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Comment by kazinator | Hacker News Reader

> Imagine you're 75, retired, and suddenly your property tax spikes and the house you bought 20 years ago for 150 is now worth 750K, and now you're on the hook for 30K.

Easily solved by not hitting people who own one property which is their primary residence.

I'd go easy on two-property people; some people need two places for various reasons, and they occupy both.

The tax rules can be crafted such that heavy penalties are imposed on people with three or more properties, and on house flipping activity.

Only reason you don't see more of that is because, doh, the rules are written by the rich. The politicians themselves or their rich chums are doing a lot of that speculating.

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> Easily solved by not hitting people who own one property which is their primary residence.

This would discourage individuals from renting out their property for a small profit, which is exactly what you want to see more of to increase affordability (and liveability — not everyone likes renting from big investment firms and property management companies).

No, someone renting out their one property, which is their primary residence, does not increase affordability.

That is because they themselves have to live somewhere. If they have to rent, then what have we achieved?

Harassing these people is entirely regressive.

People doing something entirely normal, like buying a place and living in it, are not the root cause of any problem.

(OK, I've heard of the practice of sleeping under the desk at work and using the company kitchen and shower, while AirBnB'ing your apartment for $. Good luck with that if you have a family.)

Making it costlier to own a second or third property discourages small time investors from renting out those properties, which decreases the availability of rental units, and raises rents.

Alternatively, and worse still, it might erode profit margins such that rentals become exclusively the domain of big investment firms. How is this of benefit to ordinary renters?

My remark about "not hitting people who own one property which is their primary residence" doesn't say anything about second or third property owners. I'm against harassing two-property owners with taxes and even three. Some people have reasons for living in two places and don't want to rent: they have their things there. (I think I said something to that effect in my original comment.)

I'm with you about the undesirability of these investment firms who hog up properties; the tax structure could easily be set up to squeeze them out, while encouraging the small owner rentals: people who have two or three places.

These firms are basically parasites who contribute to the housing problem as much as home flipping speculators. It should be entirely unprofitable for someone to have like twelve properties. We simply cannot have that in cities where affordability is spiraling out of control.

Maybe once upon a time chains of managed condo buildings and such owned by big companies wasn't a problem; it could be high time to crack down on it.

> I'm with you about the undesirability of these investment firms who hog up properties; the tax structure could easily be set up to squeeze them out, while encouraging the small owner rentals: people who have two or three places.

But that tax structure would put downward pressure on rental unit availability, which would very likely raise rents. Wasn’t the goal of all this to solve housing affordability?

> It should be entirely unprofitable for someone to have like twelve properties.

Someone, as in ... a human? What about LLCs? It’s easy and simple to form several of them.

As someone who owns no real estate, and strongly prefers renting from individuals, my concern is all these plans to make it harder for individuals to own several properties will make it even harder than it already is to find a good deal as a renter.

Then we need to go after the big investment firms, so they can't do that.

What's the fallout from that? Let's keep this going and see if it reaches sustainable or insane.

> What's the fallout from that?

You mean, what’s the fallout of banning anyone or any business regardless of the circumstances from owning more than one property?

Starting with the obvious one, it incentivizes investors to form multiple legal entities to own multiple properties — thereby entirely defeating the proposed regulations. This is already how it works today amongst informed property investors (though for reasons of legal liability, privacy and wealth protection rather than skirting regulations).

But assuming you could close this (realistically impossible to close) loophole... I’m guessing people in this hypothetical fantasy would prefer buying huge tracts of land, and building ADUs? Rentals would likely become a lot more scarce. Maybe corruption would rise due to the general ridiculousness of the proposed regs. Dunno. What do you think?

> it incentivizes investors to form multiple legal entities to own multiple properties

How it could work is that a residential property must be registered to an individual's social insurance number, not to a corporation.

So then they will have to start inventing people if they want to shelter their activities.

These people can be audited. How did you get the title to this property? From whom? Where is the mortgage in your name? How come you're not actually paying the mortgage? Etc.

You can't hide the fact that you didn't buy that property from the tax man.

How would property development work? How are the much needed and widely adored characterful European style duplexes and lowrises in city centers going to get built if one person can only own one property?

I don't see why you are conflating construction industry that builds and sells houses with the rental industry that builds nothing.

In you can get business visa in you invest X amount into a company, it can be in construction but not a property, house-flipping or rentals

As it should. We have a house shortage.

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