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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

#71

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.

Correct. Landlords are reprehensible, including small ones.

Yes, let's ban rentals altogether.

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

#72
post #7

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'm tentatively alright with the idea of renting forever and never owning property"

This sounds akin to feudal peonage.

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

#75
post #13

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.

So the number in the title is mostly small LLCs.

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

#76
post #61
post #13

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.

1000 is too high a threshold. I wonder what it would look like if you dropped to 50 or 100. I hang out in RE circles. Anecdotally it seems that probably most of these are bought by people who have just 1-20 properties - regular folks who have regular jobs but are looking for ways to supplement their income and hopefully quit their jobs. Owning merely 5 extra homes is not enough to replace income, and in some markets…

IMO extra properties should be heavily taxed. Say you have more than 3, it should basically not be profitable anymore. No one wins if people are hoarding houses

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

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are, just as much, competing against someone who wants to buy that home for themselves thus raising the price of it.

So what? That person who wants it for themselves is competing against all the renters that would like to rent the home that OP fixes up, but who aren't privileged enough to be able to put together a down payment to buy a house. So that aspirational home buyer is driving up the price for renters. Should we be angry at the home buyer as well then? It's not like OP is going to buy the home and let it sit vacant.

OP buying reduces the hosing supply for owners and raises the price to become an owner pushing more people out of the "privileged" owners bracket. At the same time doing it to the most accessible to own property and making money in the process.

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

#78

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 you see a distressed home for sale and decide to buy it, fix it up, and rent it out, you are an investor.

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

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just need to remember that banning housing investment means banning rentals which is problematic for people who don't have good credit and a down payment.

Imagine if housing was cheap enough that paying the mortgage was around the same as what it now costs to rent. There definitely needs to be some rentals, but I believe that there needs to be controls over how many and the rental price.

I have good news for you! How many rentals are available is closely controlled in most parts of the US. This is one of the things zoning accomplishes. It's possible that the outcome may differ slightly from what you want, however.

Rent controls are unfortunately very similar in key ways. They've been tried, and the results may not quite line up with what you might be hoping for.

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

#80

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 want…

There are so many housing incentives (tax-breaks, etc.) designed to encourage home ownership a very simple solve would be to ensure those only apply to owner-occupied housing and limited to a single home per household.

Then people would decry socialism, big government, or excessive regulation.
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