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Comment by jwarden | Hacker News Reader

> If something goes up more than inflation - it is a good investment

It’s not that simple. First, risk is a also factor. But a real estate investor is not just looking for capital gains. They are looking at rent yields against costs (taxes, insurance, maintenance, interest).

Real estate can be a good investment even without appreciation in real terms. And that is a good thing.

Real estate investors play an important role in society. Without landlords, it would be impossible to rent a home. So anyone without the ability to purchase a home would have to rely on friends and family or charity, or sleep in the street.

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Sure but if you make the tax incentives TOO good for landlords, owner occupied housing % goes down as those with capital amass larger portfolios to lease out.

Further if you made building housing easier there would be more available, with less price pressure from excess demand pushing prices and rents up.

I’m more interested in enticing developers to build than I am encouraging more landlords.

Okay but I think we’ve lost the thread of the argument.

I am arguing against the claim "Housing can be affordable or it can be a good investment. Not both."

You support this claim with the argument that “If something goes up more than inflation - it is a good investment” and therefore it can’t be affordable.

I am saying real estate can be a good investment even if it doesn’t go up more than inflation. Do you disagree?

Further, for landlords to make homes available to rent, housing must be a good investment. Do you disagree?

Note that a Georgist tax on 100% of land rental value does not stop the landlord from earning a return on their improvement values. The land tax of a property with a 100% land tax will decrease the land price down to $0, and thus instead of for instance putting $500k into buying land and $500k buying apartments, they could instead buy 2 $500k apartments for the same capital cost. The end result of this will be more apartments, which will bring down rents, but this will yield a higher ROI than they currently achieve, since they have to pay less rents to the banks.

> I am saying real estate can be a good investment even if it doesn’t go up more than inflation. Do you disagree?

Yes I think so. You need rents to escalate faster than maintenance costs (which are tied to inflation closely) for this to be a good trade. So again - for rent to become relatively less affordable over time.

It sounds like you are not considering rental income (the argument I made in my original comment). You only need growth of rental income to exceed growth of cost for it to be profitable to be a landlord. Am I incorrect?

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