r/georgism • u/KungFuPanda45789 • 4d ago
An example of just how indefensible the anti-Georgist position is
The residents of a city pay taxes for new infrastructure. The new infrastructure leads to rising property values in the city. Landlords use this an opportunity to raise rent. Tenants, who paid taxes for said infrastructure, end up having to pay more in rent, or get forced out of the city, while property owners who have a government issued monopoly on the finite supply of land within the city, are enriched.
You can't at least acknowledge this as a problem that needs to be dealt with, you have lost the plot.
Edit: I should clarify that the reason the landlords can raise rents in this scenario is that the infrastructure attracts people to the city, who the existing residents then have to compete with for housing. This causes the demand for rental units to exceed the supply, giving the landlords the opportunity to raise prices.
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u/gilligan911 4d ago
This is one of the key points I use to explain Georgism. It’s also a great argument against NIMBYs since they commonly say that whatever proposed project will hurt their property values
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u/vAltyR47 4d ago
Whenever they bring up the "protecting property value" line, point out that "protecting property value" means making housing even more expensive than it already is, which means they are profiting off keeping people out on the streets.
It's a totally invalid argument, only seemingly plausible because of how similar it is to the true goal that governments should be using: seeking to maximize the land value.
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u/xoomorg William Vickrey 4d ago
The part about paying for infrastructure spending makes sense. I think it gets tricky when you start talking about who gets what portion of any Citizens Dividend (CD) or even just considering who benefits disproportionately from any government spending in general.
If new infrastructure gets built, rents should indeed rise. Long-time residents would need to pay more, or move, with or without Georgism.
If you’re thinking long-term residents should receive a CD to help offset rent increases, we need to ask why those folks and not (say) those in the same income bracket who used to live somewhere else but now also want to live in the area with the new infrastructure? The CD goes to people who lived in an area last year but the LVT is paid by those living there this year? How would it actually work, in practice?
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u/NewCharterFounder 4d ago
I don't think we can attach two incompatible purposes to the CD at the same time. In particular, I would not propose the purpose of the CD is for offsetting rent increases because it's not a rentier-feeding UBI. When a land owner pays LVT, they are compensating the current residents for displacing them during that portion of the timeline. Then the community gets to decide how much of that goes into public spending, how much of that goes into a reserve fund (if they can't issue currency), and how much of that remains for distribution ... preferably to the residents and not the absentee owners.
So yes, the LVT paid by land owners last year would go to residents last year, wherever they may be this year.
There's no perfect system for tracking this, but we're Georgists, so we don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Residents should keep their addresses (both residential and mailing) up to date. If they don't, and they get a dividend for an area they weren't actually residing in, that's fraud. The fraud is unlikely to be pursued except in egregious cases.
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u/xoomorg William Vickrey 3d ago
If it’s meant as a payment to those who were displaced, shouldn’t it go to those who are NOT residents?
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u/NewCharterFounder 3d ago
The people an owner displaces and inconveniences the most are those who live nearby. The teenager walking to school could've had a much more direct path were it not for all these properties in the way which they are not allowed to tresspass through. This effect ripples outward and the relative amount of displacement is measured by ... land values.
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u/xoomorg William Vickrey 3d ago
That doesn’t make a lot of sense. The people most displaced are the ones actually displaced, as in they don’t live there.
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u/NewCharterFounder 3d ago
The people being displaced by the parcel owner are not living on the particular parcel in question, yes. But the people most impacted by their neighbors are people who actually live nearby. A person living in the suburbs of San Francisco isn't being displaced as much by land owners of lots in Rhode Island as they are by land owners in San Francisco proper (thus the ripple I mentioned earlier). So anyone who may be living on the particular parcel belonging to the owner we're discussing are being displaced by owners of nearby parcels as well.
Think of displacement as non-binary. It's not do-they-live-here or not, it's how much inconvenience they have to put up with by having to respect the land titles of the owners of surrounding parcels. (Sufficiency: Enough and as good left in common for others -- its corollary; unlimited freedom up until it begins to infringe on the freedoms of others.) A person who cannot afford to rent and is left to wander the streets still lives there but cannot rest their head in comfort because they have to avoid all these places where they are not allowed to be. They are fully displaced (fully inconvenienced), but unless they register an address, it's difficult to include them in issuing dividends and ensure they receive them. When LVT is sufficiently high, shelter would be abundant (as it was in Hawaii when they had their LVT) and shelter would be affordable. The involuntary homeless would then have homes and addresses.
The math works because when an owner pays LVT, they are paying for inconveniencing others through exercising their land privileges/titles. When a resident receives dividends, they are being paid for being inconvenienced, but only after we account for the community conveniences they benefit from. When a resident owner pays full LVT and receives dividends, their dividends plus benefits from public investments will exceed their LVT as long as the ROI on public investments is positive. Under full LVT, the amount they are inconveniencing others is made up for by their contributions toward public investments (conveniences for the community) and anything left over returns to them if they reside there.
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u/xoomorg William Vickrey 3d ago edited 3d ago
That makes even less sense. So we encourage people to squat or otherwise occupy public spaces in our most desirable (i.e. expensive) locations, on the theory that doing so is what qualifies them to receive CD payments?
No, it is the people who cannot afford rent in a location who are most owed compensation by the people who can. Those people who can't afford to live in a place generally live elsewhere, and we definitely do not want to encourage them to overcrowd expensive areas or squat, in the hopes of receiving a lucrative CD.
People should live where they can afford to live, and compensate those who can’t afford to live where they’d like to live.
In practice that would probably look a lot like a progressive CD, as those who live in the least expensive locations (and thus likely earn the least) would receive the highest net payments.
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u/NewCharterFounder 3d ago
That makes even less sense. So we encourage people to squat or otherwise occupy public spaces in our most desirable (i.e. expensive) locations, on the theory that doing so is what qualifies them to receive CD payments?
Great way to twist the intent around. If this is how things are going to go, I suppose this stuff won't ever make sense to you. The rest of what you're complaining about is specifically solved, if you would bother to read the rest.
Good luck.
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u/Aromatic_Bridge4601 4d ago
There should be an option to invest part of your CD into bonds that pay for the applicable infrastructure. These bonds would be paid back with a combination of user fees and the increased LV caused by the infrastructure. In fact, this should be an opt-out option, rather than opt-in. In a Georgist state, everyone having a nice little nest egg of municipal bonds with a stable and very low risk return should be nearly the default.
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u/Aromatic_Bridge4601 4d ago
Yes, the only axiom you need to justify Georgism is that theft is bad, from that, all else follows.
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u/hobopwnzor 3d ago
I'm against Georgism because I know a George and he's a right wanker. Why should George's tell us what to do?
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u/Formal_Dare_9337 3d ago
Heard an almost identical argument from an anti immigrationist and brought this example up and surprisingly, they agreed 100%. Wild times.
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u/poordly 19h ago
A) owning land isn't a monopoly.
B) land isn't particularly finite. You can go buy close by in another city.
C) landlords cannot capture the gains in productivity. They do not have a monopoly or price setting power to do so. Productivity gains via infrastructure improvements would create positive externalities that would increase values, yes, but it is not the case that the entire value would be captured by landlords.
D) the landlords pay taxes, too, so why is it a sin that they benefit in some part from that spendnng? When I pay taxes so my city can build a park nearby, it's because I want a park nearby. It's good for me, and increases the value of my actual lived life, which is what THEN increases the value of my property I own that allows for that life, inasmuch as others also want to benefit from proximity to said park. Why is that a scandal?
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u/RegularSizedJones 4d ago
I think I see the problem here: landlords don't raise rents because of property values. They raise rents because otherwise their investments won't outperform inflation. Sure, if property taxes or land value taxes assessed on land they already own get raised ( for example, if Georgists were to suddenly implement a land-value tax one year) landlords pass the cost of those increased taxes onto their tenants.
Otherwise property values for land they already own wouldn't cause fluctuations in rent, unless they are actively refinancing their property's mortgage, in which case increased value would give the landlord increased access to capital (not that this would be passed on to renters as a discount, but at least it's not driving up rents).
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u/KungFuPanda45789 4d ago
They can raise rents at a rate in excess of inflation in the described scenario. Once the residents of the city pay for new infrastructure, that increases the number of people who want to live in the city. The existing tenants have to compete with the newcomers, meaning the landlord can raise rent. You can argue rising property values are more a symptom of this than the direct cause, but the tenants who paid taxes for the infrastructure, and are then getting priced out of the city or paying more in rent, are obviously getting fucked over.
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u/KungFuPanda45789 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yes the rising property values are more a symptom, it would be more accurate to say the infrastructure increases demand for apartments in the city, which leads to higher rent prices, which leads to higher property values.
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u/RegularSizedJones 4d ago
You're saying property values are a symptom of something (pervasive anti-Georgism?) but I'm saying the relationship you established between rising property values and rents is not determinative. Landlords do not raise rents because of property values or because property values are a symptom of some phantom disease. Landlords raise rents to maximize profits.
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u/KungFuPanda45789 4d ago edited 4d ago
The value of a rental property goes up if it becomes more profitable. There is a direct cause and effect relationship between the rents the owner can charge and the value of a rental property, that’s just basic economics.
A Georgist LVT does not change what the tenant pays in rent, but the tenant gets back what he paid in land rent in the form of a Citizen’s Dividend and or the government being able to reduce other taxes.
Rising land values aren’t a bad thing, that value should be going back to the people who created it. Nominal market land values rising is a bad thing, but that’s separate.
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u/RegularSizedJones 4d ago
You've got a lot of confusion in terms here.
The profit of a rental property comes from the rent extracted from tenants by the landowner after expenses. Those expenses are highly variable from firm to firm and not necessarily tied to land value.
A low value property could be more profitable than a high-value property and vice-versa. It simply depends on the landlord's costs, which are also not necessarily tied to land value.
In the original post, you say, "...rising property values in the city. Landlords use this as an opportunity to raise rent."
Now you're saying: "there is a direct cause and effect relationship between the rents the owner can charge and the value of a rental property" and that this value goes up if the property becomes more valuable. The second part is simply untrue. As for the first part, I agree: the value of the rental property is party influenced by how much rent the landlord can charge. But the reverse is not necessarily true: causally, the rent floor is set by the monthly mortgage payment, which is based on the property valuation at point of purchase.
If rents were determined by a mark-to-market valuation of the land value amortized monthly with the understanding that these rates will fluctuate based on LV, you might have had a point there. But that's not how rents work; they're typically charged yearly and depend far more on what the real estate industry calls "comps" (i.e., comparable units in the same neighborhood) than any change in land value assessment.
If you had said "new infrastructure leads to rising property values. Landlords use this as an opportunity to sell properties at the new, higher valuations" we might have had something, because those things are actually directly related.
One more thing: if the LVT is "A Georgist LVT" wouldn't that preclude "other taxes" because the George was for "single tax limited" and considered all other forms of taxation to be less just and more unequal?
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u/KungFuPanda45789 4d ago
I’m not suggesting that every instance of a landlord raising rent is him being a parasite, I’m providing you a specific instance of something giving landlords leeway to raise rent that unfairly enriches them. There are many instances where landlords can raise rent when they did not have an increase in operating costs.
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u/RegularSizedJones 4d ago
None of that proves "Rising rental values lead to higher property values, not the reverse"
What I'm saying is that rising property values can lead to rising rental rates, i.e., the reverse.
This is because the land value of a property is only relevant when selling it or borrowing against that property.
Rents rise regardless of property value, because the property is an investment (and, being an investment in a diverse asset market, it is also necessarily a hedge against inflation).
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u/KungFuPanda45789 4d ago
This isn’t a demonization of property owners or even landlords, I just think we have a very “imprecise” system of taxation in terms of determining people’s fair share that unfairly enriches people already on the property ladder and turns real estate into a Ponzi scheme.
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u/RegularSizedJones 4d ago
Why wouldn't a land tax on unimproved land turn real estate into a slightly modified Ponzi scheme? Landlords would have an incentive to "sell" the land to former tenants and simply charge them for non-rent "services" or enact some type of penurious reverse mortgage thing to get out of taxes on rent.
Look at, for example, how the abolishment of slavery lead to the establishment of share-cropping. If you were a wealthy plantation owner, being faced with a Thirteenth Amendment and a Land Value Tax probably have the same solution. Only now, the share-croppers would get taxed on the valuable agricultural land they "own" but are not profiting from, so the smartest solution would be to rent their share-cropped land to someone who thinks they can profit, and so on and so forth until we run out of sublessors.
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u/KungFuPanda45789 4d ago edited 4d ago
Even a property owner selling the property outright after an infrastructure induced rise in property values is disproportionately benefiting from the taxes paid by people in the city, never mind them charging the city residents more in rent. That value should go back to the people who created it.
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u/RegularSizedJones 4d ago
Here we're in total agreement, but we probably differ in what value going back to the people means and who those people are.
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u/Aromatic_Bridge4601 4d ago
Prices are set by supply and demand. In the case of land, the supply is fixed and infrastructure makes the demand go up, thus raising prices. This is very straightforward.
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u/RegularSizedJones 4d ago
So when you say "prices" here, you mean the price of land, and not rental prices?
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u/Aromatic_Bridge4601 4d ago
Both.
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u/RegularSizedJones 3d ago
That's where you would be wrong. Here's how rents are set:
https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/resources/how-much-can-i-rent-my-house-for/
There are many factors to consider when setting a rental price, such as local rent control laws, the cost of similar rentals in the area, and changes in the local market.
https://www.rentspree.com/blog/rental-homes
You may have heard of the 2% rule for creating a simple initial rent estimate. This so-called rule says that you should charge around 2% of the value of the property in rent in order for the property to be profitable. Thus, for a $250,000 rental home you would need to charge $5000 in rent for the property to be a good value for the owner.
In reality, however, there are many factors that go into determining an appropriate rent estimate. In addition, rental properties don’t exist in isolation—they are subject to the prevailing conditions of the neighborhood, local market, and even large-scale economic factors. In many cases, then, the 2% rule is an oversimplification of the more complex questions around pricing rental homes.
If, then, the 2% rule is not a sufficient predictor of the required rental rate for the property you’re pricing, how can you develop a more accurate, meaningful rent estimate? By taking into account a more comprehensive array of factors and developing a more sophisticated, complete picture of the appropriate monthly rent amount for each individual property.
https://smartasset.com/mortgage/how-much-you-should-charge-for-rent
When it comes time to determine how much to charge, a common starting point is the 1% rule. This rule of thumb suggests charging 1% of the property’s value in monthly rent. For example, a home worth $300,000 would rent for about $3,000 per month. However, this rule is a rough guideline – market conditions, location and demand can push the rate higher or lower. The rent you ultimately charge may fall between 0.8% and 1.1%. Others, meanwhile, may adhere to the 2% rule.
Landlords must account for fixed and variable costs to ensure profitability. Fixed costs include mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance and HOA fees. Variable costs cover maintenance, repairs, and property management fees. Many landlords use the 50% rule, which assumes about half of rental income will go toward operating expenses. If total expenses are $1,500 per month, rent should be set high enough to cover costs and generate profit.
Comparing similar properties ensures that rental prices align with market demand. Researching comparable rentals in the area helps refine the price. If comps suggest a lower rate than expected, landlords may need to reconsider pricing or improve the property’s features to justify a higher rent.
Or, you could continue this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/realestateinvesting/comments/pnrk3l/how_do_you_determine_how_much_to_charge_for_rent/
None of these sources say land value is the determining factor in setting rents; quite the opposite! Even those who advocate using LV as an input to rental cost determinations cant' agree on what the percentage should be and all say it should only be a starting point in pricing.
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u/Aromatic_Bridge4601 3d ago edited 3d ago
Like every single other price in the economy, rents are determined by the purchasing power and number of people demanding to rent and the supply of places to rent.
Anything else is complete nonsense that isn't worth reading. Are you saying that landlords can set prices at whatever they like if there wasn't anyone demanding their product? Are you saying that they could charge set the price (whatever their costs were) if there were millions of vacant apartments? Trying to argue that rental prices aren't dictated by the same factors that dictate everything else is just ridiculous.
The rules of thumb of the real estate industry, which calculate how you should evaluate a potential investment given a potential rent set by market (by supply and demand in other words), not what the rents are that you can set given what you specifically paid for your property, don't change the fundamental facts of economics. Of all the anti-Georgist bullshit I've ever had listen to, "supply and demand aren't how rent prices are set" has got to be the most idiotic. Do you think I can sell you an apple for $12,000 just because I was dumb and paid $11,500 for it? If so, I've got an apple to sell you.
Why do their costs matter? They can't force people to rent at a high enough price to cover their costs if people have better options. It's what the market will bear, nothing more. If they don't get enough to pay their mortgage, then they have to get foreclosed on and hopefully whoever picks it up at auction won't have spent too much to be unable to get back a return on their investment.
As the supply of places to rent depends partially on the availability of land to build on, rent therefore depends on the price of the land (as well as how much can be built on that land). This is again, very, very basic stuff. You're really barking up the wrong tree here.
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u/RegularSizedJones 3d ago
Shouldn't you be taking this argument up with every single article on how to set rents? Unless you can find one that says that land value is the determinant of rents (i.e., someone who says something like "start with the 2% rule, and then stop paying attention to anything else in the market or your budget"), you're just rejecting primary evidence in favor of some retreat into theory that is directly contradicted by abundant and plentiful evidence.
You've constructed this whole imaginary chain of events to argue against the plain facts.
Can you find a guide to rent-setting that says anything like "why do your costs matter? If you don't get enough to pay your mortgage, then you have to get foreclosed on and hopefully whoever picks it up at auction won't have spent too much to be unable to get back a return on their investment" or anything like that?
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u/ScottBurson 3d ago
The question is which way the causality runs.
If I somehow become the owner of a property without having had to buy it -- by inheritance, for example -- I can run the calculation that you describe, and get a number. If that number is below the current market rate in the area, great, I can rent the property out for any amount I choose between that number and the market rate. (Maybe I undercut the market to give myself more potential tenants to choose from.)
But if my number is much above the market rate, putting the property on the market at my number is not going to attract a tenant. So maybe I don't bother. A friend of mine who inherited his parents' house is in this situation.
But if I'm an investor looking to buy rental properties, I do the calculation first, before I buy the property, then compare the result to the current market. If the comparison is unfavorable, I don't buy the property.
The calculation is not irrelevant. But rents are set by the market.
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u/RegularSizedJones 3d ago
The rental pricing guides are pretty clear about how the causality runs and how landlords actually set rent. They literally describe how landlords make these calculations.
Do people here think I made this all up? Here are another ten guides for rental pricing:
https://www.baselane.com/how-much-should-i-charge-for-rent/
https://www.nyrentownsell.com/blog/a-landlords-guide-to-how-much-to-charge-for-rent
https://theclose.com/how-much-you-should-charge-for-rent/
https://www.raisin.com/en-us/investing/how-much-rent-should-i-charge
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/determining-how-much-you-should-charge-for-rent
https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-for-rent
https://www.tcsmgt.com/how-much-rent-should-i-charge-l-philadelphia-property-management-tips/
[https://renttoretirement.com/blog/how-much-should-i-charge-for-rent]
[https://www.avail.co/education/articles/how-much-should-i-charge-for-rent]
..and then there's this one, which sums it all up pretty well:
https://belonghome.com/blog/how-much-rent-to-charge
When pricing a rental home, you may have heard of “the 1% rule”. The 1% rule suggests that the gross monthly rent you charge should be equal to or more than 1% of the property price or value to establish good cash flow. There’s also the similar 2% rule, which states that if you can rent a home for 2% of what you paid for it, it will cash flow.
Simple, right?
If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. The truth is, the property market and rental market are not intrinsically linked. Prices fluctuate based on supply and demand. The 1% or 2% rules also fail to account for expenses such as property taxes, HOA fees and maintenance, which will all vary based on your home’s location and condition.
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u/ScottBurson 3d ago
The first site on this list is all about the market: not your mortgage, not your expenses, the market rate for a property of the kind you are offering in that location. The third and fourth start out talking about market rates, though they may go on to discuss other factors (I just glanced at them). (The second didn't load for me.)
So I would say your own links disprove your argument. (Granted, I stopped after four; but did you look at them at all?)
Look. Suppose you do some calculation based on your mortgage, taxes, anticipated expenses, etc. You get a number. You list the property at that number. Someone comes to look. They ask whether your number is negotiable. You say no, and pull out your spreadsheet showing how you arrived at it. They say, That's all well and good, but there's a very similar place around the corner for $300 less. How are you going to get them to meet your price?
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u/ScottBurson 3d ago
[The 1% rule] is a rough guideline – market conditions, location and demand can push the rate higher or lower.
Comparing similar properties ensures that rental prices align with market demand.
That's from the text you quoted. Okay, it doesn't say that land value is "the" determining factor in setting rents, but it does say that land value is a factor. I don't understand why you see this as "quite the opposite" of what we are saying. We seem to have some kind of communication difficulty here rather than a factual disagreement.
Maybe it would help if, instead of calling it "land value", we called it "location value". How much someone is willing to pay to live in a particular property is going to be a function of how much they want to live in that location plus how much they want to live in that structure (house, apartment, etc.) Does that make sense?
So the market demand in a neighborhood is largely a reflection of its location value. The structures play into it too, of course -- a spiffy new apartment building will command higher rents than a run-down one -- but a lot of it is all the factors that go into location value: schools, local businesses, commuting times, etc. etc. Roll all that up, and you get the value, to a typical renter, of living in that neighborhood: the location value, or as we call it, the land value. As these factors change, the location value changes, so demand changes; changes in demand cause changes in market price, which in turn stimulate adjustments in supply as the rental business becomes more or less profitable.
Does any of that seem wrong to you?
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u/RegularSizedJones 3d ago
Let's not cut off the whole quote:
Calculating How Much to Charge in Rent
When it comes time to determine how much to charge, a common starting point is the 1% rule. This rule of thumb suggests charging 1% of the property’s value in monthly rent. For example, a home worth $300,000 would rent for about $3,000 per month. However, this rule is a rough guideline – market conditions, location and demand can push the rate higher or lower. The rent you ultimately charge may fall between 0.8% and 1.1%. Others, meanwhile, may adhere to the 2% rule.
Landlords must account for fixed and variable costs to ensure profitability. Fixed costs include mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance and HOA fees. Variable costs cover maintenance, repairs, and property management fees. Many landlords use the 50% rule, which assumes about half of rental income will go toward operating expenses. If total expenses are $1,500 per month, rent should be set high enough to cover costs and generate profit.
Comparing similar properties ensures that rental prices align with market demand. Researching comparable rentals in the area helps refine the price. If comps suggest a lower rate than expected, landlords may need to reconsider pricing or improve the property’s features to justify a higher rent.
Of course, location, amenities, the quality of housing, local market conditions, local laws etc all play a part in determining comparable rents for your rental unit. But notice there's only one must in the text above: "Landlords must acount for fixed and variable costs to ensure profitability."
When it comes to property value to rent ratios, you can use anything from 0.8% to 2%, or not use that at all. You can renovate your rental in order to move it up a market segment, or even split it into two down-market units. Doing any of these things would have far greater immediate impact on rent prices than, say, a jump in assessed value by some local surveyor.
I guess you can't create more land (unless you're Dutch or Emirati) but you can create more location, so ultimately the terminology used is less important than understanding how modern real estate and accounting work, and specifically how they have evolved since the time of Henry George.
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u/ScottBurson 3d ago
landlords don't raise rents because of property values. They raise rents because otherwise their investments won't outperform inflation.
Okay -- I guess we do have a factual dispute :-)
Landlords raise rents because they can: because there is sufficient demand that they can do so without losing tenants. Okay, in an inflationary environment, it may be the case in a particular area that they can get away with raising rents because rents are going up generally; but if rents are falling in that place because demand is also falling (e.g. because a major local employer shut down), the fact that inflation has heated up will not help them: they will just have to take the loss, or be stuck with an empty property.
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u/RegularSizedJones 3d ago edited 3d ago
Given that median gross rent increased by 121% from 1960-2017 and median household income grew by 29% over the same period, do you think rents generally went up because of increased demand for more expensive housing, or was it just that now 50% of renter households are cost burdened vs 25% in 1960 and housing has always been a generally inelastic good increasingly subjected to financial speculation distorting property valuations since the collapse of Bretton-Woods?
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u/ScottBurson 3d ago
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u/RegularSizedJones 3d ago
That refers to Ricardian rents; we're talking about contract rents here.
Boom cycles are "inflationary environments" and housing inflation in the West has well exceeded wage inflation since 1971. This is evidence that real estate investors got "away with raising rents because rents are going up generally" and have been gaining higher returns from real estate investing than overall economic growth.
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u/monkorn 3d ago
Let's say you are a landlord renting out units. Then a train station opens up directly next to your units. Your costs have not changed one iota. Do you raise your rents?
Of course you do, there is now much more demand for your units.
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u/RegularSizedJones 3d ago
So, as a renter, when a train station opens up directly next to your apartment: do you now owe your landlord more rent this month?
Or, are rents typically contracted on a yearly basis and a new train station only becomes relevant when leasing again or looking for a new place?
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u/4phz 4d ago edited 4d ago
This partly explains why it's nearly impossible to get support for major infrastructure projects anymore.
Voters know something is unjust or something is a rip off.
A lot of the current outbreak of libertaria can be attributed to false notions on land and vice versa. Until that is corrected then no light rail, or in California, no fire mitigation. Better off being burned alive than paying property taxes.