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Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

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Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#11

Post by inetknght »

didgetmaster wrote: post #5

What constitutes an 'Investor' in this article? If I see a distressed home for sale in my neighborhood and decide to buy it, fix it up, and rent it out; this article seems to put me in the same category as institutional investors who come in and buy or build entire communities of homes.

> If I see a distressed home for sale in my neighborhood and decide to buy it, fix it up, and rent it out

Buying something to rent it out is clearly investing.

Buying something to fix it and re-sell it is usually also seen as investing.

Buying something to use it (live in it) could also be an investment but usually isn't seen as such because it's assumed that you only live in one place.

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#12

Post by sillystuff »

In 2012 I was looking at investing in REITs. One REIT's pitch was that they owned such a large percentage of the rental housing in Tampa Florida, that even though vacancy rates were high, and rents were going down throughout the nation and other areas in the state of Florida, they were able to keep rents high in Tampa.

Disgusted, I realized the harm that REITs and private equity are doing to housing markets, and wanted nothing to do with it.

We need legislation that discourages housing as investment if we are to maintain housing as shelter. Unlikely, as wealthy folks who make money with the status quo run things.

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#14

Post by moneywoes »

staindk wrote: post #7
cammikebrown wrote: post #3

Pretty hilarious to see “Why is Rent Skyrocketing?” as the article directly under this one on the front page.

Hilarious sure, but also sad and concerning. I'm tentatively alright with the idea of renting forever and never owning property... but with rent increasing and investors buying up more and more property, it looks like things will get uglier and uglier. I am not alright with paying absurdly high rent.

As someone who’s had his elderly parents renovicted, it really makes me think about owning one day.

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#15

Post by itake »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #9
didgetmaster wrote: post #5

What constitutes an 'Investor' in this article? If I see a distressed home for sale in my neighborhood and decide to buy it, fix it up, and rent it out; this article seems to put me in the same category as institutional investors who come in and buy or build entire communities of homes.

Are you not an investor in that situation? The person who wants to own a house to actually live in is the only one not being an investor.

I think the concern is local investors keep the money in the local economy, whereas 'foreign' investors are extracting value from the local community.

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#16

Post by ceeplusplus »

staindk wrote: post #7
cammikebrown wrote: post #3

Pretty hilarious to see “Why is Rent Skyrocketing?” as the article directly under this one on the front page.

Hilarious sure, but also sad and concerning. I'm tentatively alright with the idea of renting forever and never owning property... but with rent increasing and investors buying up more and more property, it looks like things will get uglier and uglier. I am not alright with paying absurdly high rent.

In a competitive market (I'd say even the biggest investors own At the very least, replacing all SFH with townhouses would give 2x density increase. Removing the height limit on new construction and allowing rebuilds of old apartment buildings without excessive permitting would probably give another 3x increase.

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#17

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

staindk wrote: post #7
cammikebrown wrote: post #3

Pretty hilarious to see “Why is Rent Skyrocketing?” as the article directly under this one on the front page.

Hilarious sure, but also sad and concerning. I'm tentatively alright with the idea of renting forever and never owning property... but with rent increasing and investors buying up more and more property, it looks like things will get uglier and uglier. I am not alright with paying absurdly high rent.

> I am not alright with paying absurd rent.

Then you should either:

1) Buy a house to live in

2) Buy a house to hedge against rents going bananas

The 30-year fixed rate mortgage at negative real rates is the biggest handout the world has ever seen.

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#18

Post by duxup »

__derek__ wrote: post #6
sebhook wrote: post #2

It would be interesting to see the "investors" segmented by assets under management (AUM). I'm sure some "investors" are mom and pop rental situations while other institutions, such as BlackRock, are purchasing single-family homes at scale. I'll also be curious to see what happens when remodels need to happen. Many trade labor markets are hyper localized and difficult to scale across a property portfolio, this is whe…

> The CoreLogic data shows that what it calls “mega” investors, with a thousand or more homes, bought 3% of houses last year and in 2022, compared with about 1% in previous years, with the bulk of investor purchases made by smaller groups. Re: Zillow, it actually did well in the flipping business when relying on its models to make the buy decision. It got into trouble after tweaking the model to say "buy" on more (an…

IIRC Zillow did "too well" to the point that they felt their model wasn't gauging the market correctly and was going to inevitably fail them spectacularly. The fact that it did well, better than it should have was just good luck... but also a bad sign because the model predicted a different outcome.

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#19

Post by idiotsecant »

rngname22 wrote: post #8

I really hope that battery technology, EV technology, and self-driving technology lead to a tremendous boom in full-time RV / vanlife popularity and make it a better quality of life than traditional fixed housing and all the people who bought up housing as an investment vehicle see their money go poof. It's like using potable water or the air we breathe as an investment vehicle.

Living in a van is only possible if a small percentage of people do it. The infrastructure for sewage, parking, trash disposal, utilities, etc are all designed to handle a bunch of houses that stay in one place.

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#20

Post by tpmx »

Is this really a change for the worse compared to the status quo?

Compare this with the home-ownership rate graph here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_S...

Remarkably steady at around two thirds over the past ~50 years which of course is less than three quarters.

(Not an american, so I may be confused by some terminology.)

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