That’s exactly an instance where this would happen. Since the value of the land itself not what’s built on it is valuable in this instance. Look at the value of the land near any ski resort town over the last 10 years.

Okay that kind of makes sense. There is a problem though, well three.

Imagine you live in a small town. Something happens (COVID for instance) and your town becomes popular and your land value goes up. Yesterday your house was worth 100k but now it’s worth 500k+. Your saying those people should essentially be forced out of their homes? To be bought up by rich people?

Additionally this means only the super rich would be able to afford homes? This tax would essentially mean only the top 1% could have a home and basically give them a free for all on any land they want. Why would we want that?

Lastly if you increased land tax by that much landlords would have to increase rent prices to offset this? So even with a govt subsidy the renter is still the person paying this increase.

Honestly I’m intrigued by this idea but once you start thinking about how it would work it falls apart. There is probably some variation of this that could work. Maybe in cities they’ll be an extratax if you don’t build some sort of minimum housing? But this is already pretty similar to just basic property taxes.

I don’t understand how would a 100% land tax work? If you own a 300k house you’d have to pay 300k in taxes every year? So basically making housing unaffordable except for the ultra rich?

Also why would anyone build apartments if they weren’t going to make a profit? What’s the incentive? No one would do anything if they couldn’t make money doing it.

If landlords are bad or too expensive why not move, another building another state another lower cost of living area? Agreed rents are super high but that’s mostly in dense urban areas. You’re paying a premium for location.

I’m really not seeing any honest answers here about how to fix this problem. Besides the government should provide everyone free housing? How would that work how would you decide who gets to live where? Who gets the apartment on the lake vs next to the airport/oil refinery?

Like I get it housing is expensive but I haven’t seen anything here that would actually help fix that? Ironically more landlords and more apartments would probably help.