Harris to endorse protections for renters and removal of key tax benefits for Wall St. investors buying homes

Property tax should be 100% for third houses (there are legit reasons to own 2 houses - especially when helping a family member finance a home or inheriting property) and for any houses not owned by an actual human.

Give developers building a house 3 months to sell after completion. If it doesn't sell in that time, it gets auctioned off to the highest bidder with no minimum price.

Also give a maximum construction time of like 2 years to keep them from leaving a door off or something and calling it unfinished until it sells for their inflated bullshit value.

Land zoned residential must be developed or sold to an individual human within X years. Empty land that's zoned residential should be platted with a maximum lot size appropriate to the area to keep them from developing 1 house on a thousand-acre tract and selling it to someone who is trying to sit on the land as an investment.

Essentially, developers need to be forced to build and sell houses at a fair market rate they're prohibited from manipulating.

Can we add on the penalty being forced to hike across the Mojave buck naked with no shoes.

Owner Occupancy credit against property taxes. Sometimes called a "homestead exemption".

Basically, if you live in a house you own, you pay a vastly lower property tax rate. If you own a house you don't live in, you pay a vastly higher property tax rate on that house, because you can't claim the exemption.

When we establish this, "landlords" stop "renting" and become private mortgage lenders. They sell their homes to their former tenants, or issue "land contracts" (rent-to-own arrangements), and enjoy the lower tax rate on the property.

If they foreclose or evict, they pay the higher tax rate until they get a new "buyer".

I understand what you're saying and I did feel weird typing that since I know there must be a better alternative.

Something has to give, though. In late June I had to leave a place I rented for 19 years and I'm still stunned. Idk how much of the house's value we paid in rent, but it was a lot. And it wasn't even a large home, just a small cabin few people would wish to live in. But there was nothing stopping the landlord from kicking us to the curb.

Honestly, I don't feel like landlords should even exist

Sure, maybe renting can still exist, as long as it's cheaper and government run or something. I would much much rather give my rent to the government than some rich fuck who literally gets my money for free

The US built 30 million single family homes after WWII, and some people still live in them. Post war has its own architectural styles. The split level ranch came from that era.

Compare owning some land and shitbox you can live in to being homeless or watching all the money you earn be taken and horded by landlords.

I'll take the shitbox please.

It’s a rhetorical question. It’s meant to underline how I think the protections are grossly insufficient.

Nah, nonprofit state-run landlords

We have those. They run "Section 8" housing, which, in my area at least, is substandard housing in high crime areas, because those areas have the cheapest housing, and that's what the state buys. They also currently have a 6-year wait-list in my area. You only have a fixed time you can live there. There is means testing, and strict rules on who can come and go.

The problem isn't actually the "state run" part, though. The problem is the market in which the state is operating. Whatever approach we take, we need to fix that market first, and that's what I'm talking about.

I don't want to buy a house, I move around a lot...

I don't think you understand what a "land contract" is. It gives you the flexibility you need from a rental agreement, without imposing rent on long-term residents of a property.

If you are only going to be living in the property for less than 3 years, it is a rental agreement. It is an agreement that happens to be recorded with the county, like a deed, which allows them to consider you an "owner occupant".

The real differences are if you decide to stay there longer than 3 years. Your monthly payment was calculated by assuming principal, interest, taxes, and insurance on a 30-year mortgage, which is usually what you're going to be paying in rent anyway.

If you stay at least three years, the agreement becomes a sale contract; you become the deeded owner; your equity becomes the down payment, and your former landlord becomes a private lender with those pre-existing terms.

If you leave before 3 years, you forfeit your equity, and the agreement functioned identically to a rental agreement.

You still get to live like a tenant, and move around as you like. You can unilaterally abandon the contract for any reason during that 3-year period. For you, nothing changes other than the words at the top of the agreement. Words that are important to your "landlord" as it saves him a lot on taxes, but that are completely irrelevant to you as a "tenant".

But, if you do change your mind during that three year period, and decide you do want to become a homeowner, you're already well on your way.

Alternatively, Duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes are all single properties, where the owner of that property can live on site, making the property eligible for the owner occupant credit. The other 1-3 units on the property are available to rent out. If you really want an actual rental agreement instead of a land contract, that is one option.

Yeah, many states have similar credits or exemptions for various purposes. From my brief research, it seems the STAR credit is not available to new homeowners. It's only available to people who are grandfathered in. But, it works much like I describe: a credit for owner occupants.

Ohio has a "Homestead Exemption" allowing disabled and elderly homeowners to deduct $25,000 of the market value of their residence.

We can do the same thing for purposes of discouraging corporate and investor ownership of residential property, and encouraging occupant ownership.

Landlord has to live on-site. In what I fondly call "face-punching distance." And can only collect a monthly salary equal to 3x the median rental price of all of the units in that building. Any surplus profit after paying utilities, taxes, and maintenance cost (to maintenance people who either also live on site or are at least paid 3x the rent of a median unit), gets refunded to the tenants.

The owner of the building lives in the building and leases apartments to tenants who live in the same building as the owner.

Duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes could all have an owner living in one of the units, making the whole property eligible for the owner occupant credit, while the other units remain available for rent.

Bringing this back to your comment, suppose instead of dividing a complex into individual units, we divided it into a "quadplex" condo. A single property consisting of 4 units. The owner of that property occupies the quadplex, making the quadplex-condo eligible for the owner-occupant credit. 3/4 of the apartments are still rentable.

there’d be a lot of poorly maintained buildings no one would want to actually own part of

Somebody is making money off of those poorly maintained apartment buildings now. Better that somebody be someone who is actually part of the community (and thus motivated to improve the property) than a hedge fund manager living on the other side of the country.

What a terrible reply. I never said presidents don't get anything done in their first term. Just pointing out how a lot of shit they campaign on doesn't get done so they campaign on the same shit again.

Only comment that makes any sense in reply to mine. This is true. I'm just saying they always campaign on the same shit that they can't get done in their first term.

I'm only voting for her because of her running mate.

Yep. And the further feasibly left we vote the more likely we are to see those kinds of things happen. It has to be consistent and it has to be the furthest left that can actually win.