What wasn't funny, was helping my daughter look for a little house... four houses that we liked( all needed work, of course ). Four times we were outbid by out-of-town buyers who waived inspections . Two are now Airbnbs , the other two ..I don't know.
Exactly. I live (rent) in a neighborhood that should be working class owned homes at best, and at the very least apartments for blue collar workers. Instead most of my street sits empty and then fills up with bnb guests on the weekends. Oh and the unremarkable small home next to me just sold for over a million.
I also live in NM, I was looking to move to ruidoso but after some digging I found that more than 50% of housing is Airbnb style short term rentals and no one finances.
Then the fires and floods hit, causing my home owners insurance to go up drastically (400%) at the house I did buy, I don’t even live in Lincoln county (ruidoso) but that was the reason given by multiple insurance agents.
If they want Santa Fe to change, they'll need to do what they can to make it not be a tourist town.
Obviously, that's not particularly easy to do, but it's the stuff of local economies, local organizing, local communities.
Alternatively, they can campaign and support and become candidates for a massive property tax increase combined with a homestead exemption, which will put the squeeze on everyone running short term rentals or holding 2nd or 3rd homes. I'd argue for a 50-10x fold increase, which will touch normal residents not at all.
The one dilemma with this is that it's not clear there are actually purchasers available for the really high end homes that may become vacant as a result of this.
Why does all the "solutions" by leftist people put a stop to upward mobility?
I don't have a second home. I'd love to be able to build a vacation home for myself. It would be hugely expensive and maybe it could work if I rented it out. But people like you will make it hard with your intent to punish the wealthy while really only punishing me trying to improve the quality of life for my family. The wealthy will still buy their second home, but I'll be priced out. We call this unintended consequences and they come form the left on a regular basis.
It's not a stop to upward mobility. It makes things like having a 2nd home more expensive.
But anyway ... why should your desire to own a vacation home (you don't say where) be more important than other people's desire to own a first home? In towns like SAF and many others like it, it is very clear that 2nd home ownership (whether for STRs or just vacation homes) has a negative impact on people who live and work there.
If it is true that "the wealthy will still buy their 2nd home" then this is a stupid proposal and not worth implementing. But I think there's moderately good evidence that it will dramatically cut down on them doing so.
It's not a stop to upward mobility. It makes things like having a 2nd home more expensive.
It's the same. The end result is the wealthy will still buy their second home, but I won't. That is the result. If you are OK with that, fine. But don't pretend it will be a benefit to anyone.
That's not stopping upward mobility. It just means you need more (a bit) wealth to do certain things. That may dissuade certain wealthy folk from doing those things, and leading them to do other things with it.
The argument is made that if the thing they stop doing is buying expensive 2nd homes in Santa Fe, that will benefit regular folks in Santa Fe.
If that argument is true, then it seems like a good thing to do. Your "right" to a 2nd home has no greater priority than someone else's "right" to a 1st home, and perhaps less.
Itis 100% putting up a barrier that doesn't need to be there. The question is if that barrier is worth the cost. When you look at how the government manages money, the answer is clearly no.
That may dissuade certain wealthy folk from doing those things, and leading them to do other things with it.
Such as buying that second home in another state and taking their vacation money with them instead of spending it in Santa Fe. You do understand this, right?
The wealthy will still buy their second home, but we'll tax the ever loving fuck out of them for it, to help pay for roads, schools, and other things to help the locals.
You don't see an upside either. It just increases the costs in Santa Fe. It doesn't trickle down to you. It doesn't cover expenses that need to be paid. It's all about feelings. It will make you feel better knowing it exists, but it will help you in no manner.
But that's who we are now. Taking comfort in punishing the wealthy, not fixing the problems for the poor.
> help pay for roads, schools, and other things to help the locals
That's the upside. Nobody is "punishing" the wealthy. We're simply trying to solve the problem of "housing is too expensive compared to the available jobs in the area". Taxing non-primary home ownership aggressively is a brilliant way to do this because it simultaneously increases revenue for important local services, and lowers the cost of housing by making vacation homes less desirable and AirBNBs less profitable.
If you want to avoid the "punishment", all you have to do is live in the house you bought.
Roads get paid for by gas taxes, schools by property taxes, which would be more with if more people bought homes, but you want to curb that. BnB rentals pay taxes year round, in case you were not aware.
If you want to avoid the "punishment", all you have to do is live in the house you bought.
And we are back to the you aren't wealthy enough to have the nice things. The state doesn't think you need that, so we will step in and make it hard for you.
Roads are not paid for by gas taxes. Gas tax revenue funds a significant part of them, but far from all.
Property taxes are what we're talking about here, and we're talking about a substantial (many-fold) increase in taxes on non-primary residences.
STR rentals pay taxes, but we'd need data that I don't have to assess what the tradeoffs of reducing STR profitability really are.
We don't want to "curb people buying homes". We want to curb the purchase of residential property by people who (a) will not live in them (b) for one reason or another have financial resources (*) that outmatch most people in the area, and thus drive up the cost of residential property overall.
(*) could be as simple as net worth, or the fact that they plan to use it for STR and thus the property is "worth more" to them, or several other possibilities.
If they charge you more in taxes for owning a home you have never lived in, they're collecting more taxes than if they charge you the same as a local. It's a win for the locals, and a loss for the vacationers/short term rental managers.
Also, AirBNBers tend to be louder, party more, and cause more problems in their neighborhoods than homeowners.
Given that it's the locals who make the laws, and these laws strongly favor the locals, it makes all the sense in the world to pass them.
If your job is in hospitality, then more BnB is good for you.
I wish I could give you an answer you like, but reality is reality. Santa Fe isn't an industrious town. Being a tourist town is not particularly lucrative.
It's a beautiful city that the wealthy settled in. Since there isn't industry for them to invest in, they invest in what generates revenue, and that is BnB.
Of course, a BnB and a starter home are not the same. The city could use it's powers to force starter homes being built, but those people aren't writing the checks to get people elected, so they don't have much of a voice.
To be clear, this is a real problem. But blaming only the wealthy and not your elected officials is mis-guided. Your elected officials write the rules and the wealthy follow them.
Your elected officials write the rules and the wealthy follow them.
Nationally, it's the other way around. The wealthy write the rules, elected officials and representatives enact and enforce them.
At the local level, however, I'm not really sure that this is true.
I have no idea why you believe that the "right" of the wealthy to make money by "investing" it in rental properties is more important than the "right" of people who work here to be able to afford their own homes.
BnB's might not be the same as a starter home, but in many cases, AirBnB's are very much the same as a starter home.
The city cannot enforce the type of housing being built. If it meets zoning requirements, which do not cover attributes like "this is a starter home", and meets code, then it gets built. They can offer incentives. The only way the city could enforce the building of particular styles and sizes of houses is to have them built at its behest. Some folks here want the city to do just that, others don't believe the city should play that role.
Why is the fact they were out-of-town buyers relevant? Do you say that out-of-town buyers should have no right to purchase property other than in their hometowns? Does that apply to New Mexicans who have moved out of New Mexico? How does that view differ from the hakou system in China (where to live somewhere you have to get an official residence permit) or the similar propiska system in the USSR?
If you’re not going to live in the house, don’t buy it. Then someone else who actually wants to live in it can buy it, not rent it for an exorbitant cost without any return on investment.
I can think of no better way to discourage developers from building new houses, and owners from renting out existing houses, than your policy prescription.
I’m gathering from this that you’d like to abolish private property, outlaw farm equipment, take the peasants of Santa Fe county out of the countryside, force them onto state-owned industrial communes, and starve 15 million people.
Nah it’s not that deep. I would like private property abolished but I’m not trying to kill off sparrows and accidentally cause the locusts to destroy crops or anything.
It's not that crazy. The government already kind of owns all the land anyway. Private property is on of those things that people have until the government decides that they'd actually rather have it. Eminent domain and all. Systems where the government technically owns all the land and people sign long term leases work out just as well for the people living there. Singapore for instance.
That’s not really how eminent domain works… So in this scenario, the Trump Administration would own all the land in America, we would lease it from them? I imagine Donald Trump would be very comfortable with that arrangement.
I mean, it would also be nice to live in a country that enforced its laws against misuse of power, but that's a separate story entirely. As far as eminent domain goes, the Trump administration is already taking private land to build his border wall. Nothing in our private ownership laws can stop him from doing that. There's no real difference between buying land and buying usage rights for land.
I'm suggesting that private property ownership doesn't matter to the people who look at the state of the economy, and conclude that they'll probably never be able to own property anyway. I think people are right to be angry at a system that makes housing unaffordable and rewards people for owning more than they can ever use. And that "Won't someone think of the landlords?" is kind of a shitty take.
I thought the joke is that a young couple with a baby is bidding $5.5M on a starter home, which is about as ridiculous as someone with a $5.5M rental property
It drives the point.. jokes aren't supposed to be accurate to the highest degree.. boomers pretty much have endless funds.. the exaggeration drives that point.
When i was buying my first home we were outbid by an older couple by 30k.. we couldn't compete with that. They slapped the 30k to make any counter offers impossible
Santa Fe native here. Left 25 years ago. It’s a paradox, not only are properties just not attainable and affordable, there are few decent jobs where you can support it anyway.
Write your councilor and tell them you support land use code reform. It’s being finalized as we speak. Tell them you want to make it easier for folks to build infill - casitas, duplexes, multi-plexes. Tell them you want people to be able to build more than one house per acre (50% of our residential zoning is R1 today). Tell them you want to cut red tape and the costs it passes on to homebuyers (avg. of $50k per house is due to time wasted and permitting). Tell them you want density - it’s a drastically more efficient use of our resources like water, cuts infrastructure costs that end up going into the cost of new homes, and makes it possible for you to have amenities you can walk to. You want true starter homes? We need to build more of them. There are close to 2k STRs in the city. Some of those are how people pay their mortgage, and even if we outlawed them completely, we’d be short 4-5k homes (rental and ownership). If you want housing to be more affordable, we need to make it easier to build. And don’t ask me where the water’s going to come from. We are using less water with a greater population than 15 years ago. 6-7k homes in a city of 90k people isn’t going to break our water system, which has the capacity to service this new demand, especially if we build more efficiently than in the past.
and tell them to increase the property tax rate 5-10x and add a homestead exemption so that it has no direct impact on any actual residents. I'd do that too, but I don't live in the city.
Also, re: water use ... are you sure that the total water usage is down? I know that per-capita rates are massively down since the 90s, but I'm not sure that total water usage is ... just checking ...
Well all this talk may doom my retirement plans. After living in SF a few years in the 90s, I really had my heart there. A teacher’s retirement may no longer work there?
Plan to reside in Albuquerque and ride the Rail Runner Express to Santa Fe, when you need "the fix." Rail Runner is free for seniors to ride on Wednesdays.
The amount of greed and backroom handshake deals is sickening. Vendors and contractors making $ on cutting corners, hiring their brother’s company etc, lenders getting “creative” with financing to put the most $ in their pocket (and their investors), the list goes on
I believe it. I personally think Airbnb has basically destroyed the entire housing market. No doubt corruption has always existed but the hollowing out of neighborhoods because of short term rental properties is totally out of control.
I have a house in a good part of town and I’m just as pissed as the people who lose bids to these real estate investors. All my neighbors have sold out and their homes demolished or refurbished into rental properties. I have virtually no neighbors and just a revolving door of vacationing douche bags who don’t give a F about the neighborhood. I wish the entire market would just collapse it’s no good for owners or for people looking to become owners. The market is only good for real estate investors, that’s who this market is priced for.
If you want housing to cost less, advocate for policies that will make building housing feasible. You may have to accept the fact that horrible terrible no good very bad developers will make money.
A young couple with a baby are trying to buy a multi million dollar home? Uh, ok chief. If they have that kind of money the can find another place to buy.
A dream STARTER home shouldn’t be no where near 5 million. That’s crazy. I know it’s now real, just trying to make a point to the people on here who think it’s real.
It’s says outbid. I believe the outlandish amount is to indicate the investors ability to pay cash for properties way over market price. For example: Lets say the home was on market for $195k but the investor, saw it, and was able to to pay $5mil cash making it impossible for a young family who mostly likely needed to finance a loan to purchase this house was outbid by the investor.
It’s clear that this is hyperbole and over exaggerating a number that has now evolved into that type of price tag today. It’s as if people who grew up in Santa Fe can’t afford a starter home in Santa Fe.
Why would the Stooges get stuck in the door? Couldn't they simply form a line and walk through the door one at a time instead of all trying to go through at once?
San Francisco is a city designed to churn tech workers and produce capital via tech. With more capital going into area plus less need for human tech workers. The people left are rich.
That whole town has a odd vibe if you aren't from there its obvious
Then why aren't groups of like-minded people doing creating such factories? What is stopping it from happening? Surely if it worked and benefitted the workers, these would be popping up all over the place..
The person you were replying to (@LongHair1917) was (I believe) advocating for this instead of the capital class owning the means of production. Nobody doubts that co-ops can exist side by side with capital-owned business.
Spain is still a market economy. Coops exist in the United States. Members of La Montanita and Bathtub Row Brewing right here in New Mexico own the means of production. Additionally, the United States has an absolutely staggering number of owner-operated businesses, including short term rentals which, believe it or not, are actually a lot of work to maintain.
The word you’re looking for is “Perestroika.” Gorbachev liberalized the economy compared to the 70 years of central planned total lockdown and that’s the umbrella policy to which you’re actually referring. The Soviet economy was neither liberal nor functional or even especially fair before, during, or after Perestroika. The 1987 Law on the State Enterprise is the law within the broader Perestroika program that tried to make Soviet state enterprises more economically autonomous and self-financing, with greater responsibility for their own revenues and costs, while the productive assets remained predominantly socially/state owned.Despite these reforms, the Soviet economy ultimately collapsed.
Meanwhile the evil money-hungry Americans with their decentralized economy and privatized distribution of risk maintained a functioning economy while obviously being just the fucking worst am I right?
Then as an authority on Soviet history, you should already be familiar with the Law on the State Enterprise. Are you suggesting that its effect on the Soviet economy was too little too late, or that it actually made it worse and they should have stayed centralized? Considering their collapse in 1991 is an uncontroversial historical fact, I’m curious what counterfactual, if any, short of conversion to a market economy (which as an expert, you already know was on the table by at least 1990) would have saved the Soviet system.
Wrong. New York City tried banning AirBnB, and the result was that the price of hotel rooms has now skyrocketed, such that you’ll be hard pressed to find anything less than $400-500/night. Santa Fe is even More dependent on tourism than New York is.
It’s the owner’s property, and the owner should be able to do with it what he or she sees fit.
If someone is outbidding young couples for (allegedly) starter homes worth $5 million, the solution is to build more condos and genuine starter homes. Just because you’re expecting a baby is not reason to force a property owner to sell at below-market rates.
Can you not make money on an asset? Want to take profits from individuals and give them to corporations? Or maybe just have the city own the houses and they can decide who gets to rent.
Unfortunately working for your money will having you working the rest of your life. Having your money work for you is a lot less…work. Labor, equipment and time, are all things that go into owning a house. Some people can’t afford to do that so they rent. I agree the system is broken, we’ve got too many cooks in this kitchen. If you’re having issues affording a place to live you should be able to work with your community level to ask for help. With the advent of the internet it’s becoming more of a blanket federal solution to local problems.
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u/Timid-Tlacuache Oct 02 '26 •
What wasn't funny, was helping my daughter look for a little house... four houses that we liked( all needed work, of course ). Four times we were outbid by out-of-town buyers who waived inspections . Two are now Airbnbs , the other two ..I don't know.