If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

Re:If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pens... by tachyonbeam on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @12:25PM (#27449807)

Maybe? They are a luxury for the upper middle class, and you could easily rent one the same way you rent an airbnb. Those holiday homes do need to belong to someone though, so I suppose it makes no sense to outright ban own multiple homes, but we could structure it so that resale is more highly taxed, particularly resale after a short time (i.e. people "flipping" properties).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pens... by gowld on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @12:29PM (#27449865)

This is already a solved problem: property tax + homestead exemption.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pens... by datavirtue on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @12:39PM (#27450007)

Ok...we need more houses so tax the hell out of developers?!

You need people to be able to build and flip properties without being taxed at all. The current taxes are carving a modest profit down to "not worth it" for a lot of people who could otherwise build and revitalize affordable housing.

More taxes on home sales results in less homes for sale.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pens... by tachyonbeam on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @12:45PM (#27450088)

IMO we should probably reduce taxes on house builders. Maybe even give them tax exemptions. Do what we can to increase supply.

Speculators wanting to buy a house, redo the kitchen, and mark up the price 20% 6 months later though? We could just let older, unrenovated houses be cheap. That opens up deals to new home buyers. You can redo the kitchen after buying the house if you really care. You don't need some middle man to do it and mark up the house.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pens... by sokoloff on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @12:56PM (#27450241)

Lots of people want to buy a move-in-ready house. Many don’t know much about construction, don’t know which end of a hammer to hold, can’t afford to have a house sit idle for 3 months while a renovation happens, and want to have the “Apple” experience for one or two hundred a month more in their mortgage payment.

That’s the service flippers provide, IMO. (I’m not one but I think they’re more helpful than not in terms of providing housing that owner-occupants want.)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pens... by nitrogen on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @01:59PM (#27451022)

There's flippers who truly restore a dilapidated house and help resuscitate a neighborhood, and there are flippers who put a thin veneer of newness on a rotting frame, bury the waste in the backyard, and then still try to charge the same as the first kind. We don't need more of the second kind.

[ Parent | on HN ]