Amsterdam to oblige homeowners to live in homes worth less than €512,000 | Hacker News Reader

Amsterdam to oblige homeowners to live in homes worth less than €512,000

nltimes.nl

21 pointsbelter8 comments

If investments are the problem then likely it is mostly driven by people who own more than one property. So why not simply introduce a large (eg 5%) annual tax on secondary properties and kill the issue entirely? It would need to be done on a national level in The Netherlands rather than just in AMS is one drawback. But it seems like there might be enough support.

Edit to expand. Each year with your tax return you would complete a one pager form on which you list your properties, your percentage/share of the ownership of each, and their assessed valuation (just use whatever standard local council assessment is used for other property taxes).

Total up the combined valuation. If you own two properties your share of ownership totals to 200%. Proportion of excess above the allowed quota (eg 100%) times the total valuation is the amount you owe the 5% tax on.

Make trusts and companies pass through for this purposes. They report their properties and valuations and the amount the beneficiary owns as a share and the individual then includes this on their tax form.

Apartments and so forth can still exist they’ll just need a lot of shareholders. Additionally more emphasis can be placed on non profit social and municipal housing charities/agencies (eg Vienna case) which can be exempted from the tax.

What if a company builds a new apartment block for students, would the taxes apply to them too?

Taxes would apply to the shareholders of the company as described. If each shareholders share along with their other properties is below the quota there’ll be no excess on which the 5% is due. Otherwise better for the university to build non profit student housing instead to be exempt.

> introduce a large (eg 5%) annual tax on secondary properties

congratulations, now the most vulnerable population - renters, pay 5% more.

rent is fixed at the bottom end by renters income. more likely to dissuade investors if they can't take the crunch.

This is always an argument when taxes on property come up. By reasoning we should make all the existing f taxes on property 0% because it’d all immediately pass through. But that’s not how it works.

In this case it doesn’t abolish rental property anyway. Your investor that thinks he can hold onto his large portfolio and just raise rents 5% is competing with a married couple who own one house they live in and one they rent and therefore isn’t subject to the tax. And against the person who owns an apartment in AMS but relocated to Rotterdam or somewhere else for a few years and is renting there so renting out their own apartment. Also competing against non profit housing charities and municipal housing (eg Vienna) and coops/companies with large portfolios by very large shareholder counts. That is this style of investor wouldn’t be sound anymore and would go away.

Hope this helps people! I bet it will!

Unless all houses will tend to start at 504.000 in amsterdam from now on?

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