This falls flat on its head when you consider that this would force a bunch of people in becoming small time landlords, with the inability to invest in their skills and competency by scaling up to multiple properties. Barely anyone would be interested in running multi-family real estate and they would migrate to commercial real estate. What would remain for residential is low density condos and shitty small time landlords with variable understanding of the expectations of their role, and variable notions of what's legal and what's harassment. Anything high density is too expensive (in time and capital) to do as a "coop" style endeavor and this means no high density residential would occur unless its luxury and expensive rent, to make up for the substantially higher taxes.
I'm sorry but you can't make more housing appear by simply raising the barrier of entry and throwing sticks in $INSERT_EVIL_GROUP's front bicycle wheel. Ultimately, things need to be cheaper and easier to build, and this will come at the cost of some people's freedoms (expropriating their land for redevelopment, displacing people for redevelopment, preventing bike shedding about neighbors' preferences).
It's easy to take a dump on so called rent-seeking landlords. But picture yourself becoming a landlord; imagine you're this newly minted, high spirited multi-family property owner and you want to do good for your neighborhood without becoming a charity and ruining yourself. Then look at what your options would be. In many US urban areas, there's already a lot of regulation in place that would drive you mad in your inability to make things better for your tenants and yourself in a sustainable manner. The rules literally push you into what you're seeing in the rental market (crappy apartments with high rent).
But the underlying point here (I think) is that people owning one home is higher priority than owning multiple homes. I’m not contradicting either of you, but it feels like you responded to a different question.
I don't disagree (favoring personal ownership over multiple ownership), but then I'm not sure how this works out. Single-family homes everywhere? It's causing housing problems due to sky rocketing prices due to low density. So I think it's accepted that we need multi-family homes, to gain higher density housing. Ultimately skyscrapers, but in most case a few units per building. In most jurisdiction, the cost of developing a unit goes up the less dense the project is, so economical units sort of by definition mean packing more units per project.
It works out if high density housing is built and then all sold as condos. People could pool together and buy land as a coop-style group, and then develop it as high density housing. But then its facing organizational hurdles (coop-style orgs don't have the best outcomes) and the whole thing need to survive years long timelines (to design, permit and build) while staying focused to avoid cost avalanches. Good luck!
I don't have an agenda in this (unlike other commenters suggested) and would love to discover a better way of doing all this. I think the current system is flawed but I don't hear convincing alternatives. And what's there right now is better than a feudal system, that's for sure... Hey, back then, Lords were owner occupiers! How has that worked out for the peasants?
I live in Norway, and it seems to work just fine. The density isn't all that high compared to, say, NYC, but anyways there definitely are plenty of multi-unit apartment building, which suffer from the same organizational problems, that manage to survive fine as individually owned units. I am not qualified to speak too much on this, but anyways it's certainly a solved problem, and there should be plenty of templates from other places to build off of.
Are they also built and developed as a group, or is it via a main developer who buys land, builds the building and then sells the individual units? If that's so, the same sometimes exists here, but because regulations, zoning and permitting is so limiting, lengthy and onerous, the units built end up being prohibitive and quite limited in numbers. Which really doesn't help much solve the problem.
Hence why I think the issue isn't about taxing more for stuff like "not owner occupied", but more about the opposite: make it faster and easier and cheaper to build high density residences. Then prices will fall and the affordable market will be served by smaller developers.
You're funny, I have no agenda. I'm a new owner of a triplex, always been a renter before, and we occupy one of the units. I'm just learning this as I go, but the economical dynamics are playing out in front of my eyes and I'm confused at the conflicting policies from local governments. Give me a chance and perhaps believe me if I say I just have honest and good intentions, and this is based on what I'm seeing as I explore this path? Or you can dehumanize me and pretend I'm some villain.
I have biases of course, but I don’t see what my agenda would be here? What is it that I’m plotting or trying to influence? Tell me what my agenda appears to be?
I'm sorry but you can't make more housing appear by simply raising the barrier of entry and throwing sticks in $INSERT_EVIL_GROUP's front bicycle wheel. Ultimately, things need to be cheaper and easier to build, and this will come at the cost of some people's freedoms (expropriating their land for redevelopment, displacing people for redevelopment, preventing bike shedding about neighbors' preferences).
It's easy to take a dump on so called rent-seeking landlords. But picture yourself becoming a landlord; imagine you're this newly minted, high spirited multi-family property owner and you want to do good for your neighborhood without becoming a charity and ruining yourself. Then look at what your options would be. In many US urban areas, there's already a lot of regulation in place that would drive you mad in your inability to make things better for your tenants and yourself in a sustainable manner. The rules literally push you into what you're seeing in the rental market (crappy apartments with high rent).