Land Taxes

[-BlueGreen-]

I'm from a small server, so most of the housing problems don't really apply to me, but I still follow discussions around housing issues.

It seems that the #1 complaint about the current implementation (so, not talking about the numerous suggestions to go to instanced individual housing or stuff that's a dramatic change) is the amount of players who hoard houses for the sole purpose of flipping them for a profit.

It's against the rules, but the GMs can't possibly police everything well enough to catch everyone making it profitable enough for the people who do it anyway. I've seen plenty of "lock housing to 1 per account" suggestions, but since FC leaders shouldn't be prevented from having a personal house if they want, there's no stopping determined hoarders from just owning 8 FC houses per account instead of 8 individual houses.

I had a random thought the other day which might be a potential solution. Instead of trying to introduce some hard restrictions on house ownership, why not instead attack the economic incentives of house flipping? My thought was that some kind of "land tax" could be added to housing which would make the act of simply sitting on land cost gil. In order to turn a profit, then, the seller would have to sell the house for more than the purchase price + total tax paid while waiting for a buyer.

It doesn't have to be too extreme, something like every 30 days:
Small house - 100k gil
Medium house - 500k gil
Large house - 1mil gil
Prices would apply the same for both individual and FC owned houses. The jumps in price between the sizes loosely correspond to the differences in the purchase price of each size.

I know the idea of constantly recurring expenses on owning a house would be a huge turn-off for many, but if it served to deter people from engaging in house-flipping, then I'd expect more houses to open up for people who would actually use them and decorate them. Besides, with housing basically being a large gil sink, I'd think this would fit right in.

Besides, it even opens the opportunity to make the auto-demolition a bit more friendly. Instead of a straight 45-day auto-demolition, house owners might get an escrow account with their house in which they can deposit up to 6x the 30-day tax. If the 30 days is up and your escrow doesn't have sufficient funds to cover the tax, then auto-demolition happens right then (of course, you should get e-mails warning of this as the date approaches). This would give people the ability to pay in advance to keep their house through an extended break.

As a player from a small server where our FC had no trouble getting a house once we could afford one and then later getting my own personal house after auto demolition was added (and seeing plenty of small plots regularly available even today), such a tax would be kind of annoying, but I could easily cover 100k/30 days for my personal house.

I would think that house flippers might find such a tax to be a real pain. Not only would they have to constantly shift funds to their alts to pay for the tax, but every 30 days without a buyer could cost them millions of gil.

Basically, for those in one of the large servers where it seems nothing SE can do with the current system can ever open up enough plots that you can have a shot at home ownership, would you be fine with paying a tax if you knew such a tax made it possible for more people to enjoy housing?

[Acilith]

1mil every 30 days for a large house HELLLLLLL NAAAAWWWW. And the prices are so insane from flippers it wouldn't even matter to them. There's better ways to make gil sinks in game.

[-BlueGreen-]

1mil/30 days a bit much? What would you suggest?

I'd think that flippers would be encouraged to radically drop their prices as they would be strongly encouraged to sell the house sooner to avoid as much tax as possible. In the current setup, there's nothing stopping someone from buying up a plot and listing a price of 200 mil gil forever as they wait for inflation to eventually make it to where someone desperate enough for that house would actually have 200 mil to spare. They could wait years to sell that house and the profit would still be insane. Throw in a tax, though, and the longer they sit on it, the more their profit disappears. This would encourage them to lower prices to what people can and are willing to pay. Additionally, with tax making housing less attractive that would lower demand which should further serve to drive down prices.

Another point to 1mil/30 days for large while 100k/30 days for small is this: Everyone and their dog seems to want a large house, but there's only so many. It makes a bit more sense that large FCs would likely take up large houses and due to the membership (or airships), hopefully not have trouble with that 1mil/30 days. If you can't afford the monthly costs of the house (mansion) of your dreams, but you could afford a smaller place, wouldn't it be better to settle for the smaller place vs not having one at all?

[Acilith]

The only one who makes gil in my fc is me, honestly. We're all RPers. I would be the one paying it every month and I already pay a sub to play this game.

..And you severely underestimate how fast houses sell, even from flippers. :X Small houses on balmung sell for 50mil anyways, what's 100k/month ? It just seems like this is more punishing to everyone else, than to house flippers.

[Sylfaein]

Going after flies with a bazooka, here. This would actually hurt legitimate owners more than it would hurt the flippers.

Just because someone has a house, doesn't mean they have all that cash to spare. To spend months saving up for a house, only to lose it purely because you can't meet the monthly cost would be horrible.

[Dzian]

I'd settle for a land tax (or some equivalent land lease thing) if it meant scrapping the current reclaim system.

Least that way if I wanted to unsub for a patch or 2 I could just pay 3-6 months tax (or equivelant) up front and be safe from demolition

Would be much better than what we have now imo

[Canadane]

It's against the rules, but the GMs can't possibly police everything well enough to catch everyone

They can with your help! If you see something, say something!
Only you can prevent forest fires realtors.

[Dustytome]

Land flippers don't tend to hold onto land, they buy it and immediately go to resell it. The tax would only affect those using the plots. I'm not sure if SE actually does anything as I've reported the same individual selling on multiple accounts/alts and they continue to do so. They need to make it harder to simply drop the land into someone's lap. I'd even like to see them go as far as flagging an account that's flipped a house to be unable to purchase housing other than an apartment or an fc room for up to a year if not permanently. Remove all land associated with the account and in addition they cannot own FC land while the account is flagged. Ownership will always pass them over in the event of an FC leader not returning and they will be ineligible to be directly handed leadership.

[Zigabar]

No. Stop trying to punish the players for SE's mistake. I don't agree with house flippers, but taxing will only punish the legitimate owners.

[Sylfaein]

They can with your help! If you see something, say something!
Only you can prevent forest fires realtors.

Very true. The GMs WILL respond. Spoke to one just the other day about a jerk trying to hock a medium in PF for 40M.

We need a better way to report it, though. It seemed the only way to report in-game was through the harassment pipeline... WTB "Other ToS Violation" option.