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Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

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Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#581

Post by ultraluminous »

Panzer04 wrote: post #496
ultraluminous wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this argument touted frequently in housing related threads and it always confuses me. Housing prices have soared over the majority of the developed world - dozens of countries[1]. Is NYMBYism and prop13 driving the housing crisis in Luxembourg? Chile? Estonia? Do you think the entire world property market, taxation and legislation is structured exactly like in the California bay area? The whole "just zone m…

What do you mean "obviously reductive"? Why wouldn't it work?

It's not a question of "would it work", the point is that real-estate prices are rising in dozens of countries, and thousands of cities. Zoning is a local issue. Assuming that the reason homes prices are out of control in Santiago, Chile and in Tel Aviv, Israel for the same reasons as in San Fransisco is, well, silly.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#582

Post by rsj_hn »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #575
rsj_hn wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also growing population and people moving to areas where the jobs are. Most recently: pandemic refugees from NYC and California settling in adjacent areas. When demand changes for a good with inelastic supply you see large excursions in price. Right, when there is a disruption. Say there is an increase in jobs in city A and wages rise by 10%. Say there is a decrease in jobs in city B and wages decrease by 10%. Now…

economic interventions based on sentimental intuition -- "it's not fair that you should be evicted if you are laid off" We pay people unemployment compensation because the knock-on effects from someone taking the next-best job are serious, and it's immensely difficult to recover from an eviction. There's volumes of research on that. The "sentimentality" has vast economic benefits.

> We pay people unemployment compensation because the knock-on effects from someone taking the next-best job are serious

We have unemployment insurance not because of sentimentality, but because insurance is economically useful. A person cannot insure themselves from loss of wage income, so paying some overhead to have the government do it makes sense.

Freezing evictions does not make sense. We do not freeze layoffs, for example, in our unemployment insurance program. We let employers make the layoffs they need and then have an insurance pool that the laid off can draw from.

A proposal to have rental insurance that you contribute to and can then draw from for temporary eviction assitance might be a good idea -- it depends very much on how it's implemented.

One of these has economic benefits but the other does not. Both are sentimental in nature, but that is not a sufficient condition to adopt a policy -- actual economic outcomes has to be the deciding factor.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#583

Post by ultraluminous »

fleddr wrote: post #502
ultraluminous wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this argument touted frequently in housing related threads and it always confuses me. Housing prices have soared over the majority of the developed world - dozens of countries[1]. Is NYMBYism and prop13 driving the housing crisis in Luxembourg? Chile? Estonia? Do you think the entire world property market, taxation and legislation is structured exactly like in the California bay area? The whole "just zone m…

I agree. Here in the Netherlands, NIMBYism isn't really a thing. If you don't own the land, you as existing resident have very little say in new developments around you, exceptions aside. Even in this situation where almost every development is approved, it doesn't lower prices at all. The reality is that when demand is continuously high, you can never keep up with supply. It just keeps coming. Which is what happened…

Yup. Essentially, housing is an in-elastic demand, and livable land is a finite resource, further exacerbated by the realities of emigration. Combined with extreme wealth inequality, it brings us to this type of dystopia - https://ssir.org/articles/entry/tackling_the_housing_crisis_...

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#585

Post by saos »

the-pigeon wrote: post #296
game_the0ry wrote: post #255

Former real estate finance professional, here. If you were hoping this was a sign of the real estate market falling and perhaps its your chance to get a bargain, think again. > The company is seeking roughly $2.8 billion for the houses, which are being pitched to institutional investors, according to people familiar with the matter. Institutional investors (Blackstone, Blackrock, Colony, et al) will be being in bulk,…

This would be easy to fix with legislative that makes property taxes much higher for investment home properties. I don't think I've ever heard of a politician even talking about that though.

Yup. Likewise in the UK.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#586

Post by yazaddaruvala »

delfinom wrote: post #438
frankfrankfrank wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I wish people understood more of what these "institutional investors" are doing. The Fed has essentially trapped us in a system where the likes of blackrock get access to essentially free Fed printing press money right of the rollers that they then use to buy up real assets at inflated prices, which only drives up the inflation that thereby also drives up the value of previous purchases at near zero rate int…

This is the end game of the baby boomers and economy really. Collectively everyone is hoarding onto property for their nest egg, investment funds get piles of their money from 401ks and pensions as well to invest into areas like real estate. A large chunk of retirement is now predicated on maintaining or increasing property values. The fed is now so fucked it can't even raise rates without immediately causing propert…

I agree institutional investment into homes is a big issue, and based on our current laws it will drive a lot of people into rental agreements that are unlivable and for the few it'll make mortgages obscenely expensive.

> This is the end game

I disagree with this statement. Firstly, we will likely fix it sooner rather than later. Secondly, if it truly gets horrible, we still have one person one vote. Its not the property owner that gets the vote, its the renter that gets the vote. If you end up in a locality with 100% rentership, they will vote for rental caps, they will increase their living quality through building codes/regulation, and they will vote to remove zoning and the local politicians will follow through because there is no downside to the people in their constituency.

There will still be corruption in the form of state level or federal laws to reduce local autonomy (e.g. with municipal broadband), but thats a problem we already have, and people need to learn to vote for their best long-term benefit rather than ideologically and/or their short term benefit.

Even today, if you want to stop Big Real-Estate from making rentership horrible and keep making housing prices obscene, vote to remove zoning or at the least, vote for zoning that would let the market increase housing 100x. We are all kinda NIMBY regarding the short term, but need to find a way to vote against our short term best interest for the sake of our long term best interests.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#587

Post by throw123123123 »

camdat wrote: post #578
throw123123123 wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this thinking. What is the difference between one landlord with 2 properties or 2 landlords each with one property? Why is the latter better than the former?

Where would these two landlords be living? Both would be exactly the same if the landlord doesn't rent.

Does it matter? If you want to achieve maximum dwellings for renting, changing the distribution of units / owners doesn't seem like a practical way to go about it.

You would want to make more units, as many as possible.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#588

Post by fleddr »

ultraluminous wrote: post #583
fleddr wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Here in the Netherlands, NIMBYism isn't really a thing. If you don't own the land, you as existing resident have very little say in new developments around you, exceptions aside. Even in this situation where almost every development is approved, it doesn't lower prices at all. The reality is that when demand is continuously high, you can never keep up with supply. It just keeps coming. Which is what happened…

Yup. Essentially, housing is an in-elastic demand, and livable land is a finite resource, further exacerbated by the realities of emigration. Combined with extreme wealth inequality, it brings us to this type of dystopia - https://ssir.org/articles/entry/tackling_the_housing_crisis_...

I agree that livable land is finite, but far from scarce. The US has an enormous supply of livable land, it's just that everybody clusters into hot zones. It's obviously not easy to break that pattern, but I consider it the only real solution.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#589

Post by maxerickson »

fleddr wrote: post #588
ultraluminous wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Essentially, housing is an in-elastic demand, and livable land is a finite resource, further exacerbated by the realities of emigration. Combined with extreme wealth inequality, it brings us to this type of dystopia - https://ssir.org/articles/entry/tackling_the_housing_crisis_...

I agree that livable land is finite, but far from scarce. The US has an enormous supply of livable land, it's just that everybody clusters into hot zones. It's obviously not easy to break that pattern, but I consider it the only real solution.

Yeah, the US is at a point where there is a lot of built environment that is underutilized because job opportunities are concentrated in other places, never mind the large amount of land that can readily be developed.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#590

Post by r00fus »

Panzer04 wrote: post #504
humanistbot wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're omitting a major component of the demand side: investors and speculators. If the market was just made up of the people who are looking to live in those homes, the market would be reasonable for those people. But we have a massive amount of investment funds looking for returns in an uncertain market, plus near zero interest rates for the near future. The number of investors who are buying houses they have no in…

Investors and speculators don't live in houses, renters do. If there isn't renting demand, than it doesn't matter how much speculation there is, prices will fall. Blaming investors is directing the anger at the wrong place. Blame regulations and building restrictions that prevent housing supply being built where people want it.

Did you see the last part of parent post? Corporate speculators actually gain even more by taking the property off the market and letting the fallow property increase prices for the rest of their herd of properties.
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