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Assuming an average value of $500k per-house, a millionaire could own two houses and a billionaire could own the entire neighborhood (lemmy.world)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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I was doing some math in my head. I've been thinking about housing prices and wanted to assess the rough value of my city neighborhood block.

Assuming the average value of a house in my neighborhood is a flat $500k, that means 2 houses = $1M.

Counting the houses on my street I estimated there are about 20 houses per-block, which means 1 block = 20 houses = $10M.

Continuing to scale that up by factors of 10, we get:

10 blocks = 200 houses = $100M

and

100 blocks = 2000 houses = $1B

I opened up a map to visualize 100 blocks and it's practically my entire city neighborhood. Billionaires shouldn't exist.

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[–] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

That's why I believe there should be a legal limit to how many houses one can own. Even if this could be easily bypassable by registering in the name of family members, it would hardly reach such proportions

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Rather than a hard cap, I like the idea of property tax rates that go on an exponential curve depending on how many houses you have beyond the one you live in, which are used either to subsidize building more housing or somehow redistributed.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    It's easier to implement as a tax credit. You're entitled to a 90% rebate on the property taxes for the home you live in, perhaps a 50% credit for a home you own that a family member lives in, and no rebate for additional properties.

    One major benefit of this is as soon as a lender initiates foreclosure proceedings, the taxes owed on the property go through the fucking roof. They are motivated to work with you on the loan.

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