So this just glosses over several issues and ignores the big obvious solution.
The big obvious solution is a system like Vienna where ~60% of the housing is supplied by the government.
Oh and if no one wants to buy houses, great. Let the government take them over and then create rental stock, something the UK did until Thatcher came along [1].
You can also differentiate between personal home ownership and so-called "investment properties". That is, you punitively tax hoarding of housing as well as short-term speculation in hoousing. As one example, Switzerland (depending on canton) has pretty high capital gains taxes on housing that tend to decrease the longer you own the house [2].
We have a ton of shortsighted and downright destructive policy to increase house values (eg Prop 13 in California) that are often sold emotively. Prop 13 was sold as not kicking seniors out of their homes so we got a tax policy that essentially froze Disneyland's property tax to 1960s levels.
NYC builds a ton of real estate for no other purpose than allowing non-domiciled billionaires to park their wealth. I, for one, think that owning property in NYC (or anywhere) should make you resident for tax purposes. And the property tax system should be fixed but it's held hostage by upstate homeowners who like their subsidized tax rates on single family homes too much to let anything change.
Relying on private entities to provide houses by being landlords is an absolutely awful system.
The big obvious solution is a system like Vienna where ~60% of the housing is supplied by the government.
Oh and if no one wants to buy houses, great. Let the government take them over and then create rental stock, something the UK did until Thatcher came along [1].
You can also differentiate between personal home ownership and so-called "investment properties". That is, you punitively tax hoarding of housing as well as short-term speculation in hoousing. As one example, Switzerland (depending on canton) has pretty high capital gains taxes on housing that tend to decrease the longer you own the house [2].
We have a ton of shortsighted and downright destructive policy to increase house values (eg Prop 13 in California) that are often sold emotively. Prop 13 was sold as not kicking seniors out of their homes so we got a tax policy that essentially froze Disneyland's property tax to 1960s levels.
NYC builds a ton of real estate for no other purpose than allowing non-domiciled billionaires to park their wealth. I, for one, think that owning property in NYC (or anywhere) should make you resident for tax purposes. And the property tax system should be fixed but it's held hostage by upstate homeowners who like their subsidized tax rates on single family homes too much to let anything change.
Relying on private entities to provide houses by being landlords is an absolutely awful system.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-...
[2]: https://www.ubs.com/ch/en/services/guide/mortgages-and-finan...