Comment by magicalhippo
2 days ago
> Controversial, but for affordability reasons, there even should be a cap on how many homes an individual can own for rentals.
Here in Norway the solution, as with so many other things, is taxing. Your home is evaluated at some "market rate", but if it's your primary residence the effective tax value is just 25% up to $1 million (70% on value above $1 million). For reference, a typical 3-room apartment in Oslo, the capital, is around $400-500k.
However, if it's not your primary residence, then you pay tax on 100% of the "market rate". The tax rate is 1%, so not insignificant.
Until a few years ago, tax on non-primary residences was much lower, and hence we had a lot more people buying to rent if they inherited money or similar. Some even had a dozen or more properties. These have now exited, so policy is working as intended.
One thing of course politicians for some reason didn't think of is that if most of the landlords suddenly sell, rental market will shrink. So now it's super-expensive to rent, and those who rent usually do so because they can't buy for one reason or another (no stable income to support a loan for example).
> So now it's super-expensive to rent
And as if it was ordered, a news story[1] on exactly that this morning. Last year alone the average price for a rental unit went up 6.3%, and simultaneously a record number of apartments were sold. So very unlikely to come down.
[1]: https://www.nrk.no/norge/leieprissjokk_-nesten-20.000-kroner...
So you created a policy that takes money from the lower/working classes and those on welfare (restricting rental supply for those who rent) and transfers it as a tax subsidy to the middle class (who own) and are offering this up as "good" policy?
You've also encouraged your middle class to massively over-leverage themselves to a single house/apartment by creating a huge tax subsidy for them (from 30-75%), which will no doubt continue placing upward pressure on house prices and also create risks if interest rates increase. Why would you not take the biggest loan the bank will offer, given interest rates are quite low in Europe and you will not be taxed on most of the value of that property you can acquire with leverage?
Crazy thought, did your politicians ever think about the idea of NOT subsidizing the demand side at all? If the issue is the price of housing, subsidizing demand for it in any way is going to make that problem worse!