US set to unveil long-awaited crackdown on real estate money laundering
US set to unveil long-awaited crackdown on real estate money laundering
The U.S. Treasury Department will soon propose a rule that would effectively end anonymous luxury-home purchases, closing a loophole that the agency says allows corrupt oligarchs, terrorists and other criminals to hide ill-gotten gains.
The U.S. Treasury Department will soon propose a rule that would effectively end anonymous luxury-home purchases, closing a loophole that the agency says allows corrupt oligarchs, terrorists and other criminals to hide ill-gotten gains.
How about they just make it illegal for corporations to own houses?
This would be the biggest game changer for our country. Let corporations own all the apartments they want but keep them out of single family housing. There’s no reason for corporations to hoard and sit on housing, letting them sit empty and raising the prices of the occupied ones. Single family Housing should not be an investment opportunity for corporations.
Let’s bring down housing prices, and people will have a hell of a lot more money to spend on other things to keep our economy moving.
Then after that let’s do Healthcare and Education.
Why stop at single family housing?
I live in a house that was sold at below market rates, under the condition that I will also sell to the next homeowner at a below market rate, there is a fixed equity gain each year to cover general home owner costs. I own the house, the city owns the land the house is on, HOA covers outside upkeep like roofing, window cleaning and driveway maintenance. This is known as a Community Land Trust.
There is no reason this method of housing can't also be applied to folks that live in an apartment. Fuck corporations they shouldn't own anything.
Just tax any home other than your primary residence at 100% of the assessed fair market value per year. Hell, make it 100000%. This includes apartments, condos, townhomes, mobile homes. It would solve a lot of problems real quick. Some “real estate moguls” might have to find a real job for once in their life but it will be good for them. I hear they like to hustle.
Conservatives would never, ever let that happen. Conservatives help billionaires specifically because it hurts normal people.
Renting is the right choice for some people. Corporations have to obey stronger laws than mom and pops and are in my experience more likely to keep the houses updated.
This is completely untrue.
The Mom and Pop owners have less resources to handle if you suddenly break your lease and leave due to crumbing conditions so it’s in their best interest to keep their properties updated.
Corporations often will ignore your complaints, and then just absorb the costs for a couple months until they can move in someone else into the same broken property. Corporations do not care when it comes to their properties, while individual owners do care because there are actual people behind them.
Also, regardless if “renting is the right choice for some people”, the housing shortage is due to corporations buying up single family homes with the express purpose of renting them, which pushes potential owners out of the market entirely.
Not when they are essentially a cabal :/ https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent
Just a single data point but as soon as a corporation bought my apartment complex they "attempted" to illegally increase my rent through hidden fee increases. They also "accidentally" sent me the wrong leases with the rents increased multiple times.
If I need to sue a corporation for something like this, it's going to be a lot of time and effort for me but nothing for them so they can essentially get away with the illegality. Mom and pops it's a lot of time and effort for both of us so it's in both of our best interests to do things by the book.
Yes, renting is absolutely the right choice for some people. I completely agree. That is why I never said apartments shouldn't exist or that people couldn't own multiple homes to rent out. However, I think people who own multiple homes should be taxed higher on them.
Housing should not be a retirement vehicle. It should be a basic human right.
Also, I don't think it's true that corporations have to obey stronger laws than mom and pops. I'm pretty sure rental laws are just rental laws, and corporations just have lawyers who make sure they are following all applicable laws. I could be wrong, though.
15 years too late.
The long-awaited rule is expected to require that real estate professionals such as title insurers report the identities of the beneficial owners of companies buying real estate in cash to the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
Uh-oh, looks like someone is going to have to buy Clarence Thomas another RV to get out of this one!
Another blow to Trump - they just keep coming.
Anyone remember when a bunch of Russians bought up a bunch of trump real estate?Always amazed how blatant this is and yet the GOP only screams for Hunter Biden dick pics.
can we do Canada next please
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This will have much less of an effect on housing prices than people wish. The core problem there is lack of supply, not a handful of foreign oligarchs.
Foreign oligarchs affect supply, and I don't think we have any idea how much. Corporate owners are probably a bigger chokepoint on supply, but domestic wealthholders are probably a big player as well. We need a variety of rules in place; enforcement of any of them will increase supply, but that mostly benefits whoever's left in the list above. If we crack down on the biggest supply problem, the next biggest one will buy up the excess.
If we actually want private homeowners to take precedence, we have to make it extremely difficult for anyone to own multiple homes, corporation or not, wealthy or not, foreign or not.
To your point, this rule, whether it becomes an enforceable regulation or not, isn't even targeted at increasing supply. It's targeted at preventing money laundering.
To your point, this rule, whether it becomes an enforceable regulation or not, isn’t even targeted at increasing supply. It’s targeted at preventing money laundering.
Oh I know; that was aimed more at the people talking about corporations owning housing, as if that's particularly relevant. I'm quite skeptical that the corporate boogeyman is really a meaningful target when it comes to housing costs though. We've been drastically underbuilding for decades now - with quite a lot of that directly coming from extremely onerous zoning laws. The sheer fact of the matter is that in most American cities (where people actually want to live - empty shacks in rural Nebraska are not particularly helpful here), there are far more people who want to live there than available housing, and the inevitable result of this is that the wealthiest people are those who get to live in them. This will be the case regardless of whether the housing is owned by a corporation or a mom and pop. The fundamental problem is lack of supply; anything that doesn't address that will not meaningful reduce housing prices and is at best a band-aid.
There are 16 million vacant houses in the US. Even if half of them are unslavagebale, thats still enough to house the entire homeless population of the US multiple times over.
And are those vacant houses in places where people want to live?
In NYC, for example, the vacancy rate is a bit above 2%. Vacant houses in Oklahoma have zero relevance to homeless people in NYC. It also has to be considered that a lot of vacant residences are only temporary; either caught up in legal issues or briefly empty while the owners find tenants. But again, geography is critically relevant here. Vacant properties only help if they're in places where people actually want to live and where jobs are available. It doesn't matter how cheap a shack in Nebraska is if there's no job around beyond farming.