14 Jan 2023, 2:45 pm
Nades wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Nades wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Capital is essential for achieving things and people who contribute capital deserve to see returns from it. But nobody made land. People should be able to make money by building new buildings, or making existing ones better, but not by owning land and charging other people to use it.
You are aware that landlords don't rent out plots of land right? There is often a building involved which is man made, very expensive to construct and has to be paid for in some form or another along with being maintained.
I don't get the whole land argument. Why does the building suddenly not exist when it comes to landlords? Do tenants only want the plot of land or something?
As I said, property management is valuable and people deserve to be able to make money from it. But essentially, being a landlord is about renting out a depreciating asset. It is the same as renting out cars. There are plenty of car hire companies, both short term and long term, and they aren't doing anything wrong (at least not inherently).
The issue is that landlords don't only make money by renting out a depreciating asset, they also make money from the increasing value of the land. When house prices go up, it isn't usually because all houses suddenly got magically nicer, it's because the rising population has driven up demand for land, and land values have gone up accordingly. The landlord has done nothing to earn this portion of their income.
In an ideal world, we would have a tax on land values rather than on property values. There are no major downsides to this tax. Unlike income tax or capital gains tax, it wouldn't negatively affect the economy. Then all landlords would be running "property management" businesses using the same business model as car hire. But right now they're profiting from something they had nothing to do with.
The whole concept of renting is for someone else to make use of whatever is being let without having to pay for the capital. Instead the owner pays for the capital. Whether this item being rented goes up or down in value is just coincidental like the value of all tangible items that can be sold (and intangible ones). In of itself there is nothing wrong with profiting from rising house prices.
Selling houses is an awful way of making money from houses anyway and most landlords never do it.
I think I've made it abundantly clear that I'm not opposed to renting out homes, so I'm not sure why you're explaining the concept. The issue is twofold:
1) the landlord's ownership of the land and total capture of the land rent allows them to extract wealth from their tenants (domestic or commercial) without creating new wealth. This is known as "rent seeking" and is separate from "being paid rent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
2) all landowners (both those who own the land their home sits on, and those who own other bits of land) are engaged in rent seeking because they make money from the increased value of their land without creating new wealth. Many often seek to strengthen their position by blocking nearby development, increasing the value of their property due to its scarcity.
If we have to tax something, which we do, we should start by taxing economic rent. Again, to be completely clear, "economic rent" is different to "renting something out". It's perfectly possible to rent something out without rent-seeking, and this is a valuable service. But the accumulation of unearned wealth by landowners at the expense of the rest of us is the biggest cause of the gap between the haves and have-nots.
14 Jan 2023, 2:47 pm
14 Jan 2023, 2:54 pm
The_Walrus wrote:
Nades wrote:
The whole concept of renting is for someone else to make use of whatever is being let without having to pay for the capital. Instead the owner pays for the capital. Whether this item being rented goes up or down in value is just coincidental like the value of all tangible items that can be sold (and intangible ones). In of itself there is nothing wrong with profiting from rising house prices.
Selling houses is an awful way of making money from houses anyway and most landlords never do it.
Selling houses is an awful way of making money from houses anyway and most landlords never do it.
I think I've made it abundantly clear that I'm not opposed to renting out homes, so I'm not sure why you're explaining the concept. The issue is twofold:
1) the landlord's ownership of the land and total capture of the land rent allows them to extract wealth from their tenants (domestic or commercial) without creating new wealth. This is known as "rent seeking" and is separate from "being paid rent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
2) all landowners (both those who own the land their home sits on, and those who own other bits of land) are engaged in rent seeking because they make money from the increased value of their land without creating new wealth. Many often seek to strengthen their position by blocking nearby development, increasing the value of their property due to its scarcity.
If we have to tax something, which we do, we should start by taxing economic rent. Again, to be completely clear, "economic rent" is different to "renting something out". It's perfectly possible to rent something out without rent-seeking, and this is a valuable service. But the accumulation of unearned wealth by landowners at the expense of the rest of us is the biggest cause of the gap between the haves and have-nots.
Yeah but I have no idea how it's possible to rent property without being a rent seeker. The next best thing you mentioned that can be done with property was along the lines of a car rental but the laws don't allow it. It'll be more like a hotel and to a fairly large extent, tenants already benefit from having to do zero maintenance and not be exposed to the financial shocks that landlords are.
14 Jan 2023, 2:56 pm
goldfish21
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Joined: 17 Feb 2013
Age: 42
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Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
14 Jan 2023, 3:00 pm
The_Walrus wrote:
Nades wrote:
This is why Canada has never appealed to me. The distances are so vast that there seems to be zero competition for keeping house prices in check. It's literally a City or the middle of nowhere. It's no wonder cities are so expensive.
The issue in Vancouver is exactly the same as the issue in the UK - not enough building, and artificially high demand due to the lack of a land-value tax.
Not true. That's fake news!
We have built At Least enough housing to cover our population growth. At LEAST.
https://www.ubcm.ca/sites/default/files ... 0Paper.pdf
By one of Andy Yan's estimates I read a couple years back, during some recent years we actually built, iirc, 26% more units of housing than were required to house population growth.. yet people are living in tents, forests, cars etc while construction workers are building full tilt - or were until the slight downturn and developers have started to cancel entire projects.
The problem is that housing is not becoming homes. They're owned by offshore investors who see them as little more than a safety deposit box to store wealth in that the CCP can't easily take from them. Others are Airbnb's vs. rental housing stock. Towers go up, lights stay off.. foreign investors spending $1-5M+/condo just to own it and no one lives there. Entire neighbourhoods are quite dark at night.. cafes and shops close because there are no people there, only empty condos.
But we've constructed enough housing to provide homes. Suggesting it's a lack of building enough supply is total nonsense. It's that we've built $$$$$$ Monopoly Card properties for wealthy Chinese buyers to buy/sell/trade instead of homes that are both available and affordable for the people here to live in.
_________________
No
for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.14 Jan 2023, 3:11 pm
Nades wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Nades wrote:
The whole concept of renting is for someone else to make use of whatever is being let without having to pay for the capital. Instead the owner pays for the capital. Whether this item being rented goes up or down in value is just coincidental like the value of all tangible items that can be sold (and intangible ones). In of itself there is nothing wrong with profiting from rising house prices.
Selling houses is an awful way of making money from houses anyway and most landlords never do it.
Selling houses is an awful way of making money from houses anyway and most landlords never do it.
I think I've made it abundantly clear that I'm not opposed to renting out homes, so I'm not sure why you're explaining the concept. The issue is twofold:
1) the landlord's ownership of the land and total capture of the land rent allows them to extract wealth from their tenants (domestic or commercial) without creating new wealth. This is known as "rent seeking" and is separate from "being paid rent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
2) all landowners (both those who own the land their home sits on, and those who own other bits of land) are engaged in rent seeking because they make money from the increased value of their land without creating new wealth. Many often seek to strengthen their position by blocking nearby development, increasing the value of their property due to its scarcity.
If we have to tax something, which we do, we should start by taxing economic rent. Again, to be completely clear, "economic rent" is different to "renting something out". It's perfectly possible to rent something out without rent-seeking, and this is a valuable service. But the accumulation of unearned wealth by landowners at the expense of the rest of us is the biggest cause of the gap between the haves and have-nots.
Yeah but I have no idea how it's possible to rent property without being a rent seeker. The next best thing you mentioned that can be done with property was along the lines of a car rental but the laws don't allow it. It'll be more like a hotel and to a fairly large extent, tenants already benefit from having to do zero maintenance and not be exposed to the financial shocks that landlords are.
Tax on unimproved land value. Then all that will be left is the money arising from the service of providing the home to someone who can't afford or doesn't want a mortgage.
Nades wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Nades wrote:
The whole concept of renting is for someone else to make use of whatever is being let without having to pay for the capital. Instead the owner pays for the capital. Whether this item being rented goes up or down in value is just coincidental like the value of all tangible items that can be sold (and intangible ones). In of itself there is nothing wrong with profiting from rising house prices.
Selling houses is an awful way of making money from houses anyway and most landlords never do it.
Selling houses is an awful way of making money from houses anyway and most landlords never do it.
I think I've made it abundantly clear that I'm not opposed to renting out homes, so I'm not sure why you're explaining the concept. The issue is twofold:
1) the landlord's ownership of the land and total capture of the land rent allows them to extract wealth from their tenants (domestic or commercial) without creating new wealth. This is known as "rent seeking" and is separate from "being paid rent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
2) all landowners (both those who own the land their home sits on, and those who own other bits of land) are engaged in rent seeking because they make money from the increased value of their land without creating new wealth. Many often seek to strengthen their position by blocking nearby development, increasing the value of their property due to its scarcity.
If we have to tax something, which we do, we should start by taxing economic rent. Again, to be completely clear, "economic rent" is different to "renting something out". It's perfectly possible to rent something out without rent-seeking, and this is a valuable service. But the accumulation of unearned wealth by landowners at the expense of the rest of us is the biggest cause of the gap between the haves and have-nots.
Yeah but I have no idea how it's possible to rent property without being a rent seeker. The next best thing you mentioned that can be done with property was along the lines of a car rental but the laws don't allow it. It'll be more like a hotel and to a fairly large extent, tenants already benefit from having to do zero maintenance and not be exposed to the financial shocks that landlords are.
Tax on unimproved land value. Then all that will be left is the money arising from the service of providing the home to someone who can't afford or doesn't want a mortgage.
Nades wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Nades wrote:
This is why Canada has never appealed to me. The distances are so vast that there seems to be zero competition for keeping house prices in check. It's literally a City or the middle of nowhere. It's no wonder cities are so expensive.
The issue in Vancouver is exactly the same as the issue in the UK - not enough building, and artificially high demand due to the lack of a land-value tax.
I think the problem with property prices in cities is just due to supply and demand. Cities have become glamorized and many people quite literally can't live outside of one.
It isn't that cities are "glamorised", if anything I think rural life receives more glamorising (there isn't a TV show called Escape to the City). It's that most people simply rationally prefer city life. If it's not for you then OK, but there are some obvious advantages to city life: jobs, lots of people, a greater variety of amenities, better transport, etc.
Yes, the issue is supply and demand... but the issue is the shortage of supply, not excessive demand. We need more homes to be built.
14 Jan 2023, 3:34 pm
14 Jan 2023, 3:49 pm
15 Jan 2023, 2:21 am
RetroGamer87
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15 Jan 2023, 2:24 am
RetroGamer87
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15 Jan 2023, 2:26 am
RetroGamer87
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15 Jan 2023, 2:42 am
RetroGamer87
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15 Jan 2023, 2:56 am
ASPartOfMe
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15 Jan 2023, 4:27 am
15 Jan 2023, 7:21 am
RetroGamer87
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15 Jan 2023, 8:52 am
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