Of course there's the best option which is an non-occupancy tax that goes up exponentially for each additional property you're sitting on for speculation.
That right there would be a hard counter to wallstreet hoovering in the housing market.
It's like you're not even considering the feelings of the millionaires and billionaires with 72 houses each and I for one just won't stand for it.
That on top of a tax that is highly progressive after x number of properties, regardless of occupancies.
Quick reminder: The Nazi German government emptied out Eastern European towns and villages taken by the Wehrmacht during various campaigns, most notably Operation Barbarossa, for resettlement of "pure" Germans to those occupied lands (called Lebensraum)... this started almost literally once these occupied towns and villages were far enough from the front lines. Also, the whole point of the US Government's genocidal forced march of native tribes, often referred to as the Tail of Tears, was to clear said native tribes out so the Southern aristocracy could seize the land for plantations worked by chattel slaves... whole swaths of what is today Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi were settled by whites as a result.
Many a "populist" (read: Fascist or proto-Fascist) operate their politics in this manner. Promise either cheap land (or, at the very least, housing) to the workers and others by committing what is, on it's face, a genocide. There's more modern examples (two in particular, going on right this minute for all the world to see), but I don't want to get the ban-hammer so I won't name them directly (I forgot to check the instance in which I am commenting before doing so, but not taking my chances).
Additionally, "Mass deportation" is a fucking genocide, I don't know how this can even be said loudly. Guess people never learn...
Donald John Trump comes from a family of real estate speculators.
Akira Toriyama once said he based the character of Freeza on Japanese real estate speculators, who he called "the worst kind of people." (Source)
Am I saying Trump is Freeza? No, Freeza is several orders of magnitude more competent on his worst day than Trump was when he peaked in 1951. But I think it's important to underline, for the people in the back, what level of cartoonish evil we're dealing with, because for some reason people will read stuff like this and it won't sink in. Maybe DBZ will help.
I don't know. I'm tired, y'all.
Neither choice is great. One is evil.
That 25k quickly becomes "oh, everyone had 25k more so we can charge 25k more".
Don't give rich house builders tax breaks, they're the ones causing the problem by deliberately not building enough. You're the fucking government. Build houses yourselves. Rent them through social housing programs.
25k is for first time home buyers, not everyone. You can't have separate prices for first time buyers and the rest of the public, and a seller won't know how you are financed until after the house is listed anyways.
This absolutely will help, because if you'd just ask anyone trying to get a home, the down payment is the hardest part to satisfy.
The only way a house cartel can form like this is for those that own the homes. The builders don't own the homes, corporations do. Those corporations collude and price fix to create a cartel. Focus on that.
The builders have made the 16 million empty homes in this country because they were just selling them to corporations. It's not that they are not hiding enough, it's that the rich have engulfed the entire pipe with their gluttonous mouths and there is nothing left for the rest of us.
When will we finally slay the beasts that are killing us?
I've started to come around on the 25k down payment assistance. It definitely has it's problems, and there will absolutely be those who gouge because of it. But because it's specifically down-payment assistance it will still help first time buyers get mortgages on houses they can afford the regular payments on, but don't have the extra to set aside for a 10% down payment because rent is taking everything they could be setting aside for a down payment. And it's limited to first time home buyers, with 2 years of on-time rent payments, and says "up to" 25k. Wouldn't surprise me if it ends up being limited to 10% of the purchase price (which gets you more favorable loan terms).
thinking that homeless illegal immigrants are the root cause of home shortage where a single corporation or a billionaire buys thousands of flats to rent them to people for exorbitant prices.
in one way it works because if you kick out many homeless people out of the country, you can say that in one year you cut homelessness by half.
If they really wanted to change regulations they'd push changing zoning regulations in cities to allow building anything other than detached single family housing. That would be totally reasonable and help alongside tax incentives. But I have a feeling that's not what's meant by changing regulations...
They said “making federal land available”. I take that as they want to sell off land in places like national parks to be developed.
Which, needless to say, is an awful idea.
"Kill 3 kids and bulldoze the neighboring nature reserve (it won't give us more chairs, but it'll feel good)"
I hate any financial assistance that doesn't address the root cause, because all it is at that point is more tax and wealth transfer to the rich.
So the mass deportation would be of lawful alien residents, because undocumented residents cannot buy houses unless it is straight up cash, and even then would have a hard time getting insurance or utilities, you know, without a SSN, credit history or IDs. Unless they use a stolen SSN, which is very difficult and rare.
$25k down payment assistance where one bed one bath houses are routinely nearly half a million is a joke tbh.
Honestly I really don't think that's effective either. Giving people more money to buy something generally just means the market will respond by charging more money for that thing. The assistance will effectively get "priced in" given time.
It's honestly the weakest part of the Harris/Walz platform for me. Trump plan is utterly insane top-to-bottom though, and they're just using immigration as a scapegoat here, which is... something.
I have one "weird" and "radical" proposal: public housing to rent. Not to but. At affordable price. That would lower the price of every house, flat, ...
Those who live in apartments, and only they, should collectively and equitably own the building entirely.
They ban abortion and then don't want those babies/future adults housed. Classic.
I'm curious how many houses/apartments are unused in the US, acting as a speculative asset and if building more is even necessary.
Immigrants own Chase Manhattan?!!?!
Damn, lern somethin' new errday ...
The only thing proposed that's reasonable is "changing regulation." It's too easy to block new housing, and often times it's just flat out illegal to increase density or build mixed use.
As usual, the blue choice is obviously much better than the red choice, but only in comparison to this bat shit crazy red choice. On it's own, the blue choice is still rather bad.
I'm starting to think that Republicans just exist to make the bad Democrat options look always better in comparison.
If you have one side that is pushing into the crazy territory really hard, the public discourse will change and shift in a way, that a moderate position will be perceived as extreme. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
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