Oh my God oh my God if the landlords have to sell, that would be... Check notes... That would be really good for people who want to buy houses.
this is what is known as "a feature, not a bug"
SIKE! sold houses are only bought by corporate holding companies, now you've lost even more rights!
In France there is a law that forces you to sell to your tenant if he has the highest bid
Why would you need a law to make someone sell to the highest bidder?
Because sometimes there's a tie
Or the landlord might just want to spite the tenant, or he might want to sell to a "new" buyer who turns out to be business partner/cohort/shell LLC/etc.
It's even better than that because it is illegal to make bids on a property you sell so the seller name a price and if someone want to buy it at that price it's sold. Most of the time buyers tries to bargain on markets where the demand is low
This happened a lot during the Great Depression. But then I believe the owners found a way to withdraw the auctioned property if the minimum bid didn't suit them. The French law might bring back the Penny Auction by saying, "You put it up for bid - a sale has to go through."
They can still do that through proxy buyers. If you go to enough auctions, it's easy enough to pick them out.
Wouldn't you sell to the highest bidder anyway?
I mean, my wife and I didn't sell to the two highest bidders on our first house because the fuckers were obviously going to rent it out.
One was a bid entered by a piece of software often used by flippers and rental companies (had branding at the bottom of the pages etc) and the other was a cash in hand bid with an overt offer of more under the table, which is fairly illegal where we live.
We selected third place, someone who had messy handwriting, obviously has been written by two different people, and ended the bid with "777" which was cute and showed us not only were they human, they really wanted the place. And no wonder, with offers like the first two likely happening on nearly every sale in the area.
I did that myself with a home. I ignored the high bid in favor of selling at a steep discount to a young family.
Wouldn’t most people sell to the highest bid anyway?
Never any history of racial segregation in the housing market, nope. No Sir. Never.
Are people really accepting less money so they don’t sell to brown people? Like why would you care? You’re selling the property. You don’t have to deal with the new owners if you happen to be racist.
Gotta keep the community pure.
I'll add, as a minority there are neighborhoods that are off limits because I know I would not be accepted, and, I have an "ethnic" name, so I assume some bias may be held towards people selling in neighborhoods like that.
Granted, this article was from all the way back in… last week.
“An African-American woman’s quest to buy a pricey condo near the Virginia Beach Oceanfront – impeded by the white homeowner’s refusal because of her race – is just the latest example.”
“…landlords frequently use subtle methods or mask the real reasons why they don’t want people to move in.”
The neighbors care. So unless you don't live in that town it could make for some interesting neighborly interactions. Wouldn't be surprised to find court cases of neighbors suing for loss of property value.
Yes but we had our fair share of assholes
There have been auctions in the past, mostly farm, that the community got together to drive off outsiders and then proceed to lowball every item on the auction. They would then return everything to the owner after the auction.
It was a fine 'fuck you' to the bank, until the bank closed or sold out because they no longer had the assets and cash reserves needed to stay open themselves. Which then screwed the rest of the community over.
More precisely, when you sell the tenant has the right to buy it first.
If the landlord is thinking of accepting an external offer under the initial price then he has to ask again to the tenant if he would buy it at this lower price.
Umm, you can legally sell it to someone else and not the highest bidder?
Not in France. If the tenant wants it, the tenant gets it
Rent control is a bandaid on a real problem that makes things worse long term. What California needs is build more, which means end the NIMBY and unfreeze property taxes so those seating on underutilized land are forced to develop it or sell.
Would property taxes actually do much? They're so little even in high property-tax states that I think you'd need to do a lot more than that to FORCE rich people to utilize their other properties. High taxes would potentially push more costs on renters. Maybe we should just outlaw having more than 1 or 2 homes... including for real estate companies and banks :)
I keep wondering how to make the law do that. Making a company is like $100, that's nothing compared to the house price. They would just have shell companies all over each owning a single location. 123 Fake St., LLC; 124 Fake St., LLC; etc.
You'd limit Ultimate Beneficial Ownership of the properties, not direct ownership.
I'd probably do something like:
No individual or private entity may have Direct, Indirect or Ultimate Beneficial Ownership exceeding or of multiple of any of X(2-5?) Single Family properties, Y(2-3?) low density Multi-tenant properties, or Z(1-2?) high density Multi-tenant properties. Excluding the first wholely and solely owner occupied property. Excluding Ultimate Beneficial Ownership of less than A(.01-5?)% of a property. Excluding Ownership less than B(30-180?) days. Failure to comply results in forfeiture of newer ownership to REGULATOR-TBD until compliance is met. Multi-tenant properties have C (5-10?) residences
IANAL, probably some other loopholes that need closing. But the intent would be to limit consolidated ownership of many properties. But not impact several of the more reasonable ownership structures, nor impact churn of properties. The regulator would sell whatever extra it gets to fund housing programs.
You forgot the part about where the individual in question goes to jail when caught. That part is important.
How will that work for individuals who own .00001% of hundreds of homes (by owning shares of several real estate holding companies)?
Also, mega rich people don't to legally own anything. It is owned by a trust with undisclosed beneficiaries. It is also routed via multiple offshore dummy corporations. It is set up this way so that tax agencies can never figure out incomes and inheritances.
Law with two parts, only a specific type of company may own rental properties. And you may not own or be employed by more than one property; including holding stock. The same rules apply to property management companies that service land lords with few properties; possibly with larger limits on how many properties they can manage at a time.
With that basic structure we can decide how many buildings/units each company can own. For example the limit could be 100 single family homes, or 3 mid sized complexes, or 1 large tower. Then we should be able to have a system that keeps landlords from going big. Makes the system so decentralized market concepts must work and monopoly power is effectively destroyed.
High taxes would potentially push more costs on renters.
Potentially, but I think here not so much. Competition drives prices down. In a perfectly competitive market, prices are pretty much equal to the cost of production. In that case, any tax would be completely passed on to the customer. But you can't produce land at a certain location. My guess is that rents are largely determined by willingness to pay.
LVT, not property tax. You want to tax the value of the land, not the value of the property built on it.
I don't think you need to add any taxes. If the area is attractive enough to warrant a higher density redevelopment, just unlock it and it will get done.
I mean, if you are a developer and you know for certain there's a lot of interest in a certain area and you know for certain that you could buy that big single family lot and make a 3-5 story building instead with 10-20 apartments, you'd be crazy not to offer double the market rate to get it and develop it as fast as possible.
Just need to change the law to allow redevelopment of single family areas into medium density.
Hmm build more. I’d be curious to see the stats on this. California has probably built 10 times more than the rest of the country combined over the last decade or so. People need to GO THE FUCK BACK HOME.
Oh my God oh my God if the landlords have to sell, that would be... Check notes... That would be really good for people who want to buy houses.
this is what is known as "a feature, not a bug"
SIKE! sold houses are only bought by corporate holding companies, now you've lost even more rights!
In France there is a law that forces you to sell to your tenant if he has the highest bid
Why would you need a law to make someone sell to the highest bidder?
Because sometimes there's a tie
Or the landlord might just want to spite the tenant, or he might want to sell to a "new" buyer who turns out to be business partner/cohort/shell LLC/etc.
It's even better than that because it is illegal to make bids on a property you sell so the seller name a price and if someone want to buy it at that price it's sold. Most of the time buyers tries to bargain on markets where the demand is low
This happened a lot during the Great Depression. But then I believe the owners found a way to withdraw the auctioned property if the minimum bid didn't suit them. The French law might bring back the Penny Auction by saying, "You put it up for bid - a sale has to go through."
They can still do that through proxy buyers. If you go to enough auctions, it's easy enough to pick them out.
Wouldn't you sell to the highest bidder anyway?
I mean, my wife and I didn't sell to the two highest bidders on our first house because the fuckers were obviously going to rent it out.
One was a bid entered by a piece of software often used by flippers and rental companies (had branding at the bottom of the pages etc) and the other was a cash in hand bid with an overt offer of more under the table, which is fairly illegal where we live.
We selected third place, someone who had messy handwriting, obviously has been written by two different people, and ended the bid with "777" which was cute and showed us not only were they human, they really wanted the place. And no wonder, with offers like the first two likely happening on nearly every sale in the area.
I did that myself with a home. I ignored the high bid in favor of selling at a steep discount to a young family.
Wouldn’t most people sell to the highest bid anyway?
Never any history of racial segregation in the housing market, nope. No Sir. Never.
Are people really accepting less money so they don’t sell to brown people? Like why would you care? You’re selling the property. You don’t have to deal with the new owners if you happen to be racist.
Gotta keep the community pure.
I'll add, as a minority there are neighborhoods that are off limits because I know I would not be accepted, and, I have an "ethnic" name, so I assume some bias may be held towards people selling in neighborhoods like that.
Granted, this article was from all the way back in… last week.
“An African-American woman’s quest to buy a pricey condo near the Virginia Beach Oceanfront – impeded by the white homeowner’s refusal because of her race – is just the latest example.”
“…landlords frequently use subtle methods or mask the real reasons why they don’t want people to move in.”
Virginia Mercury News
The neighbors care. So unless you don't live in that town it could make for some interesting neighborly interactions. Wouldn't be surprised to find court cases of neighbors suing for loss of property value.
Yes but we had our fair share of assholes
There have been auctions in the past, mostly farm, that the community got together to drive off outsiders and then proceed to lowball every item on the auction. They would then return everything to the owner after the auction.
It was a fine 'fuck you' to the bank, until the bank closed or sold out because they no longer had the assets and cash reserves needed to stay open themselves. Which then screwed the rest of the community over.
More precisely, when you sell the tenant has the right to buy it first.
If the landlord is thinking of accepting an external offer under the initial price then he has to ask again to the tenant if he would buy it at this lower price.
Umm, you can legally sell it to someone else and not the highest bidder?
Not in France. If the tenant wants it, the tenant gets it
But worse for those looking for a rental.
Rent control is a bandaid on a real problem that makes things worse long term. What California needs is build more, which means end the NIMBY and unfreeze property taxes so those seating on underutilized land are forced to develop it or sell.
Would property taxes actually do much? They're so little even in high property-tax states that I think you'd need to do a lot more than that to FORCE rich people to utilize their other properties. High taxes would potentially push more costs on renters. Maybe we should just outlaw having more than 1 or 2 homes... including for real estate companies and banks :)
I keep wondering how to make the law do that. Making a company is like $100, that's nothing compared to the house price. They would just have shell companies all over each owning a single location. 123 Fake St., LLC; 124 Fake St., LLC; etc.
You'd limit Ultimate Beneficial Ownership of the properties, not direct ownership.
I'd probably do something like: No individual or private entity may have Direct, Indirect or Ultimate Beneficial Ownership exceeding or of multiple of any of X(2-5?) Single Family properties, Y(2-3?) low density Multi-tenant properties, or Z(1-2?) high density Multi-tenant properties. Excluding the first wholely and solely owner occupied property. Excluding Ultimate Beneficial Ownership of less than A(.01-5?)% of a property. Excluding Ownership less than B(30-180?) days. Failure to comply results in forfeiture of newer ownership to REGULATOR-TBD until compliance is met. Multi-tenant properties have C (5-10?) residences
IANAL, probably some other loopholes that need closing. But the intent would be to limit consolidated ownership of many properties. But not impact several of the more reasonable ownership structures, nor impact churn of properties. The regulator would sell whatever extra it gets to fund housing programs.
You forgot the part about where the individual in question goes to jail when caught. That part is important.
How will that work for individuals who own .00001% of hundreds of homes (by owning shares of several real estate holding companies)?
Also, mega rich people don't to legally own anything. It is owned by a trust with undisclosed beneficiaries. It is also routed via multiple offshore dummy corporations. It is set up this way so that tax agencies can never figure out incomes and inheritances.
Law with two parts, only a specific type of company may own rental properties. And you may not own or be employed by more than one property; including holding stock. The same rules apply to property management companies that service land lords with few properties; possibly with larger limits on how many properties they can manage at a time.
With that basic structure we can decide how many buildings/units each company can own. For example the limit could be 100 single family homes, or 3 mid sized complexes, or 1 large tower. Then we should be able to have a system that keeps landlords from going big. Makes the system so decentralized market concepts must work and monopoly power is effectively destroyed.
Potentially, but I think here not so much. Competition drives prices down. In a perfectly competitive market, prices are pretty much equal to the cost of production. In that case, any tax would be completely passed on to the customer. But you can't produce land at a certain location. My guess is that rents are largely determined by willingness to pay.
LVT, not property tax. You want to tax the value of the land, not the value of the property built on it.
I don't think you need to add any taxes. If the area is attractive enough to warrant a higher density redevelopment, just unlock it and it will get done.
I mean, if you are a developer and you know for certain there's a lot of interest in a certain area and you know for certain that you could buy that big single family lot and make a 3-5 story building instead with 10-20 apartments, you'd be crazy not to offer double the market rate to get it and develop it as fast as possible.
Just need to change the law to allow redevelopment of single family areas into medium density.
Hmm build more. I’d be curious to see the stats on this. California has probably built 10 times more than the rest of the country combined over the last decade or so. People need to GO THE FUCK BACK HOME.