> You can either have private equity buying up foreclosed homes and house flipping tv shows or housing being used as housing that most people can afford. America chooses the former, Japan, the latter.

Even in very expensive markets like Silicon Valley, foreclosures are typically less than 1% of total home sales.

Homes are not a speculative investment either. Recent studies have shown investing in housing to be safer than investing in stocks, but with similar returns, over a time period stretching back to 1870: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/03/th...

If the housing prices are growing by 6.7% year by year, and inflation is around 2%, younglings without parents money will have to be priced out and have to work ~5% harder every year which sounds fun /s ;)

I've earned a lot on owning a home, and even have friends who "earn" more per year in owning the home than their salary for a particular year.

Does america have progressive or flat land taxes? Progressive land taxes (higher % tax of land value if you own more of it) make intuitive sense for housing affordability, but I read the Wikipedia[1] and only understood that 'it depends'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax_in_the_United_Sta...

My understanding is that most jurisdictions, but certainly California and Washington state have two types of property tax levies. 'Ad valorem' aka by value, which is a percentage of assessed value (one flat rate for all parcels, not progrssive), and per parcel taxes which is just a specific dollar amount added to each separate parcel.

There's some state by state adjustments to try to benefit owner occupied properties, but the degree to which it helps varies greatly; the California owner occupied exemption saves abou $70/year in taxes (woo?). I'm not aware of progressive property taxes, but there's a lot of different jurisdictions.