In my country buildings and flats appreciate at a rate of 6% year-on-year on average. Rent is only 3% of the value of that property per year, on average. So a landlord can take 9% and have to deal with renters, their demands and the risk of them breaking things, or take 6% and do nothing at all. Keeping properties empty and off the market is enriching themselves on the suffering of people who now don’t have a place to live.
So in my opinion there should be a vacancy tax that exactly matches the value appreciation rate of the property. Then landlords have the choice between 0% (=loss of money due to inflation) or 9%. And if they still don’t want to rent the place out, they can still sell it to someone who wants to live there.
That proposal would still keep renting out property as a profitable way to go, while also helping people who want to buy property to live there, and the only people who would get harmed by this are people who purposely take property off the market to create scarcity to enrich themselves.
Not only that, the other side is also that owning buildings as investments should also be illegal.
In my country buildings and flats appreciate at a rate of 6% year-on-year on average. Rent is only 3% of the value of that property per year, on average. So a landlord can take 9% and have to deal with renters, their demands and the risk of them breaking things, or take 6% and do nothing at all. Keeping properties empty and off the market is enriching themselves on the suffering of people who now don’t have a place to live.
So in my opinion there should be a vacancy tax that exactly matches the value appreciation rate of the property. Then landlords have the choice between 0% (=loss of money due to inflation) or 9%. And if they still don’t want to rent the place out, they can still sell it to someone who wants to live there.
That proposal would still keep renting out property as a profitable way to go, while also helping people who want to buy property to live there, and the only people who would get harmed by this are people who purposely take property off the market to create scarcity to enrich themselves.
I would add strict rend regulations. A one bedroom apartment should not be rented for more than 1/4 of minimum wage…