The prime minister is meeting with his youth advisory board this week to hear its most ‘pressing concerns,’ with the aim of informing future policy decisions.
The prime minister is meeting with his youth advisory board this week to hear its most ‘pressing concerns,’ with the aim of informing future policy decisions.
Implement a Singapore housing tax and you’ll get my vote:
For the lazy https://www.mnd.gov.sg/newsroom/press-releases/view/measures-for-a-sustainable-property-market
Seems reasonable to me, just glad i’m not a land-lord; wish i knew what the taxes were on.
Sincere question: how would this help renters? It seems to me that this would discourage people from buying investment properties to rent out, and increase the supply available to buyers. While this would make it cheaper to buy, it seems like it would make it more expensive to rent, unless one or more of the following is true:
If you or anyone else would kindly shed some light on this for me, I would gladly join your cause. As it stands, I’m currently more of an advocate for building public housing to increase the supply of both rental and purchase units, rather than adjusting the bias of what units we already have towards ownership over rentals.
Someone buying an investment property doesn’t increase the amount of housing available. Sure, it’s one more rental available, but it’s also one less home available to be purchased by someone planning to live in it. I won’t claim to be any kind of expert, but it’s pretty obvious that it having a middle man extracting profit increases housing costs overall.
The type of investors that do increase housing are developers. In the tax model above, the developers can apply to have the tax reduced to 5% which seems to make it much more lucrative than buying individual houses to rent as is.
If they don’t increase the amount of housing, then they don’t decrease it either, right? They effectively move a house that would be bought by a home buyer, to a house that would be rented by a renter.
I can see how given the argument that landlords generally make profit, that they are a needless middleman, and therefore they contribute to higher housing costs. Is there any evidence that this impact is so substantial that regulating independent landlords will be a boon for consumers of housing?
I appreciate you sharing your perspective! I remain open to be informed as to how such a policy would help the housing crisis.
Yes. The evidence is the housing market in 2023. Tax domestic speculators. Regulate the hell out of them. They are the main reason that everything is so screwed.
“the housing market in 2023”
Could you explain what you mean by that? I’d like to understand more but that’s a very broad statement.
Obviously the housing market is bad for buyers and renters currently. How can we differentiate between the primary cause being independent landlords, and there being insufficient supply? Both would have the effect of high prices, right? Therefore, more evidence is required to be persuasive.
Again, I remain open to being convinced, and once convinced would gladly be a staunch advocate for your position! My apologies if I’m missing something obvious. I really am sincerely trying to understand the argument for taxing independent landlords as a solution to our housing crisis.
It appears the average Singaporean home was $1.2MM in March, $1.6MM in June, and $2MM as of a week ago. I’m surprised he hasn’t adopted it already!
We need to bring back /s