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Re:Home Price to Income Ratio by tempfs on Monday September 20, 2021 @11:47AM (#28595118)
1. Residential homes are no longer allowed to be 'investment properties' aka every person(or married couple) can own exactly one house. Corporate entities except for Banks(even then can only own it for the time it takes to sell it in the case of foreclosure) can't either.

2. Only actual Americans can own property in America. Single-fam, multi-fam, land,etc. doesn't matter.

Exactly no one needs to rent houses if mulit-fam exists and actual houses aren't speculative instruments or places where foreign nationals hide their money.

Re:Home Price to Income Ratio by simonsarris on Monday September 20, 2021 @12:23PM (#28595517)
Doesn't that sound insane from a mile away? By the time you are done making exceptions, you'll have infinity carve outs. This is not a solution so much as a way to squish the problem into a different, weirder shape.

1. Everyone is forced to sell their lakehouses, cabins, ADUs? Detached mother-in-laws? (wtf is "Exactly one house?")

No one is ever able to rent a single family home ever again? Right now 14.5 million households / 44 million residents rent single-family homes in the United States. They're... out of luck? On the street? Gotta save for a down payment? If those houses are force-sold, don't you think people-other-than-the-current-inhabitants will come in and buy them?

Actually, can anyone ever rent ever again? Or is it a buy-vs-homeless dichotomy here? Or do towns have to become miniature companies and play landlord? Or states?

2. Timber companies are forced to give up their land, bankrupting all of them and driving the cost of wood sky high. Mobile home land must now be sold, except no one can buy it. Farms except for sole proprietors are forced to give up their land (sorry partnerships, amish, people with discontiguous lots, and everyone who wants to eat this year, you're out of luck)

IMO you should focus on laws that let people build more (eg, ADUs, duplexing) rather than getting out the stick and hoping there won't be huge side effects.

Re:Home Price to Income Ratio by amrocha on Monday September 20, 2021 @09:06PM (#28600979)
You know public housing is a thing right? You don't need to rent from the private market, that's just how it is right now
Re:Home Price to Income Ratio by lastofthemojito on Monday September 20, 2021 @12:08PM (#28595348)
Even "simple" solutions like those you've proposed so often wind up having unintended consequences.

For your first proposal, I wonder about folks buying a house through an LLC or trust as folks often do to protect their privacy. Are we banning that? I also wonder about inheritance - if I own a house and my parents die, leaving me their house, how long do I have to sell one to be "in compliance?". Maybe their house needs work and I'd like to spend a few months or a year fixing it up to maximize what it'll sell for. Is that ok? And speaking of timing - I remember during the wave of foreclosures after the last housing bubble, banks kept a lot of houses off the market for a while to moderate prices, rather than listing everything at once and panicking the market further. Seems like banks ought to have some leeway to maximize their return (e.g. if a house has a pool and is foreclosed on in the late fall, maybe they judge that waiting until spring would get a better response from buyers).

Re:Home Price to Income Ratio by leetcrew on Monday September 20, 2021 @12:48PM (#28595837)
> Exactly no one needs to rent houses if mulit-fam exists and actual houses aren't speculative instruments or places where foreign nationals hide their money.

okay, but what if I have (an opportunity for) positive cashflow, minimal savings, and want to move away from my parents' house? does it just suck to be me or what?

Re:Home Price to Income Ratio by swiley on Monday September 20, 2021 @01:05PM (#28596043)
There are good reasons to be a renter, it’s hard enough getting an apartment in the time between accepting a job offer and your start date, I couldn’t imagine hunting for a house/condo in that time.
Re:Home Price to Income Ratio by jakemoshenko on Monday September 20, 2021 @12:20PM (#28595492)
Where do you expect rental housing stock to come from in this scenario?
Re:Home Price to Income Ratio by JamesBarney on Monday September 20, 2021 @11:58AM (#28595242)
1. Just bans people from renting houses to other people. This reduces the supply of rentable houses to 0. Reduces the supply of rentable stock in general. And very slightly marginally reduces the price of houses.

2. Can corporations still own commercial property? And can foreigners own corporations ?

Re:Home Price to Income Ratio by ch4s3 on Monday September 20, 2021 @03:39PM (#28597897)
Who builds new homes if builders can't own them pre-sale? I imagine you have a carve out for that, but who qualifies as a builder?

What about people who want to live in cities? How do they come together to build say a small condo building? Do we only allow co-ops? How is that financed?

When you say "Americans", do you only mean citizens or permanent residents? Where do temporary residents live?

How do people move to new cities/states? Where will the new housing come from?