(12-28-2024, 12:22 PM)mikesez Wrote:

(12-28-2024, 11:36 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: But there's no good reason to do it.  If we want houses to be more affordable, we have to build more of them.  We have to increase the supply. Allowing people to build houses in order to rent them out incentivizes the building of more houses.  Telling people they have to sell their rental properties at the end of every lease discourages the building of more houses.  Your typical lease for a house is two years.  You're telling me if I buy a house and lease it out I will have to sell it after two years?  That would cause a depression in the housing market.  Sure, houses would be more affordable for a while after that, but with new houses not being built, it wouldn't take long before the price of houses skyrockets because of a lack of supply.

I think you understand how a free market functions, but someone reading this thread would think you do not.  You're making an Elizabeth Warren-level proposal.

If someone wants to buy or build a house and rent it out, and someone else wants to rent it from them, that is how a free market is supposed to work.

You're overthinking this.
As long as the landlord is fully covering his mortgage payment with the monthly rent, the landlord will end up selling the house for more than he bought it for. He will profit and he will want to do it again. This is called being successful in the real estate business.
If the landlord is not covering his costs with the rent payment, he was aggressively speculating and that's bad for the housing market. This is called being un successful in the real estate business as you paid more for the asset than you can recoup.
The policy really wouldn't change behavior that much, I don't think. Yes it would
We need to do something to make sure the market for housing isn't dominated by landlords.  Why? They provide a service making housing available to the market. Repair and upgrade older housing and provide capital to build new.
Building more housing has costs in terms of traffic and displacing people.  These costs are worth it if we end up with more people owning homes and having more disposable income to keep the economy going, keep kids in the same schools, etc.  The costs are not worth it if we're just feeding a new landlord class.