Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

41–50 of 1001 posts

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

#41
post #32

If only so many people didn't treat land and houses like investments, there wouldn't be such a disastrous hoarding problem. Henry George's Land Value Tax [1][2] seems like an obvious economic fix that would require a large fraction of the population to change how they think about land and natural resources, but most of them are invested in such a way (i.e. owning multiple houses on multiple parcels of land, often wit…

I already pay a Land Value Tax to my town.

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

#43

Its worse than that. As a tenant, you cannot have people who are not on the lease stay long term without them going through a background check. This means that you may end up increasing the homelessness of relatives with temporary financial issues and also isolating potential mates with financial issues from living with their significant others until married, forcing the better financially equipped mate to take a hit…

Rent control makes landlords very hesitant to add new people to a lease. Otherwise the unit can just be passed from friend to friend and never get back to market.

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

#44
post #31
post #26

I really wish we'd get some innovation in the housing market. 3D printing of houses or something could be epic. "Just" disrupt the current construction companies... It's clear they can't keep up with the demand right now.

Location matters too. I don’t think the problem is making a log cabin in the woods.

Sure, we can't print more ground to build on. But it's another cause of increasing real estate prices here in the Netherlands.

Probably need to zone some of that agricultural land (60% of land usage in the netherlands) into housing, if we want to give young homeowners a chance at owning property.

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

#45
The problem is the government mandated houses be piggy banks for middle class people, all but allowing large institutional investors to take advantage of the rule system put in place to protect and increase prices: low interest rates, local control of land use (to kill new supply), etc. It was a side effect to allow others to benefit from the scheme.

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

#47
post #37
post #24

Sidestepping all the emotional comments. It's open market. Adopt to it. 1. Build more homes. 2. Sell to Blackrock or whatever at 2x or 3x your cost. 3. Profit!

Have you tried 1 in most places? No lot availability. No materials to build the house. No workers available to build the house. Etc.

Then the problem is NOT "Blackrock buying homes".

It's elsewhere.

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

#48
post #26

I really wish we'd get some innovation in the housing market. 3D printing of houses or something could be epic. "Just" disrupt the current construction companies... It's clear they can't keep up with the demand right now.

Axios just had a little blurb about this: https://www.axios.com/housing-prices-construction-costs-8acb...

The bottom line is that local land-use laws are murky and problems with local codes are very difficult to predict and control for at scale - and that's the way existing homeowners want it.

It's interesting too that homeowners are such a powerful lobby, but without a single entity setting policy or giving talking points. It is, essentially, our culture. This is the way we want it to be. At least for now.

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

#49

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?

Since land is a limited asset they can effectively corner the market in specific regions and gain pricing power, allowing them to turn that 20% purchase price premium into a hefty profit.

Cities can counter this by allowing more new construction but backfilling Single Family Residences requires land and that may not be readily available within certain commute distances.

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

#50
post #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.

That actually messes with single family home owners more. I would love to provide more housing and make more money.
Post reply on HN