(12-28-2024, 01:18 PM)Jag149 Wrote:

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

The first bolded is how it should work in a free society. The rest just comments.

We have a housing shortage.  That's a fact.
Suppose we are building houses as fast as possible given the labor force and tools we have.  That might not be true, but suppose it is.  
Every single family home that a landlord buys is one less single family home that an actual single family can buy.
Now suppose that my second statement is false and we can speed up the rate of home construction.  That would be a supply and demand thing.  Assuming we have done a good job loosening up zoning noise, the supply of homes might increase, but only at increased cost per unit.

I will admit that my idea of forcing a buyout clause in every lease contract might not be a good idea. 
But it is an attempt to address a real problem that must be addressed.

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