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You don't seem to get my point. How much money would someone who rents their house (or someone who owns it but doesn't own more) pay? How much tax cut would they get? What about someone who owns three villas and six airbnb apartments?
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Nope.
I'm saying that a tax cut is just a different form of taxpayer money and asking why, in the first place, we should want to use taxpayer money to increase the value of the assets of people (or companies) who own buildings.
I would really feel for that poor-poor landlord who would no longer be able to live off the rent they are paid every month (and who surely would not just increase such rent), but I still wouldn't want to use my money for improving their building.
PS: income is not a measure of wealth. One can live off their wealth (often inherited) and still generate little or no income.
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Did I ever say landlords are a bunch of rich bastards? This is twice you put words into my mouth. IDK if it's a way of thinking or a deliberate debate technique, but please stop: it's really irritating.
Also, since "you are afraid I know little about the real estate business", would you be so kind as to enlighten me with your wisdom? or should I defer to your authority and just trust you? (BTW: we are not talking about how things work - we are talking about how we think they should work. I know full well that building and renovations -among other activities- are often incentivized. That has much more to do with politics than ethics).
Hence the need for fees/taxes to dis-incentivize not doing that.
For the rest... landlords are people who chose to invest in a building (rather than bonds/stocks or whatever). [edit: Specifically, they are not benefactors of humanity who provide a home for those who can't afford to buy one (I'm not saying that's what you think - it's just something I often hear, similarly to entrepreneurs who "give jobs" rather than buying work because they need it)]
It is not my responsibility that their investment bears fruit.
If more people need to sell buildings, prices go down and buildings become affordable for people who previously couldn't afford them. This is not considered in your reasoning.
Politics treats landlords with special regard for exquisitely political reasons: landlors are lots (many more than - say - factory owners), and they are generally either "small" and naive (ie. the typical one-to-a-few-buildings landlord usually decides by gut feeling rather than actually calculating things out), or "big" and comparatively very powerful (think mega-rich people or real estate companies).
Usually, this leads to populist proposals that cut property taxes or that (like these incentives) transform taxpayer money into increased value of private assets (buildings).
Such proposals actually mostly benefit the "big and powerful" landlords, but are nonetheless also backed by the small ones, too naive to actually understand that where they spare a few hundred euros per year, the mega-rich get to buy an extra mansion (and too full of themselves to understand that the poorest who don't own buildings pay without getting anything in return).
That's an admirable initiative! I didn't know about that.
I think we trust the free market (which is rally the market of the strongest) way too much and IMHO basic necessities (rent, utilities, public transport) should have a set price.
I can't really comment on that law (I mean... I do like it in principle, but of course the devil is in the details).
I don't really see why pushing for renovations without the incentives should have the same effect as setting rents by law, or how a supposed increase in the supply of houses (*) could screw up the rent market (I mean, rents are gonna go up across the field... that's just normal since house will be better and utility bills lower. If you fear that people will not be able to afford rent anymore, give incentives to poor families who don't own their house, instead of paying landlords for renovations).
(*) "supposed" because I don't really think many people would be forced to sell because they can't either renovate or pay the fees for failing to do so - but of course the law could be written to demand unreasonable renovations and impose unreasonable fees.. it's a quantitative problem, not one of principle.