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What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

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Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#81

Post by lowercase1 »

lucasmullens wrote: post #70
1996 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. This is why the US is so much better than Asia. What worries me however is how there are more and more laws and regulation to not let people crash and burn - like forcing people to have health insurance. Stupid code for building houses - etc EDIT: and I'm not being sarcastic. I admire how by taking the correct decision to apparently sacrifice the poor, we have made the pie bigger for everyone including the p…

Wait, what? You're against building codes? A lack of building codes is in no way why the US has been successful. They prevent people from literally burning.

GP frames it wrong but building codes make make affordable housing very hard to create in ways unrelated to safety.

>most homes built in Des Moines will be required to have a full basement, a single-car garage, and a driveway. Minimum lot sizes for single-family houses will range from 7,500 to 10,000 square feet. Building codes meant to guarantee residents’ safety will now decree their comfort

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-02/with-zoni...

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#82

Post by uihududhmd »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #49
blackrock wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fox is guarding the henhouse. The politicians themselves are benefitting from the situation. So why would they change it?

Who exactly is benefiting? I'd love to have this card in my back pocket for debates. Are there specific politicians we can draw-and-quarter over this? Or was your statement just a generic "all politicians bad" rant with no real citations?

US Political donation data https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=F10

Article from the guardian about US Senators investments https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/19/us-senators-...

Investment portfolios of some Indian politicians. I'm not familiar with the politics of India. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/wealth/plan/what-do-pol...

In general, wealthy of all stripes are invested in real estate to some degree. "Land - they're not making any more of it"

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#83

Post by [deleted] »

dhbradshaw wrote: post #48

After a cold snap recently I went out to visit an older couple in a trailer who had had their plumbing burst due to freezing. The trailer was in really rough shape. They were huddling under blankets because heating and insulation were inadequate. And now they had no water. Two things make me angry about the trailer park situation. 1. people living there who only get poorer from it. They own the portion of the home th…

[deleted]

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#84

Post by wing-_-nuts »

1996 wrote: post #65
exolymph wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States is the land of high variance. We let people crash and burn, but we also let people soar. A society that permits the former is unremarkable — letting people suffer is the default in poverty, and most countries are relatively quite poor. But the latter, letting the tall poppies stand proud with not much more than heckling for their height, is something special, and it's a big part of how we've become…

So true. This is why the US is so much better than Asia. What worries me however is how there are more and more laws and regulation to not let people crash and burn - like forcing people to have health insurance. Stupid code for building houses - etc EDIT: and I'm not being sarcastic. I admire how by taking the correct decision to apparently sacrifice the poor, we have made the pie bigger for everyone including the p…

/s? Not sure if /s

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#85

Post by [deleted] »

dhbradshaw wrote: post #48

After a cold snap recently I went out to visit an older couple in a trailer who had had their plumbing burst due to freezing. The trailer was in really rough shape. They were huddling under blankets because heating and insulation were inadequate. And now they had no water. Two things make me angry about the trailer park situation. 1. people living there who only get poorer from it. They own the portion of the home th…

[deleted]

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#86

Post by FooHentai »

clairity wrote: post #72
FooHentai wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure you're entirely correct. A lot of people plan on downsizing their housing when they reach retirement age - Move somewhere smaller because you don't need to accommodate the kids any more, and further out of an urban center because you don't need to commute any more. This is a net positive - It frees up more valuable real estate in urban centers for working-age citizens to utilize, and extracts capital fro…

that's a false dichotomy. you can support freeing up urban real estate and retirees downsizing without assuming a house is an investment. for instance, if the economic system acted to stabilize home values neutrally rather than explicitly promoting increasing valuations (through interest rates, and other mechanisms), you could still have those positive dynamics without the negative externalities.

You're right. Ops position was that housing should not be seen as any kind of investment. My point was that, for retirees, housing is a valid investment vehicle and that dynamic is valuable to society as a whole. But on reflection, I'm thinking in the wrong terms here. I could better view this as housing being an important store of value for retirees, rather than an investment generating financial return for them.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#87

Post by throwawayboise »

mike_d wrote: post #56
phkahler wrote: post #18

Housing can not be both affordable AND an investment. Interest rates need to rise, and soon.

Many countries have solved this problem by providing near zero interest loans to individuals purchasing a primary residence, while maintaining higher interest rates for investment properties and corporate purchases.

That's how it works in the USA as well. Mortgage interest for a home you live in will be lower than for investment property. Insurance is cheaper also.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#88

Post by bityard »

dhbradshaw wrote: post #48

After a cold snap recently I went out to visit an older couple in a trailer who had had their plumbing burst due to freezing. The trailer was in really rough shape. They were huddling under blankets because heating and insulation were inadequate. And now they had no water. Two things make me angry about the trailer park situation. 1. people living there who only get poorer from it. They own the portion of the home th…

Where I live, there are many levels of quality when it comes to "trailer parks". I know of a few that are essentially slums: very low-income residents, crowded, dirty, noisy, and packed with trailers from the 50s and 60s. I don't know who would _choose_ to live in these places. Maybe it's a case of poor people being poor because they make poor choices. Or simply aren't aware that there are better options.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are communities with HOA rules, well-kept common areas, a clubhouse, etc. My mom lives in one of these. Honestly, it's not a bad place to live. I could totally live there if needed to. I tried to talk her out of buying it based on the economics alone ($400/mo lot rent plus around $60k for the house) but she went ahead with it anyway. It doesn't make financial sense to me, but maybe she sees something about the situation that I don't.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#89

Post by omegaworks »

exolymph wrote: post #42
Shacklz wrote: post #14

The US are such a weird country... on one hand, Silicon valley et al, producing the coolest tech & the shiniest toys, and on the other hand... people who can only afford to live in trailer parks, even with a full time job. It never ceases to amaze & depress me simultaneously.

The United States is the land of high variance. We let people crash and burn, but we also let people soar. A society that permits the former is unremarkable — letting people suffer is the default in poverty, and most countries are relatively quite poor. But the latter, letting the tall poppies stand proud with not much more than heckling for their height, is something special, and it's a big part of how we've become…

This is blatant capitalist propaganda. Basic access to things like housing and education make for a tangibly wealthier society. Every dollar we invest in preschool education, for example, nets out $6 in terms of return throughout the course of the child's life.[1]

The nation continues on its "high variance" trajectory because it is structurally incapable of acting democratically. Two of the four major deliberative bodies are anti-democratic. The Senate is elected in extreme disproportion and the Supreme Court is ridiculous 9 unelected seniors deciding outcomes for an entire country.

It was set up this way intentionally, to entrench and structurally favor wealthy Southern slaveholders and established Northern merchants that traded on their commodities.

1. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/12/12/504867570/how-inv...

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#90

Post by evancox100 »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #15
BitwiseFool wrote: post #12

How can individuals compete against institutional money? Housing prices are skyrocketing in my area and there are stories on the news about investment firms buying up homes and putting them up for rent. What's to stop these well financed institutions from buying up more and more real estate and forcing more people into renting?

They can't. Nothing and they are already are doing it. Blackrock raised billions during COVID on the idea that once the evictions kick off, lots of homeowners will lose their homes and those tenants with black marks will have to pay more and more to rent. Every person abusing the COVID moratorium just to screw over the "landlord" who owns one property is just one more nail in the US clusterfuck coffin. Edit: it's Bla…

You must be talking about Blackstone, the private equity/LBO group, not BlackRock, the ETF provider. I don't think there is a Mobile Home Index ETF, not yet at least.

I think there is a lot of hate directed to BlackRock, which is really meant to be directed at Blackstone. BlackRock is an absolutely huge financial company, to be sure, but is soley in the business of ETFs and asset management, which aren't exactly abusive or extractive.

And no it doesn't help that the names are so ridiculously similar.

Edit: just learned that BlackRock started as an asset management arm within Blackstone, and the similarity was intentional. I think the operations have diverged enough since then that there's a worthwhile distinction between the two.

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