone going to college who doesn’t want to stay in dorms)?
Canada has a good chunk of this law in place, but it doesn’t cover all owners you’re listing.
Underused Housing Tax:
The Underused Housing Tax (UHT) is an annual federal 1% tax on the ownership of vacant or underused housing in Canada that took effect on January 1, 2022. The UHT generally applies to foreign national owners of housing in Canada. However, in some situations, the UHT also applies to some Canadian owners (such as certain partners, trustees, and corporations).
Its got some big carve-outs, but its still better than we have in the States. One big carve-out is that publicly traded Canadian corporations are exempt. However, private corporations are subject to it. So its better than nothing.
I like this idea. It would be good if two was a very slight increase because of buying and then having to sell. Also long ago having a vacation home was something obtainable by relatively common folk. Would like to see that again but wealth disparity would have to come way down for that to happen.
In my magical Christmasland hypothetical scenario, it would be something like $10 ^ [number of qualifying properties] per year, for each property.
Mom and pop have a vacation home, or a property on the market? $10 / year. No problem. Got 5 vacant homes? That’ll be an extra $500,000 per year. Get a tenant or sell.
Would need some sort of limit such that the tax ceased when homelessness reached, say, 0.01% of the population or less, because right now there’s about 26 vacant homes in the US per homeless person; the point is to reduce homelessness, not to bankrupt everyone, of course.
Nah, keep it going even when homelessness is low. If you own three vacant properties, you’re paying 3,000 a year. It would be cheaper to give one of your homes away to a poor person who only has one, so they get to have a vacation home too. The poor person only has to pay 10 dollars a year.
Real estate taxes are usually done at the town level.
Who gets the money? Where does it go to?
I’m on board…don’t get me wrong…but I think shouldn’t be prohibitively expensive for the upper middle class to have a cabin in the woods or some such.
I think it should also have a bit to do with the market of the area where the home(s) are located.
If the market is hot because people want to live there, then yeah, they shouldn’t be letting it sit vacant, and shouldn’t be making a living off landlording (supplemental income I could forgive…there needs to be private leasing of homes/apartments at some level…not every body wants or needs to buy a house, and the alternative would be corporate landlords which brings us right back to square one).
But if you’ve got a cabin in BFE Utah? Go you. Get out of here and enjoy some quiet time.
The cabin thing can be fixed by proper zoning and regulations. Zone for “recreational use”, meaning it can’t be your primary residence (totaling an absolute maximum usage of, say, 6 months out of the calendar year). Enforce it with regulations and regular audits for such things as propane/electricity, mail activity (some have mail service), and maybe even vehicle permit activity.
This could grant lower taxes than the hypothetical you replied to, but proof of compliance would be required. Wealthy people should be able to facilitate that without a problem.
Get a third property? Tax it heavily. Register it to an LLC? Tax it heavily. No residence should ever be under an LLC, that is an obvious tax loophole that needs to be closed up. Trusts need to be audited as well.
Fourth property? 100% tax. End of the story, no loopholes, no exceptions, no further questions your honor.
Since I’m on this tangent, the same should apply to cars. Work vehicles should be subject to far higher scrutiny as far as compliance goes, and no, Kyle, your brand new Dodge 3500 on 22" wheels and 12" lift with pristine bedliner and a shitty smoke tune does not count as a work vehicle just because you haphazardly slapped a shitty magnetic company logo on the door.
Since I’m on this tangent, the same should apply to cars. Work vehicles should be subject to far higher scrutiny as far as compliance goes, and no, Kyle, your brand new Dodge 3500 on 22" wheels and 12" lift with pristine bedliner and a shitty smoke tune does not count as a work vehicle just because you haphazardly slapped a shitty magnetic company logo on the door.
This is funny because in my country we actually have a system that you can use your company car for personal use only if you pay an extra tax, based on the power rating. This makes for two sorts of people who use company cars for personal usage: Those who get small economical company cars so the tax is as low as possible… And those whose Lamborghini Urus is registered for company use only (Yeah right, I saw you use it on a fucking Saturday).
Technically the tax authority should occasionally investigate these, but unless you really stick out, they don’t have the bandwidth.
I assume it would be the same in the US: Those who want big powerful trucks for personal use with less tax paid, will just lie. All you have to do is make up stories about your miles. IRS don’t have time to check.
What could actually be done? Just tax all cars, company car or not, based on weight. Oh there will be a LOT of whining. But heavy trucks do more damage to the roads, and it’s not linear or even quadratic. And just allow personal usage, because it’s difficult to enforce rules about that. People would be less incentivized to get heavy work trucks. Fuck it, get a luxury car for your company car, at least that is way less dangerous to pedestrians + way less wear to the roads compared to a truck.
I absolutely would not want this government in charge of my housing.
Adequate public housing as part of this would be a pipe dream that would require a completely different form of governance. Otherwise it will be used to contro; and it would probably be means tested, resulting in another welfare cliff for people to be scared of.
Have you seen current housing projects?
I’d rather there be guaranteed minimum housing. Essentially hostels on transit routes where there’s a bed, showers, a locker, etc. No means testing. At most, require an ID so it’s at least known who is inside. Not glamorous, but not sleeping on the street.
Solution: A tax on residential property that isn’t someone’s primary residence for more than half of the year, that scales up exponentially with the number of such properties the owner owns, regardless of whether the owner is an individual or a corporation.
Take the money this generates and put it towards helping the homeless and low-income families.
Make it cheaper to put someone - anyone - in a home (even for free) than to keep it unoccupied.
I don’t think this will work simply. Probably, they’d just have a individualized RIT (Real estate Investment Trust) for each house, and then have investors buy shares (up to 100%) of the individualized RITs or a “master RIT” that doesn’t own any property directly, but just all the shares of the indivudalized RITs that aren’t sold to an investor.
Disclaimer: I do make the problem slightly worse buy investing through https://arrived.com/ (Slightly because I don’t have that much money to invest, and only a portion of it is invested there.)
Seems like the sort of loophole that, once identified, would be pretty easy to close if the legislators actually desired to do so.
Yeah, I’m all for more legislation and regulation to try to address this issue, it just won’t be quite as simple as the comment I replied to.
Also, I think landlords should support such legislation, because the alternative I see is violence toward landlords (which I don’t [yet] advocate).
personally, I’m just raiding this everything bubble for all the $ I can get my hands on, in the hopes I can get enough capital to start throwing down massive high-density high-quality affordable housing projects for sale to long-time local renters/first time home buyers exclusively.
i have a theory about crashing localized housing markets via over-supply I want to test out. my hypothesis is that the parasitic renter-speculators, who probably took out loans or otherwise leveraged themselves to throw $ into the casino we call the stock/futes market, should end up distressed when they no longer have renters/are forced to lower rents due to competition.
at which point I step in, buy their properties for cheap, then throw down more high-density, high-quality, affordable housing for local residents.
That scale should be very steep. I’ve always advocated for a limit around 3 independent homes. That gives you a primary, a vacation home and a potential rental. Beyond that, you would need to operate as a business.
And even that would be limited to something like 5, across all related businesses, no loophole by creating a ton of shell companies under a parent company to operate them. You want to be a larger scale landlord? You’re doing that with higher density apartments, not single family homes. Single family homes should be owned by families. Not hedge funds.
Likewise, empty residences should be taxed higher as well. None of this bullshit where there are a bunch of empty places operating as capital holdings for big business. Sometimes even intentionally creating housing scarcity in large cities to jack up rental prices across the board. Your rental isn’t going at the price you want? You’re priced too high, lower the price until they do. If that rental is fit for habitation, and unfilled after say a year on the market, then it gets taxed at an extremely high rate.
Disincentivize businesses sitting on housing as a means of cash storage with no intention of it being used.
I would be much more aggressive. Any home or residentially zoned property that isn’t someone’s primary residence is either surrendered, sold, or taxed at 100% of the property value per year. That would include high density housing. Homes should be owned by their occupants, not abused by the rich to exploit the poor. Landlords need to be abolished with intense prejudice. Corporate landlords, independent landlords, it doesn’t matter. Real estate as a lease or rental investment is unethical in the extreme and should not be tolerated by society.
Agreed. Even Adam Smith decried rent-seeking behavior as the bane of Capitalism. Abolish landlords, encourage more co-op housing, and renting rooms from your primary residence out, with just enough association / State provided housing to fill in the gaps.
You seem to forget that some people actually prefer to rent than own. I know people who have sold their houses and moved into apartments because they were sick of the hassle, risk, and expense of home ownership.
What’s your solution for folks who need short-term housing (for example someone relocating for work for a year, or someone going to college who doesn’t want to stay in dorms)?
State owned communities work in some places. It’s an option.
Canada has a good chunk of this law in place, but it doesn’t cover all owners you’re listing.
source
Its got some big carve-outs, but its still better than we have in the States. One big carve-out is that publicly traded Canadian corporations are exempt. However, private corporations are subject to it. So its better than nothing.
Of course they are. Gotta keep the sHaReHoLdErS happy 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
I like this idea. It would be good if two was a very slight increase because of buying and then having to sell. Also long ago having a vacation home was something obtainable by relatively common folk. Would like to see that again but wealth disparity would have to come way down for that to happen.
In my magical Christmasland hypothetical scenario, it would be something like $10 ^ [number of qualifying properties] per year, for each property.
Mom and pop have a vacation home, or a property on the market? $10 / year. No problem. Got 5 vacant homes? That’ll be an extra $500,000 per year. Get a tenant or sell.
Would need some sort of limit such that the tax ceased when homelessness reached, say, 0.01% of the population or less, because right now there’s about 26 vacant homes in the US per homeless person; the point is to reduce homelessness, not to bankrupt everyone, of course.
Nah, keep it going even when homelessness is low. If you own three vacant properties, you’re paying 3,000 a year. It would be cheaper to give one of your homes away to a poor person who only has one, so they get to have a vacation home too. The poor person only has to pay 10 dollars a year.
Real estate taxes are usually done at the town level.
Who gets the money? Where does it go to?
I’m on board…don’t get me wrong…but I think shouldn’t be prohibitively expensive for the upper middle class to have a cabin in the woods or some such.
I think it should also have a bit to do with the market of the area where the home(s) are located.
If the market is hot because people want to live there, then yeah, they shouldn’t be letting it sit vacant, and shouldn’t be making a living off landlording (supplemental income I could forgive…there needs to be private leasing of homes/apartments at some level…not every body wants or needs to buy a house, and the alternative would be corporate landlords which brings us right back to square one).
But if you’ve got a cabin in BFE Utah? Go you. Get out of here and enjoy some quiet time.
The cabin thing can be fixed by proper zoning and regulations. Zone for “recreational use”, meaning it can’t be your primary residence (totaling an absolute maximum usage of, say, 6 months out of the calendar year). Enforce it with regulations and regular audits for such things as propane/electricity, mail activity (some have mail service), and maybe even vehicle permit activity.
This could grant lower taxes than the hypothetical you replied to, but proof of compliance would be required. Wealthy people should be able to facilitate that without a problem.
Get a third property? Tax it heavily. Register it to an LLC? Tax it heavily. No residence should ever be under an LLC, that is an obvious tax loophole that needs to be closed up. Trusts need to be audited as well.
Fourth property? 100% tax. End of the story, no loopholes, no exceptions, no further questions your honor.
Since I’m on this tangent, the same should apply to cars. Work vehicles should be subject to far higher scrutiny as far as compliance goes, and no, Kyle, your brand new Dodge 3500 on 22" wheels and 12" lift with pristine bedliner and a shitty smoke tune does not count as a work vehicle just because you haphazardly slapped a shitty magnetic company logo on the door.
This is funny because in my country we actually have a system that you can use your company car for personal use only if you pay an extra tax, based on the power rating. This makes for two sorts of people who use company cars for personal usage: Those who get small economical company cars so the tax is as low as possible… And those whose Lamborghini Urus is registered for company use only (Yeah right, I saw you use it on a fucking Saturday).
Technically the tax authority should occasionally investigate these, but unless you really stick out, they don’t have the bandwidth.
I assume it would be the same in the US: Those who want big powerful trucks for personal use with less tax paid, will just lie. All you have to do is make up stories about your miles. IRS don’t have time to check.
What could actually be done? Just tax all cars, company car or not, based on weight. Oh there will be a LOT of whining. But heavy trucks do more damage to the roads, and it’s not linear or even quadratic. And just allow personal usage, because it’s difficult to enforce rules about that. People would be less incentivized to get heavy work trucks. Fuck it, get a luxury car for your company car, at least that is way less dangerous to pedestrians + way less wear to the roads compared to a truck.
You completely ignored the public housing approach. Did you realize that? It kinda undercuts the second half of your comment.
I absolutely would not want this government in charge of my housing.
Adequate public housing as part of this would be a pipe dream that would require a completely different form of governance. Otherwise it will be used to contro; and it would probably be means tested, resulting in another welfare cliff for people to be scared of.
Have you seen current housing projects?
I’d rather there be guaranteed minimum housing. Essentially hostels on transit routes where there’s a bed, showers, a locker, etc. No means testing. At most, require an ID so it’s at least known who is inside. Not glamorous, but not sleeping on the street.