We should do both. Build more housing and crack down on speculators.
Cracking down on speculators won't help people get roofs over their heads. Nor will calling them unethical. Speculators are the signal for whether there is going to be a housing problem in a few years time.
We should want a system that allows speculators and encourages them if there is going to be a housing problem so there is plenty of warning. Targeting speculators in particular is the old once-a-metric-becomes-the-target-it-becomes-a-bad-metric problem in a new guise.
If you introduce a land value tax equal to the value of the unimproved land, this will kill speculation, but also make it instantly impactful to the citizens that there is not enough supply. This will mean that the people able to change the zoning of the city will instantly see a reason to change the zoning, as better zoning means more supply means lower taxes.
We don't need no speculation.
For example, a speculator moves into a nice small village, sees potential and brings in a lot of foreign capital in a short amount of time. Buying up houses and outbidding potential new citizens. The price of land is also driven up from this, even if it's only a short term thing.
The damage has been done there and it had little to do with the number of houses. It was just a hostile takeover of a community.
/s
When the speculators run out of bigger fools the bubble will pop.
Crypto can at least just be purely speculative without really hurting anybody but it's not good for housing.
No, just building more housing will make housing less useful to speculative investment, and so speculators won't invest. Just reverse the messing with normal supply and demand. Don't apply ever more patches on top of patches to fix a situation that wouldn't exist without the messing in the first place.
Sadly, it is very hard for politicians to a) want to decentralise control, because it's much easier to declare a new controlling initiative than to say "actually, we're just getting in your way" and b) get to decentalise control, because it's much harder to argue strong economic principles than appeal to special interest groups who might vote for someone else.
By this reasoning nobody could own multi-family properties because that would be considered speculation.
Because the only difference is this involves single family homes which are going to be rented out, an act that I’ve never heard called speculation. Of all the predatory tactics Silicon Valley gets up to (hello Uber) this isn’t one of them IMHO.
I’m not sure where people think the houses that get rented out come from but I can guarantee that it isn’t people who are running a charity to provide housing to needy families. They invest capital in real estate with the sole intention of seeking a return on said investment.
I see some broad parallels in this line of rhetoric to "Zeus brings misfortune because people are impious vs good fortune when they are worthy". It presumes a difference and a drive that is not there. All assets are both speculative and non-speculative at all times. There are no assets that cannot be bought speculatively and a house is always going to be an asset because it represents a big investment of capital.
If people are speculating on real estate, all that says is that the policy of an area is going to make housing rare vs the number of people who need housing. If people thought housing was going to be abundant they would not speculate.
There are problems in the housing market, but they are not to be found by worrying about people acting speculatively. People are responding to the real problem, whatever it is.