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If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

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Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#11

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why would an entity trying to maximize profits pay an extra 20-50% to purchase an illiquid asset?

I suppose when your investment horizon if 40+ years (and interest rates are low), you can afford you have a longer ROI ?

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#12
post #8

I'm sometimes afraid of these "mega-corps" that have the effect of really changing things. Sometimes in a bad way. Sadly, once you've got money, you can earn much more. What the limit to t->infinity ? One single corp dominating the world ?

Isn't that the problem in game economies as well? Making virtual money begets making more virtual money leading to exponential growths. Some games solve it by making items more expensive for hoarders. In real life we pretend that growth inequality does not exist.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#13

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why would an entity trying to maximize profits pay an extra 20-50% to purchase an illiquid asset?

Sort of like investing crazy money into startups. Big bets hoping to get a once-in-thousand-years cashcow.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#14

This hurts people who already own houses, too - property taxes are assessed on the appraised value of the home, which is a function of what the similarly-sized houses in your area sold for most recently. My property taxes have increased 10% every year for the past several years (and it would have been more if not for a legislative 10% annual cap). I worry that there will come a day when I've paid off my mortgage but…

Property taxes do not have to go up because the assessment goes up. I have had assessments go up, but the tax rate go down because the town did not increase its budget.

In the long run it probably will though, since higher land values will probably cause increases in wages and other costs. But it does not have to be proportionally as much as the land value increase.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#15
post #8

I'm sometimes afraid of these "mega-corps" that have the effect of really changing things. Sometimes in a bad way. Sadly, once you've got money, you can earn much more. What the limit to t->infinity ? One single corp dominating the world ?

I like the thought experiment of taking that to its absurd logical conclusion.

I'm sure there are some fun ones. Eg, Once a single corporation is in control of everything, and everything that comes in is profit and everything that goes out is a loss then the only missive left is to cut all losses, no? How do we do that? Burn the planet? Can't lose if there's nothing to lose.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#16
This is what happens when you keep printing money and keep mortgage rates incredibly low.

All that money's gotta go somewhere. Hey, at least the CPI isn't going up right? Its only the most expensive thing in most people's lives that has doubled in cost in about 10 years. Same thing for stock prices, and slowly other commodity prices are catching up as well.

Non-homeowners are being shafted by this fed/ecb policy. Every year the gap between poor and rich grows larger as a result.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#18
The problem (I think) is that the Fed has dumped too much money into the system. There are no assets left to buy at reasonable prices. So now investors are buying homes.

This is the downside to the current "bailout". I think the last "bailout" was a bit more lean. People were hurt, but in different ways than they are today.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#20
If you want to fuck with landlords all you have to do is repeal your local zoning codes. Institutional money is pouring in because American cities have erected ridiculous barriers to entry in the housing market, making appreciation of home prices state policy. Repeal those barriers and make landlords poor again.
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