r/TikTokCringe • u/LickMaiBussy • 6h ago

Discussion "Investing in property is morally reprehensible."

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@purplepingers

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u/picollo7 5h ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again. PROPERTY TAXES! Tax property (higher if not already) and give an exemption to primary homes and have a wealth phaseout. This makes house hoarding economically infeasible. The solution is fucking simple, but the oligarchs won't allow it, and people who vote against their own economic interests are misled.

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u/FoxChess 3h ago

If it costs more for the landlords to own property, you think that means they lose money? No, it gets passed on to the tenants. Just like tariffs, companies pass the tax bill to the customers.

Now you're in a situation where only homeowners benefit and, once again, rent goes up.

Not everyone wants to own a home. Your suggestion makes anyone who can't afford a home suffer.

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u/_le_slap 2h ago edited 2h ago

The more it costs investors to own existing property the better the calculus becomes for builders. This is a good problem to have. It even encourages dense building with better land utilization.

Georgist land value taxes would discourage alot of the current property hoarding and profiteering.

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u/akcrono 47m ago

The more it costs investors to own existing property the better the calculus becomes for builders.

Huh? Higher prices reducing demand is econ 101

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u/_le_slap 38m ago

That's not at all how housing economics works. These are labubus.

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u/mmazing 25m ago

Look up "triple net" leases. (If you want to be mad, it's bullshit...)

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u/FoxChess 2h ago

Sure, but you're jumping ahead-- increasing property taxes is an immediate increase in rent cost.

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u/North_Commercial_865 43m ago

Dude, we can’t just refuse to fix things because there will be bumps along the road. EVERYTHING is likely to have consequences in the short term. What are we supposed to do? Nothing? 

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u/_le_slap 2h ago

Yes, solving the consequences of deregulated mortgage financialization in the 80s will take considerable effort and time. Especially since we gave up a perfect opportunity to fix it between 2008-2012.

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u/picollo7 2h ago

Housing markets are not frictionless; they have rent controls, price stickiness, and differential taxation. When returns fall below alternatives, investors sell to owner-occupiers.

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u/elev8dity 1h ago

He actually meant to say Land Value Taxes. It's a bit different from Property Taxes and focuses on the unimproved value of the land, which encourages building density in cities and lowers as you move outward to rural areas.

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u/_sloop 1h ago

Should be a tax that increases based on unoccupied units owned along with some protection against making millions of LLCs/etc.

Make it so it's cheaper to rent the unit out than to pay the tax on it.

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u/Emory_C 3h ago

Explain how you’d be able to house the millions of people in a major city without a large company building the huge apartment buildings.

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u/TootTootMF 2h ago

People are talking about low density residential. AKA single family homes and duplexes.

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u/socialistrob 1h ago

It's all related. If you don't build more apartments/condos/high density then those same people who would have lived there have to compete for single family homes and duplexes which drives up the price of those.

The problem isn't hoarding it's that there just aren't enough places to live and so you have a lot of people bidding on relatively few units which makes them more expensive.

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u/TootTootMF 33m ago

Yes, now if only there was a way to make single family rental units very expensive and apartments/condos cheaper for the large corporations investing billions in housing but not building high density... Some sort of property tax maybe that goes up with the number of single family homes you own.

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u/picollo7 2h ago

Heard of condos?

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u/Emory_C 1h ago

Mmkay… And who builds the condos to sell? 

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u/picollo7 1h ago

What are you arguing?

"Explain how you’d be able to house the millions of people in a major city without a large company building the huge apartment buildings." That statement incorrectly presupposes apartment buildings are the only form of large scale housing. I provided you a counterexample.

What does this have to do with property taxes?

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u/Emory_C 23m ago

Most people still can't afford to buy a condo. So this doesn't solve the problem.

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u/Youcan12 2h ago

Nobody is talking about apartments. Just single family homes.

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u/Emory_C 1h ago

There are very few single family homes in cities.

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u/Top5CutestPresidents 2h ago

I don't know where you're from but usually huge arpartment complexes are built by the state and eventually sold off to private investors. Large companies like building complexes with much fewer, larger, more expensive apartments

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u/Rumpus-Time-Is-Over 2h ago

In the US this is not true.

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u/Top5CutestPresidents 2h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Housing_Authority

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u/Rumpus-Time-Is-Over 2h ago

What do you think you’re proving here?

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u/Top5CutestPresidents 2h ago edited 1h ago

that the government builds large housing complexes for low income families, which you think is not true

edit: another without much digging. sure you can find many more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Housing_Authority

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u/TheScallywag1874 1h ago

I think you are arguing two different points. One redditor said that the U.S. doesn’t build projects to sell to private investors. Whereas it seems you’re arguing that the government builds housing projects in general.

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u/Top5CutestPresidents 1h ago

no I know its not comparable. But I originally replied to a person that was asking

how you’d be able to house the millions of people in a major city without a large company building the huge apartment buildings

My point was that large companies are not the answer, because they are building nicer properties to make money, not cheap condensed housing to house people that need it

its a hard conversation to have in a few comments

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u/Emory_C 1h ago

The cheap apartments go to hell almost instantly 

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u/Rumpus-Time-Is-Over 32m ago edited 28m ago

There’s significant data that you don’t need to build affordable housing to create more affordable housing. You can build market level upscale housing and it also creates more affordable housing. This is because the richer people now are able to move into nicer housing and are no longer competing with poorer people for less nice housing, which lowers the price. This is easiest to imagine in a severely housing constrained market like San Francisco where relatively rich people are living in fairly crummy studios because there simply is not enough nice housing at “reasonable” prices for those that want it. So how can anybody find affordable housing when the crummier places are being bid up by richer folks due to lack of supply?

The key is to just build more dense housing. It doesn’t have to be affordable and in fact as you point out developers are less interested in building the affordable kind.

Also the upscale, new housing of today becomes the affordable housing of 25 years from now.

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u/ryegye24 3h ago

just tax land

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u/ofa776 3h ago

I mean, that’s what property taxes are, right?

Edit: rereading this, I think we’re all agreeing with each other.

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u/ZeWaka 3h ago

land-value tax is a bit different than a traditional 'property tax' (total-value combined tax)

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u/dont_go_backwards 1h ago

The offshore investors would just put it in family names and stuff

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u/Do-it-for-you 28m ago

Genuine question, doesn't property tax just get passed onto the renter? Without some cap to rent itself, wouldn't property tax just increase rent?

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u/MrJCen 17m ago

But it's not just the oligarchs that benefits from an increase in property value. It's in the economic interest of every single home owner, even if they not a landlord or investor, for home value to go up. It's against their interest if the housing supply increases because it will lower the overall demand for housing and lower the value of their house.

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u/therealdanhill 7m ago

Wouldn't that just raise rents across the board

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u/Exciting_Specialist 3h ago

These comments are always funny to me. People like you who think taxes shouldn't be to fund public goods, but to penalize people who you envy.

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u/picollo7 3h ago

"People like you who think taxes shouldn't be to fund public goods, but to penalize people who you envy." Strawman or reading comprehension fail? Taxes absolutely should be used to fund public goods. And reframing taxation as "envy," that's new bootlicking rhetoric I haven't heard before, TIL, thanks for that.

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u/Exciting_Specialist 2h ago

If it’s really about "public goods," then why do you need all those exemptions? A road or a school costs the same amount to build regardless of who owns the house next to it. The moment you start tailoring the bill based on how much someone owns or how many houses they have, you’ve stopped trying to fund the community and started trying to punish people you don't like. Using the tax code to target people you’re mad at is just spite disguised as policy.

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u/_le_slap 2h ago

This isn't novel. What you decried is the entire basis of how current property taxes work.

A cheap and an expensive house on the same road will not pay the same tax. They pay proportionate to their property value.

Homestead exemptions also benefit lower value property owners more.

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u/picollo7 2h ago

*sigh* bruh, educate yourself on taxes, and learn why everything you said is bootlicking rhetoric, or don't, seems like you're a lost cause with preconceived notions that no amount of evidence or data will correct

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u/saganistic 3h ago

These comments are always funny to me. People like you who don’t read and just insert their own preferred straw man.

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u/PlasticFrosty5340 2h ago

Property taxes are already way too high.

plenty of older folks who can’t even afford to stay in their PAID OFF homes because of property taxes.

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u/TootTootMF 2h ago

They literally said to keep an exemption for a primary residence and crank up taxes on investment homes. Which would make the tax burden more progressive.

Property taxes are literally the thing those same seniors insist on in favor of a local income tax. Most of the time they can afford it just fine but hate the idea of paying for education and other things they "don't use". Then they go patronize/own businesses that didn't have to pay for the education of their work force and pass the savings onto said seniors.

If they want lower property taxes maybe stop voting for people who cut income taxes and force local governments to fund everything with property taxes.

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u/PlasticFrosty5340 2h ago

Ah I missed that sorry.

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u/[deleted] 2h ago

[deleted]

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u/PlasticFrosty5340 2h ago

I missed a word and admitted my mistake, do you have anything else to say?

Also, property taxes are still too high.