• EnderMB@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The plan to make housing affordable has been known for years, decades even.

    You don’t cut prices, because it means cash-rich buyers will buy up the stock as investment in the long-term.

    You don’t (only) give people money to buy, because you’re giving money to people that own property as a portfolio piece.

    You:

    • Freeze rent so that any increases fall below inflation, making it a long-term loss, but stable in the very short term.
    • Provide opportunities for people to buy their rental properties, with tax incentives for those that sell at a cheaper rate.
    • Freeze house prices and gradually drop over the long-term, so that they are a slowly depreciating asset.
    • Assist those that wish to buy their rental properties.
    • (Forgot to add this) Agree a gradual drop over the space of several years to push the price of a house down.

    This gives those that own multiple houses the means to sell property with a one-time tax benefit. You’ll lose money initially, but in the long term people can afford houses and the market will move on from property as an investment piece. The reason no one wants to do this is because it’ll take years to come to fruition, and most leadership terms aren’t that long.

    • HappycamperNZ@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      You’re right this won’t help - all it will do is push up the average house price by 25k. Freezing prices won’t do anything except drive shortage and lower quality property. Everything you mentioned will work once until people realize they can take advantage of it. We’ve seen it before - price freezes don’t help.

      It is well known what we need to do.

      • make property a bad investment. Heavily tax vacant properties and ownership of multiple, improve renters rights, increase interest rates for investment purchases. The goal is to drive down Qd quickly, reducing the value of other owned properties.

      • significantly drive up quality housing stock - Increase of Qs. Tax breaks for new builds, government rent to own, density and infrastructure increases. No tax on new builds owned for 10 years. Longer plan that solves long term.

      • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Haha, I realised that I forgot the last point!

        You’re right, freezing won’t stop it, because it’s still a stable place to keep your money. What needs to happen once frozen is that prices need to be continually dropped over a long period.

        Obviously, more housing is key, and helps push current owners towards selling sooner rather than later. The problem with housing stock, which we’ve seen in the UK and Ireland, is that the quality of “affordable” housing stock is often hilariously bad. Corners are cut, homes are too hot/cold to be considered safe, and issues like cladding that breaks the law is pushed back to the owner to fix instead of those that broke the law. That’s why it needs to be gradual and methodological.

    • Zannsolo@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Raise a taxes to extreme an degree for commercial ownership of residential properties and maybe even a 1 time multi-home tax up-front, use the money to support single property owners who end-up upside down in their mortgages. fuck people profiting off blocking out huge swaths of the population from home ownership.