Tag: private property

Australian ‘Experts’ Propose Tax On Spare Bedrooms To Ease Housing Shortage

In a brainstorm that has leftist central planners around the world salivating, an Australian market analytics firm has proposed that the country start imposing a tax on spare bedrooms. The aim: To ease the country’s housing shortage by incentivizing those who have more housing than they “need” to sell and downsize. 

Cotality Australia notes that 61% of the country’s households comprise just one or two people, yet the housing stock is dominated by three- and four-bedroom homes. Cotality says that, to “fix” this discrepancy, “governments could make it more expensive to have more housing than you need, and cheaper to live in smaller housing.” 

“It’s perfectly acceptable and desirable for people to have spare bedrooms, [but] you could ask them to pay for it through land tax,” Cotality Australia head of research Eliza Owen told the Sydney Morning Herald. “Or you could incentivize them to move on through the abolition of stamp duty or some combination of both.” The stamp duty is an Australian tax on property transfers that’s paid by buyers. Depending on factors that include location and purpose — for example, whether the buyer is going to live in the home or use it as an investment — it usually falls between 3 and 5% of the property’s value.  

Voices on the Australian right are firing back, among them Alexandra Marshall at The Spectator: 

“In the interests of ‘saving the economy’…we’ve witnessed the start of open season on private assets as part of the intellectual discussion to provide equity. The government didn’t just run out of other people’s money, it’s run out of other people’s houses.

It’s not the fault of Australians that the government started importing millions of foreigners into the country or that the government turns a blind eye when millions more refuse to leave after their visa has expired…How wildly unfair and sinister it is to turn around to Australians and say, I see you have an extra bedroom in that house you worked your arse off to pay for… Move or we’ll tax you.” 

Meanwhile, Australian redistributionists are busy cooking up other means of extracting wealth from homeowners. In a new paper, university professors Peter Siminski and Roger Wilkins assail Australia’s capital gains tax exemption for owner-occupied housing, by which the government foregoes the coercive collection of $50 billion a year. They also urge the imposition of a tax on “imputed rental income” — the value of owning a home and not having to pay rent. In a manifestly Marxist sentence, the academics complain that favorable treatment of owner-occupied housing is “a major driver of inequality, undermining the redistributive role of government.“

Keep reading

Las Vegas church outrages neighbors as congregation parks SIX HUNDRED cars on lawns and driveways

Las Vegas residents were left outraged as congregants at an Ethiopian orthodox church continue to illegally park their vehicles on lawns and driveways.

Neighbors of the Hamere Noah Kidane Mihret and Saint Michael Ethiopian Church told KLAS they have repeatedly reached out to Clark County Commissioner Michael Naft and used the Fixit app as they were instructed, but nothing has changed in years.

‘We document that and we provide that proof and we have found that there’s no follow up,’ said Daria Wu, who gathered her fellow neighbors to discuss the issues they have faced during the services at the church.

These include a spike in speeding cars, vehicles running the stop signs and illegally parked cars.

‘It’s not great to sometimes have your driveway blocked by someone else’s car,’ Wu noted, as a recent morning ceremony brought more than 600 vehicles, most of which were parked illegally in front of county ‘no parking’ signs.

The swath of illegally-parked vehicles extended more than a mile, completely blocking some off some roads. 

Church members have claimed the hundreds of illegally parked vehicles only come once a year, though residents say it is much more frequently that they are dealing with the issue.

A congregant also reportedly admitted that the parking jobs were illegal according to the signs, but was not an issue because the county has not enforced ‘no parking’ rules.

Keep reading

The Number of Housing Units Under Construction Continues to Crash

What’s the impact on rent?

Decline from Post-Covid Peak

  • Total Units: 20.7 percent
  • Single-Family: 25.2 percent
  • Multi-Family: 27.3 percent

The decline puts the number of single-family units under construction near the middle of a very wide range of 236,000 on the low end and 990,000 on the high end.

However, the number of multi-family units under construction is still enormous historically speaking.

Impact on Rent

For three years, the consensus opinion (not mine) was that rent prices would collapse.

That didn’t happen although the rate of increase in the price of rent has slowed dramatically.

However, Trump sealing off the Southern border from immigration, could soon start having a positive impact (lower rents) if builders started too much immigration-based construction.

Keep reading

These Are America’s 25 Largest Private Landowners

The U.S. is known for its massive public national parks, but a handful of families and entrepreneurs also own tracts of land that would dwarf some states.

This infographic, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, ranks America’s 25 largest private landowners in 2025 and shows just how concentrated ownership has become.

The data for this visualization comes from The Land Report, which annually tracks the nation’s biggest deed holders. Its 2025 investigations reveals a timber-heavy top tier, diversified ranching empires in the middle, and a sprinkling of tech titans and investors rounding out the list.

Keep reading

California’s Fraudulent “Disaster Recovery” Is A Land Grab

Remember Gavin Newsom’s first visit to the sites of devastating fires last January in Los Angeles, when he vowed to streamline California’s paralytic regulations so people could quickly rebuild their homes?

In that interview, while undulating his shoulders in a weird shimmy that will undoubtedly come back to haunt him as he ramps up his presidential campaigning, Newsom also promised to “prevent opportunistic investors from exploiting vulnerable residents by offering below-market prices.”

It’s hard to say which promise has been more thoroughly violated. As celebrity author Adam Carolla posted on 7/14, there is virtually no work going on along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, where hundreds of homes burned down to the sand.

This is typical.

The Palisades Fire, with a burn area that included Malibu, destroyed over 6,000 homes. So far, 161 permits have been issued by the City of Los Angeles. The community of Altadena, which was consumed by the Eaton Fire, lost over 9,000 homes. So far, 84 rebuilding permits have been issued.

Instead of streamlining the process to get permits to rebuild, if anything, the city has made it harder. In a July 14 interview with the local ABC affiliate, one dispossessed homeowner claimed the city is adding new requirements and deadlines, saying, “They’re now requiring you to submit an itemized list with pricing, which is nearly impossible in a home that’s been owned for over 40, 50 years.”

But whether it’s California Governor Gavin Newsom or Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, the playbook is not designed to help people rebuild their homes and move back into the neighborhoods where their families have lived for generations. New regulations did not replace old regulations. They added as much as they removed, with the new ones being unfamiliar even to veteran builders. All of them, of course, came delivered with the rhetoric of streamlining, while in fact only adding complexity.

Newsom, a tool of corporatist special interests, and Bass, a socialist darling of public sector union bosses, were never playing a game intended to help anyone living in a “single-family detached home.” The new regulations, sold as a way to expedite permitting, were in fact a way to make rebuilding impossible for all but the wealthiest homeowners. And Newsom’s executive order that would “prevent opportunistic investors from exploiting vulnerable residents by offering below-market prices” was actually a move calculated to limit the options of homeowners while the special interests—including the government itself—lined up to purchase these properties.

This isn’t speculation. In late June, Los Angeles County’s “Blue Ribbon Commission on Climate Action and Fire-Safe Recovery” issued its “draft action plan” for “The Resilient and Sustainable Rebuilding of Los Angeles County.” This document is a textbook example of what corporate socialist elites have in store for those normal citizens who, to date, still maintain a modicum of financial independence.

Keep reading

Watch Mamdani the Commie Say That He’s OK With the ‘Abolition of Private Property’

People on the left keep insisting that New York City Democrat nominee for mayor, Zohran Mamdani is not a communist, yet clip after clip of this guy talking reveals him to be an outspoken Marxist through and through.

This time, it’s a clip of him on some podcast saying that he is fine with the abolition of private property.

Note how he frames it. He wraps these comments in claims that he just cares so much about making sure that everyone has housing that he is open to doing away with private property. See? It’s just because he cares so much that he might have to take homes away from some people in order to make sure that other people have homes. It’s all about caring.

FOX News reports:

Zohran Mamdani’s past comments are once again coming back to haunt his New York City mayoral campaign, as a resurfaced video reveals the socialist candidate floated the “abolition of private property.”

“My platform is that every single person should have housing, and I think faced with these two options, the system has hundreds of thousands of people unhoused, right? For what?” Mamdani questioned in a resurfaced video that has been clipped and reposted across conservative social media.

“If there was any system that could guarantee each person housing, whether you call it the abolition of private property or you call it, you know, just a statewide housing guarantee, it is preferable to what is going on right now,” Mamdani said.

“People try and play like gotcha games about these kinds of things, and it’s like, look, I care more about whether somebody has a home,” he said.

The clip drew widespread condemnation from conservatives, including GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, who told Fox News Digital, “He claims to be a socialist, whether it’s wanting to abolish private property or wanting to seize the means of production, these are communist ideas right out of the playbook of Karl Marx.”

Keep reading

International Buyers Purchased $56 Billion Worth Of US Homes In 1 Year

Foreign buyers purchased $56 billion worth of existing homes in the United States between April 2024 and March 2025, up by 33.2 percent from the previous 12 months, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said in a July 14 statement.

In terms of the number of properties, they bought 78,100 units, a 44 percent increase from the prior year. This was also the first annual increase since 2017. The average purchase price was $494,400, a “record high,” NAR said.

“International interest in buying U.S. real estate increased following the global economic recovery from several years of pandemic-related disruptions,” NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement.

“However, elevated home prices and interest rates continue to dampen overall potential sales activity and remain well below pre-pandemic levels.”

China was the top buyer nation of U.S. existing homes, making up 15 percent of all foreign purchases. Canada was a close second at 14 percent, followed by Mexico at 8 percent, India at 6 percent, and the United Kingdom at 4 percent.

The top housing market for international buyers was Florida, which accounted for 21 percent of all such deals. This was followed by California (15 percent), Texas (10 percent), New York (7 percent), and Arizona (5 percent).

“To some degree, due to stubbornly high mortgage rates, a greater share of international home buyers paid cash—47 percent compared to 28 percent among all buyers—and they were more likely to purchase homes priced in the upper end of the market,” Yun said.

“Foreign buyers are drawn to investing in American real estate, in part, by our country’s strong protection of private property rights.”

Among all foreign purchases, 56 percent were made by foreigners who live in the United States as recent immigrants or who have visas allowing them to reside in the country.

Interest in U.S. home purchases by Canadians dropped this year amid trade tensions, according to a July 4 statement from real estate brokerage Redfin.

The number of Canadian users on the Redfin platform searching for homes in the United States decreased by 26.4 percent from a year earlier in May.

Keep reading

During the Pandemic, NYC Communist Zohran Mamdani Called to ‘Seize’ the Homes of the Rich for the Homeless

Over the course of just a few weeks, it has been revealed that NYC communist and Democrat nominee for mayor, Zohran Mamdani has embraced nearly every stereotypical Marxist slogan that has ever been uttered.

It’s not just words, either. His entire political and policy platform is communist.

Now it is being reported that during Covid, Mamdani called on people to ‘seize’ the ‘luxury’ homes of the rich for the homeless.

Should we start with his?

FOX News reports:

Socialist NYC mayoral candidate Mamdani once called to ‘seize’ luxury homes to house homeless during COVID

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Party’s candidate for New York City mayor and a self-proclaimed socialist, is once again garnering backlash for previous comments he has made espousing language steeped in radical socialist and communist ideology.

Mamdani, this time, is getting blasted for calling on the government to “seize” luxury condos to house the homeless during the coronavirus pandemic.

The unearthed remarks, stemming from a March 2020 social media post, followed news of separate rediscovered remarks from Mamdami touting the need to “de-commodify” housing through replacing luxury condos with communal-style living that would include things like shared laundry facilities and food co-ops.

“The oligarchs who want us to return to work to goose the stock market are the same ones with thousands of luxury condos as investment properties, sitting empty while NYers die on the streets & in shelters,” Mamdani wrote on social media in response to a news report claiming the first homeless person in New York City with the coronavirus had passed away amid the pandemic.

This guy makes AOC look like a moderate.

Keep reading

AND THERE IT IS: California Governor Gavin Newsom Announces Funding for New ‘Multifamily Rental Housing’ After LA Wildfires

This week, we learned that less than 100 building permits have been issued in Los Angeles, six months after the destructive wildfires that destroyed entire neighborhoods like the Pacific Palisades.

Now California Governor Gavin Newsom has announced $101 million in funding for new ‘multifamily rental housing’ as a solution for housing displaced residents in the area. It almost seems like this was the goal all along.

Who could have predicted such a thing?

From the governor’s website:

Governor Newsom commits $101 million to jumpstart critical rebuilding efforts after LA Fires

Los Angeles, California – Six months after the LA Fires, Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) announced the release of $101 million to help rapidly rebuild critically needed, affordable multifamily rental housing in the fire-devastated Los Angeles region. Thousands of families are still displaced by the wildfires that raged through the Greater Los Angeles Region in January 2025, placing an incredible strain on an already tight rental market.

Tomiquia Moss, Secretary of the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency: “The State’s special Multifamily Finance Super NOFA will galvanize the collective public-private response to the wildfires in Los Angeles County, expediting and expanding opportunities to build affordable housing for low-income residents. By prioritizing affordable housing projects that are ready to go, these funds will accelerate household stability, climate and health outcomes in communities.”

No one seems very surprised by this.

Keep reading

She Got a Permit for Her Chickens. Now the City Is Fining Her $80,000.

The city of Douglas, Michigan, is determined to take the “free” out of “free range.” In 2023, Kathryn Sarkisian, a resident of the Lake Michigan tourist town, wanted to do something that seemed simple enough: raise chickens in her backyard. She then sought—and received—a permit directly from the city, authorizing her to do so. Barely a month later, the city pulled an about-face, telling Sarkisian that she would have to get rid of her chickens on account of a neighbor’s complaint.

Douglas originally passed its chicken ordinance in 2020, which gives neighbors a 21-day period within which to object to nearby chicken permit requests. This process wasn’t followed, though, since the neighbor’s complaint came after the city had already issued Sarkisian’s permit. The city claimed that it had forgotten to notify the neighbors of their right to object during the review process and had therefore done so retroactively. Since one neighbor ended up objecting, Sarkisian was told she’d have to get rid of her chickens.

In the meantime, Sarkisian had spent $23,000 building a chicken coop and a privacy fence to shield the chickens from view. When Sarkisian refused to budge, the city began assessing a $300-per-day fine in November 2024. This means she is currently facing nearly $80,000 in fines for her refusal to comply with the city’s demands. Worse yet, the city hasn’t even clarified when the tolling period for the fines started—if it started from the time she began raising the chickens, the fines would now total over $200,000.

Despite the immense financial penalties at play, Sarkisian’s six plucky chickens still stride outside her back door. “I was raised in a family that loves this country, that believes in our freedom, that’s grateful for people who fought and who still fight for our freedoms,” Sarkisian told MLive in a recent interview. “And those freedoms and rights are very near and dear to me.”

Keep reading