Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "" video.

Simply putting a much higher property tax on houses that aren't being used would probably discourage that.
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Office buildings make terrible apartments. They're designed for different purpose. I used to work security in a couple highrises and they are pretty much completely unsuitable for conversion to apartments. They typically lack permanent walls, They have layouts that are for businesses, there's commonly a lack of suitable amenities in the neighborhood and just generally, it's not a great situation to rent something like that to live in.
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There should also be measures in place to limit the number of units that the same company can own in one city to help encourage competitive pricing as well as a tax on luxury units to help subsidize affordable housing units and a limit on how many regular units can be turned into luxury units. A little bit of all that probably wouldn't destroy the market, but what's going on where it's a free for all for developers to create a glut of expensive properties is definitely destroying the market.
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Being low quality is a bit of a moot point when affordable apartments are being converted into luxury units and the landlords are demanding luxury rates. It doesn't much matter whether it's luxury or not when people can't afford to rent it. IIRC, recently the state of WA is in the process of passing rent control legislation. But, the cap is super high, it's like the lesser of 10% or 7% plus inflation. It's a high enough cap that only the worst offenders are going to be limited by it. 7% is far higher than what people's income is increasing by, meaning that this just delays the inevitable.
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@IL_Bgentyl There are enough of them at this point that they make the market. Around here they've bought up a massive portion of the rental market and converted the units into luxury units and then jacked up the rates to match. Everytime that we've locally been close to caught up on demand, there's another wave of internal migration to the area and a bunch more units get converted to luxury units. I'm hoping that with some of the higher paying companies leaving the city in response to having to pay a small percentage tax on the highest wages that it might finally help the market return to some sort of sane set of expectations on what you can expect for rent.
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@HowMoneyWorks TBH, there's only so optimistic you can be without becoming completely delusional. WA state is likely to pass rent control regulations in the immediate future, but it's going to be a cap at the lesser of 7% plus inflation or 10%, which is so high as to do little to help as the rate that people's pay checks have been increasing is at best a quarter that.
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Around here they've been converting normal apartments into luxury apartments and then massively raising the rent. The result is that normal people can't afford to rent, and can't afford to buy their own either. We've literally had people working full time jobs for years that are homeless.
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@ I take if you've never heard of market failures. Part of why we're in this mess is because people aren't being paid living wages, part of it is messed up zoning regulations and part of it is private equity and foreign investors being allowed to buy up large amounts of the housing that does exist. Doing nothing is just not a viable option here. I've been watching locally as every time the developers catch up with demand, a new wave of internal immigrants arrive and many of them are able to pay massive amounts above market rates knowing that when they're done working for one of the local tech companies, that they can sell what they bought for at least what they bought it for, so it's not even like the pricing on it matters.
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@ I've heard of that, and I've heard of schools being repurposed. I think that malls and schools are probably easier to convert as they are designed a bit differently. I don't doubt that it's still pretty hard to do, but at least a mall is laid out a bit like a neighborhood to start.
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@ The prices that are being charged are so far above that rate that they would have to be massively marked down to be in danger of that. It didn't suddenly become 2 or 3 times as expensive to do that over just the last couple decades.
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@ IMHO, the only housing that can be treated as an investment is arguably rental units, and even then, there needs to be some effort to prevent a small number of landlords from owning enough of the market to be able to set their own prices.
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