[rtev]

This appears to be what happens when rich people that don’t need houses buy them anyway as investments. There should be laws preventing a person from owning more than three houses in the United States.

[dragontamer]

Just build houses, which naturally will cause the price of houses to decline.

Investors are allowed to speculate. But speculation must be risk, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

[aodntkem]

this sounds alright in textbooks, but in reality housebuilders realise they make more money when house prices rise as they build..

[pseudocomposer]

Of course, that means that anyone buying a home for themselves or family members are forced into the same speculative market and have to win/lose also. Even if all they really want is a place to live where they’re not throwing money away on a landlord.

[paulddraper]

So..... Now they have to permanently "rent" them (maybe from a company they have ownership in)?

Maybe we should just build more houses.

[pfannkuchen]

Builders really seriously need to make condos/apartments with sufficiently sound proofed walls, floors and ceilings. I would happily live in a condo if I was confident that I wouldn’t be able to hear my neighbors and have my sleep disrupted etc.

[fennecs]

Vast sprawling suburban wastelands with no services is not the solution. Just build houses is easily said but it’s not necessarily where people want to live.

[aaomidi]

Don’t buy more than 3 houses?

Or heck, more than 2 should basically be taxed at massive rates. Like, 40-50%.

[idiotsecant]

Any suggestions on how to make that happen? People are already free to build as many houses as they want. They don't because building houses is expensive and there are easier ways to make more money with that capital

[maxerickson]

Much of the change from 4 years ago would just be interest rates.

The supply of housing was unhealthy then also.

[pfannkuchen]

More like the Fed playing chicken with prospective sellers. Prices haven’t fallen much due to limited inventory, but eventually the inventory will come. A property is only worth as much as it would sell for today, no matter how rich the current owner is.

[AuryGlenz]

They’re only good investments because supply and demand being off balance, and those houses are still supplying housing (and rent needs to compete with mortgages).

[lifestyleguru]

This is a valid point all over EU as well.

[itake]

Or when empty nesters refuse to downsize their 4 bedroom house 15 minutes drive to downtown offices.

[delish]

I'll try to invoke Cunningham's Law by saying: Housing is close to a perfectly-competitive market.

I think the above is true, but I'd welcome counterexamples.

So, the way to depress housing prices is to build more houses. _Most_ housing regulations, including making it illegal for people to own four houses, reshuffle the ownership of existing houses, and don't depress their prices. As regards that regulation: if the super-rich aren't able to own $many houses, the merely-rich will buy more, and thus housing prices would be the same.

[Buttons840]

This makes sense to me, if 10 families want a place to live and there are 8 places to live, housing prices will trend towards infinity, until people give up and multiple families live together.

We need more places to live, at the end of the day there's no way around that.

Regulation might help though. If we regulate it so that it's harder to profit from real estate, then people will find other investments instead. This is good, because as long as real estate is a favorite investment for the wealthy, there will be a "mysterious" resistance to any efforts to lower the prices by building more houses.

I'm not an expert here, but this makes sense to me. Did I miss anything?

[amluto]

> Housing is close to a perfectly-competitive market.

Pick any US jurisdiction (with the possible exception of Puerto Rico? I’m not very familiar with how taxation works there) and contemplate the tax implications of selling an appreciated property. Further contemplate how those implications are different for different potential buyers and sellers of that same property at the same price. Then say again that it’s perfectly competitive.

Hint: there are all manner of effects here. Capital gains. The basis step up at death. 1031 exchanges and their associated rules. Transfer fees, title fees (which is pretty close to being a tax).

(I’m not the one who downvoted you.)

[AuryGlenz]

The other way that everyone outside of Canada seems to ignore is get a handle on the demand side of things.