I really hate all the replies attempting to poke holes with minimal effort. Thanks for this comment and your robust set of examples.

Housing shouldn't be a vehicle for interest or making a living, I'd take it more extreme than what you have if I'm being honest. You can own the buildings you use 60% of the year for work or for housing but nothing else. We don't sell stocks in bananas, we sell stocks in farms. Housing should be a consumable commodity not a line item in a corp's assets sheet.

What would stop owners from shifting the burden to the renters?

As of right now this is already how property taxes are handled by most landlords: mortgage + tax + est. cost to fix incidentals + time managing paperwork = rent (in a fair situation - though most will tack on as much extra for "profit" as they can)

So if you have a house worth 600k (12k tax), the mortgage is $3500/mo, they would just charge $4500+ a month to cover their costs.

I think the only way is to add extremely progressive property tax to multiple ownerships, and a name always has to be attached as "owner". So your first house and second might have limited property taxes, but your third would be double, fourth would be quadruple, fifth would be 8x etc.

This is a good idea which is why it will never implemented

It's such a simple proposal, but I think this might actually be the solution.

Housing cannot be both affordable and an investment.

In my area there always seems to be a cash buyer so even if you have a strong offer and are prequalified the seller isn’t going to pick you. They need to heavily tax non-primary residences and housing owned by companies. These robobuyers have destroyed any chance people have of buying a first home.

Nothing worse than seeing a house you failed to buy have a For Lease sign on it the next week.

And it's not only companies. Lots of homeowners with low-interest mortgages from 2020-21 rent out their home instead of selling when they move, which in turn depresses inventory and puts upward pressure on prices.

It does make sense because the average house price has gone up for everyone.

When my wife and I started looking at buying a house, there were new houses in a brand new development going for absolutely screaming deals. Houses twice the size of similarly priced houses. They were bland, soulless husks, each one bordering on ugly. You could even just buy the land and build your own home, ordered from a catalog. No estimate on time, of course.

And nestled in to the fine print at every single one, an HOA. The worst being 400+ dollars a month.

New housing isn't being built, at least not for most Americans. We're above average earners in a low cost of living area. What we can afford is not typical, and these crappy catalog mcmansions were just at the top of our price range, before the HOA.

The only solution I see to the housing problem, is mandating that middle-low income housing be built. Right now there's no incentive to. The money is in keeping it scarce, or milking a covenant.