1) Occupied at least a certain portion (let's say 10%) of the year
2) Occupied by the owner at least twice as often as occupied by non-owners
Can be considered a personal residence in my book. Anything not meeting this is an investment property.
Consider a friend of mine who owns two houses. If he lives in one, the other will be "investment property" if he rents it a significant fraction of the year and thus banned. He can't move back and forth to avoid that because there are only 12 months in the year and it takes at least 8 months (per house) to satisfy the "twice as often" requirement.
The only way out is for him to leave the second house vacant the vast majority of the year. That pretty much defeats the purpose of owning a rental and it means that someone who'd want to rent is out of luck.
Owning property for the purpose of renting it has serious negative effects on communities and society. Communities thrive when people live in them and value them, not when random people come for a few days, abuse the commons, and leave for somewhere else. If not banned, I'm all in favor of heavy regulation and taxation of investment properties, with a maximum number allocated as a percentage of the available housing. If renting becomes unpopular, people will actually have to sell and free up inventory, dropping prices.
That said, I see renting as a good option for many people.
For example, I didn't have the money to buy after college so I rented.
Even if I could have bought, I probably wouldn't have because I was reasonably sure that I wanted to move in a year or two.
If there weren't rentals, what should I have done?
I think that's the main issue. One of the reasons housing is so expensive is because it's an avenue for investment/infinite growth. Maybe if you didn't have to outbid people that think houses are invesment you could have bought a house/afforded a mortage.
Land scarcity/livable land is the thing that makes housing expensive. Allowing people to use that to make profit is unethical.
That's not what's happening with AirBnB. That's turning the limiter supply of ownable property (condos and houses) into short term rentals for the owner's profit at the community's expense.
Also, I never said that outright banning is the proper option. Heavy taxation on strictly limited rental options (liter to a level where the community is still able to thrive) is also reasonable.
I'm not saying rich people can't have their second place on the lake or that companies aren't free to build apartment complexes. What benefit to society does allowing businesses and landlords to own portfolios of single family homes and rent them out offer?
Like I wrote above, a friend of mine owns two houses. Under the proposed "no investment residences" rule, he can't, unless he leaves one of them vacant almost all of the year.
For some people, renting is the right thing. It's unclear how banning rental properties makes their life better.
That's rich coming from someone who thinks that owning should be the only way to have a dwelling.
No, I don't think that renting is the only way to have a dwelling.
However, I do think that renting is a better option than owning for many people.
Moreover, I don't think that telling people how they should and shouldn't have dwellings is good.
If you intended to talk only about very short-term rentals, you should have made that clear a couple of messages ago.
Of course, my examples are intended to show that there is no "clear and agreed upon" definition.
Does someone who rents two houses count as "investment properties"? How about someone who owns a complex with 50 units? How about a corporation that owns a complex with 500 units?