Looks like no state, outside of Maine, is really having to deal with this situation. I won't claim to know about how fast those percentages have changed since 2020, it at all. Won't claim to know if the laws have changed in MN since 2020. Won't even claim to know whether Maine having that much foreign held farmland is a prudent thing for Mainers to be doing. Maybe Hovey's point was that it doesn't matter whether there's laws on the books or not, since the situation is not a problem anywhere (yet).
I will confess that I really wasn't trying to make
any point with my brief response to Scooby's post. It was more my cynical take on what I think is a pretty useless Minnesota anti-corporate farming statute.
The idea behind these statutes, at least with respect to agricultural land, is to supposedly try to save the "family farm" (whatever that is) and to prevent what are perceived to be these large livestock ventures who come in, buy up 5000 acres, and have 20,000 dairy cows on them, or something, as opposed to the random dairy farmer with 100 cows.
I don't really have an opinion one way or another on that idea. I think there are positive points to be made on behalf of each side.
But Minnesota's statute, and their enforcement of it, is silly. If you put your farmland into a limited liability company or a corporation, basically the penalty is that the state can make you sell it out of the corporation or llc within five years from their discovering it. Of course, the likelihood that they discover it is almost nil.
Furthermore, you can sell it to yourself, or even better, to another corporation or llc you set up, which then triggers the five year time period again.
It is, in my opinion, a classic example of what I complain about with politics. The illusion of doing something so you can take credit with your voters, when all you have done is waste time and money.
The proposed Minnesota legislation regarding a prohibition on corporate ownership of single family homes is more interesting.
First, I really have no idea what the legislature thinks they will accomplish by this. The stated purpose, in the bill, is to try to make it easier for people to own their own home and build wealth. Ok, that's great, and a good idea, but how is prohibiting corporate ownership of single family homes going to do that?
I have no idea how many single family homes are rentals, but I would guess that whatever that number is, at least 80% of them are owned by corporations or a limited liability company. I know a lot of people who have one, two, maybe three rentals, or sometimes as many as five. All of those people hold the homes in a corporation or limited liability company. The sole reason is liability. If someone visiting a tenant slips and falls, they don't want to be personally sued.
Is prohibiting corporate ownership going to somehow put all of these homes on the market, and make them cheap enough for people to buy? Pretty unlikely. The reason that people don't buy their own home has nothing to do with "corporations" cornering the market on houses. It has everything to do with people can't afford it.
You want people to own their own homes. Do away with the 20 levels of bureaucracy you have to wade through to build a new home. I was talking with a developer awhile back. Once he owns the land, but has done nothing with it, it costs him at least 75 to100 grand per housing lot before he can even stick a shovel in the earth and begin the actual cost of digging a hole and constructing a home.
