YouSaid · the spoken record

Daryl Fairweather

lines on the record: 30
first: 2022-06-13
most recent: 2022-06-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“There's an online community of people who are very into land taxes, the Lincoln Land Institute. I'll shout them out. They do a lot of work in terms of educating at more the municipal level how policymakers should use their land, should tax it, or lease their land as an alternative land taxes. So there are, this is happening at a local level. At a federal level, I'm not sure it's even constitutional for the government to have a federal land tax. I think it violates the Commerce Clause or something like that. But perhaps they could at least set up the infrastructure for it to be easier for municipalities to adopt one.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I don't think it's the end of rental inflation in terms of how much people are actually paying, but at least the fuel is no longer being poured on the fire, it seems.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It really depends on what measure of rental inflation we're talking about because asking rents for rentals that are on the market currently, those peaked last month, I think it was 18% up year over year, and now it's down to like 17% year over year. So we seem to be past the hump in terms of home or apartments that are on the market. But that's going to trickle into all other rentals in terms of what people are paying on their lease each and every year. Because if you're in a rental for a long time, then maybe your rent was actually set a couple of years ago and isn't updated as frequently. Landlords tend to like keeping tenants because it's lower cost for them than finding a new one.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mean you could put a value on just about anything. You could incorporate the carbon value of land if there is some, if say that carbon is valued at some dollar per ton and having a bunch of trees on land absorbs that carbon, you could put a dollar value on that value of having the land remain vacant. And you can give credits to people who do that kind of activity. So I think land value tax, you can get really creative with it and try to incorporate a lot of different kind of values. Like you mentioned, those value in having a park that goes to the public even though you're not actually charging people to use the park. But I'm sure clever economists could come up with some estimate of the value to be used.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Possibly, I mean, the government does it for flood insurance. They come up with a property level flood insurance premium that's done at the national level. So they definitely could. And I think the more data you put into the model, the better it would be in theory. I mean, models were never perfect, but the more data, the better generally”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Redfin is forecasting home price growth to slow to 7% by the end of the year. That's compared to the previous year. And by 2023 for annual price growth, the slow to about 3% by spring. So home prices were expecting to stay positive, but to really start to slow down to a very slow pace. One interesting thing we did talk about is negative land value taxes. So the idea is that a place like Flint, Michigan, for example, their land value was deteriorated because of the lead in the water. So maybe we should be sending checks to the people who own land there because of the way that the government kind of failed them in terms of the infrastructure.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think you said it well that if you haven't bought a home, home prices going up is a real problem. If you already own a home, home prices going up isn't so bad, but it can have other perverse effects on the economy that might impact you. So maybe if you live in, let's say, a city like Austin and home values have gone up, you're going to be paying more in property tax as home values go up. You're going to probably paying more for groceries because people need to make more to work at the grocery store to afford their rent. And you might just see more inflation across the board. Redfin did a study of where inflation was going up the most and it's going up faster in migration destinations, the places people are moving to than the places people are leaving, like San Francisco or New York or Los Angeles.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I don't think it's going to happen in the next decade just because baby boomers aren't that old and life expectancies are going up. And it's hard to predict out farther than a decade because it's so much a policy choice. People ask me a lot about like, oh, there's a wave of millennials. What about Gen Z? Because Gen Z is slightly smaller than millennials. But Gen Z is a smaller generation because of a policy choice. We had much more immigration that promoted the size of the millennial generation and we kind of cut back on immigration since then. So we could choose to be a country that can grow and can accommodate more people if we had better housing policies. But we can also shoot ourselves in the foot and not promote immigration or growth and keep in this kind of same state.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think from a certain perspective, that is true, especially for millennials who grew up in a certain place and always dreamed of owning a home like their parents did in that place. I think that is very difficult. You can't stay in the same socioeconomic status and still expect to achieve the things that your parents did just because we didn't build enough homes for everyone to have that same American dream. If millennials kind of rethink what the dream means for them, maybe living in a more affordable area, moving to a different part of the country, living in a condo or a multi-family home instead of a single family home, I think that they could still achieve economic prosperity. It might just not look the way that they thought.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I think it would certainly help if it was paired with relaxed zoning laws. I mean, part of the housing crisis, I think, is single family zoning. And if you had a land value tax and the home was only single family zoning, then the value of that land would be less. And if it was multifamily zoning. So maybe that would actually be an incentive for even cities to rethink their zoning if they knew that they could get more tax revenue with better zoning. So that could help in that sense. But yes, I think that a land value tax motivates a homeowner to sell if their home would be more valuable as a duplex or a triplex. Or maybe they would be the ones to actually add in those extra units or put a grainy flat in or whatever so they could get revenue to make up for the property tax or for the land value tax rather.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd like there to be more of a balance for renters to not feel like they are boxed out of creating wealth or that they're always being displaced by higher and higher prices. But I think that there are some advantages to homeownership. I mean, it gives you the ability to improve your property if you actually own your house, you can be responsible for mowing the lawn and maintaining it, putting a new roof on, making it what you want it to be and putting pride into that. So if you're only renting, it might detach people from their homes a bit more. But I think that there should be more balance and people shouldn't feel like they're not achieving success just because they are renting. It might just fit better with their lifestyle and their own personal financial goals.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think property taxes are working the way they are supposed to in Texas. I was in Austin just a couple months ago and every single apartment building that was over two decades old was being remodeled. And that's what you would do if you have a high property tax. When you see that your property tax bill is about to go up because home values have gone up, you really are motivated to improve the property so you can make up that loss from the property tax. Landlords are also passing that on to their renters. Many renters are getting hit with big rent increases that aren't capped and they have to move out. And then that gives the landlord another opportunity to upgrade the property so they can get a higher return or just to rent it to somebody who has more money to pay. So I think it is causing a lot of disruption to the people who actually live in Austin. And I'm sure that it's not easy to get that big rent increase and just be told, well, this is the economy, pay the market price.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We already have the land value tax embedded within the property tax. So I think we already have in some effect. I think the question is how high could it go where people still feel like they own their land? Like if it was like I think most property taxes are around one to three percent, maybe higher in some places. So that's not a huge amount you're paying every single year. But if that creeps up to say 10%, maybe people won't feel like they truly are owning the land. And also it would cut into the wealth, the equity that they gain. One of the reasons that home prices go up so much is because people aren't actually paying for that value of the land. It's to accumulate instead of going back into the government or back into the public coffer. If you are extracting some of the wealth and putting it into the public coffer, then people won't have their house as an asset anymore. People might not like that.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that's an ideological hurdle when it comes to land value taxes. In the book, Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O'Hare's Dad is always railing about property taxes. And I just always found it really ironic that like this character that owns people is mad that he has to pay for this land that he thinks he owns is entitled to. Anyway, just an aside, I think there's like a lot of. Ideological stuff and whether somebody can actually own land or not”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one example that comes to mind is Israel. It actually call it a 100 year lease. So you lease land from the government, but it's effectively the same as a land tax because you're paying this money monthly to the government and just you have to pay it regardless of what the size of the property is. You can still do whatever you want on the property. So it works in effect the same as a land value tax. Actually, I should look a little bit more into housing affordability in Israel. They have their own land issues because a lot of the country's desert and there are other land issues there that I won't even get into, but that is one country that comes to mind.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we have to look at it on whole. Having a land value tax in the first place, I think would promote equity because it's taxes that would be collected more efficiently and could be distributed back to a community and possibly help people who are lower income or have socioeconomic disadvantages. But it's not going to be perfect in terms of collecting that money. It's not perfectly efficient. So I think you just have to look at it from both sides. and make a determination as to whether it would be good for society as a whole. I think it would be, but I think we would have to really have a lot of transparency in how appraisals are made and make it easy for anybody to fight an appraisal if they feel like they've been wronged. There are ways, I think, through the court system to make it fair or make it fairer as long as we're paying attention.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it is quite tricky. And I think that is lost a bit when we talk about a land value tax, because in theory it seems great, like, oh, just do a land value tax and everything will be efficient. But I think actually assessing the land value tax in and of itself would necessitate a bureaucracy of appraisers who determine what the value is. And anytime you're doing an appraisal, I mean, it's basically an algorithm that might determine the value of the land and there's always algorithmic bias. So one issue with the current property current property tax in America is that black people sometimes are paying more property tax than white people because white homeowners are more likely to debate what the actual appraisal is go fight that and try to get appraisal that gets them a lower tax burden. So there's room for this kind of bias to crop up just in terms of who is pushing back on what the appraisal might be or what the appraiser is.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“they're going to want to get more out of that land in order to make a profit so instead of building a single family home you might build a multi-family home instead of having a land just sit as like a golf course or something you might try to have that be commercial space that would be of more value to the entire community or to the economy”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So one is that if you are taxing the value of the land, then people are going to be less likely to stay in their property beyond the value that they would get out of it. So right now we have an issue in the country of people just staying in place, aging in place. you know, baby boomers who don't have children staying in their three bedroom home or four-bedroom home when that house may be more a value to somebody who is younger just starting a family. But because the older person in the home is not paying the full value of the land, they would rather just stay put than to move somewhere else and potentially have to bear more of the cost or to rent and bear more of the cost. So there's a bit of a problem in terms of allocation of real estate if you're not taxing the land. There's revenue to be gained from taxing the valuable land. You could put that money towards building more properties. If somebody is being taxed, the value of the land.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think that that is how an economist would want to design our tax system. But in practice, our taxes tend to skew towards equity concerns over efficiency concerns. So it's the same reason we have a capital gains tax, because the kind of people who have a lot of capital gains tend to be very wealthy. And from equity perspective, we may want to distribute some of that wealth down to people who don't have. Any capital gains to be taxed in the first place. So it works the same for property. If we're trying to just purely promote economic growth, we would not want the structure of the home or improvements to be taxed.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A very simplistic model of the world, that's true, but I actually want to push back on a land value tax being perfectly efficient. Because land value is affected by everything that's around it, whether it's the quality of the air or what your neighbor's house might look like if it casts a shadow on the land. There's like a lot of different things that can go into land value, the access to jobs for that land. So it's not immutable, but it's less likely that what Tracy does impacts the land value. It's a little bit more out of her control and it's more determined by all the factors in the community.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The reason for having a land value tax from an economic perspective is that land is immutable, you can't change it. If you tax it, it's not going to change anyone's behavior. So it's a really efficient tax to impose when just trying to raise tax surpluses. Also, there's just the idea that you didn't create the land, so the value should go to everyone. The property tax part, I think, is more motivated by having a progressive tax that if you have some mansion, you are a wealthy person and you can afford to make that to pay that tax and have it redistributed back to people who can only afford to build a little one bedroom house or bungalow or whatever it is on the property. So I think they have different motivations, but they get lumped together in just the overall property tax.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You talk Yes, so your home consists of the land, but it sits on top of that you own and you can do what you want with it. And then there's also the property that is a structure that sits on top of that land that can be modified. The land value separates that from the property tax. So a property tax is really a combination. It taxes both the land and the value of the property, but you can think of it as two different parts”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one thing that is kind of straightforward, at least when you say it, it's a lot less straightforward in practice, is to have a land value tax, which means that you essentially pay rent to everybody because you don't own the land. You didn't create the land the land belongs to everyone in your area, in your country. So having a land value tax corrects for that. And it turns the value of the home really just more into a commodity, the actual property that sits on top of it. you're not getting some excess of wealth just because the land value goes up that would mostly be taxed”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I think it goes back to the founding of this country. If you want to look at the real root, property rights are really part of how this country was built. The denial of property rights in Native Americans and the idea that an individual can own property is part of how this country was founded. So I think that that is deeply embedded into this country, the idea that you own a piece of property and it's yours and you can build what you want on it. The government can tax a bit, but I think America resists taxing too much because of that idea that you own the property.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think that builders on their own are going to be able to build enough to meet demand because they only really start getting ramped up on production when demand was exceedingly high during the pandemic. And now that interest rates are up, they're already starting to see that decline and demand and they want to pull back because of the cyclicality. Housing market builders only really ramp up at the peak. And then right after that, they pull back and they don't want to ramp up again until there's another peak coming. So I think we do need some kind of government intervention or more policy making to support home building that actually meets demand.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very destructive recession, and we're certainly still paying the price for that. And we also just didn't do enough, I think Was more harmful than it needed to be”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Millennial is the biggest generation. They're entering into home buying age. They need places to live. And we just haven't been building for them. We're really trying to grapple with why we don't build enough homes to meet. Seemingly this excess of demand”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stopped investing so much in housing or really seeing it as this savior before the housing crash, there was this idea that if we just made everyone a homeowner, then everybody could achieve that American dream and build wealth. But making everyone a homeowner came with a lot of consequences. Just magically produce that kind of wealth. So there are people who are getting homes that they actually couldn't afford. And there was a financial system that was supporting that as well that all came crashing down. The crash onwards, we kind of ignored housing, didn't see it as something that Should be promoting. We built fewer homes in the 2010s than any decade going back all the way in the 1960s.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, we are in a housing crisis. It's not just me saying this. Has estimated that we're almost 4 million housing units short. If you just look at California, it's even higher than that. I think maybe some of the confusion is that it's much worse in certain parts of the country. Where housing crises have really gone up and up for the last decade, and there are parts of the country that have not seen that. So maybe people just don't see it where they are, but as a whole, we're definitely in a housing crisis.”
2022-06-13 · Odd Lots · Daryl Fairweather On the Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source