Houston, we have a problem.
Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year
111–120 of 691 posts
Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Totally agreed. Petite landlordism is causing is a LOT of economic damage to Gen Z and even younger millenials. It's a much larger problem than REITs, IMO.
Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> The 30-year fixed rate mortgage at negative real rates is the biggest handout the world has ever seen.
Agree. I bought a house around a decade ago. Refied into a sub 3% rate. The house next door now rents for 2.5x my mortgage. That's 10s of thousands of dollars/year extra I have in my pocket.
Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year
#114In 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…
> We need legislation that discourages housing as investment if we are to maintain housing as shelter. I'm looking forward to hearing how Vancouver's vacant house tax affects their market the next few years. It sounds like a good idea and I'm glad they're running that experiment. It's hard to predict how these things go over time.
That does sound like a correct solution. It gives investors an incentive to make sure the houses are not vacant, which drives the rent down. Others should not be affected much by it, so that's a great solution.
Edit: assuming the situation is where there are vacant homes and people willing (but not able to afford) to live in them.
Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year
#115I'm so frustrated by some of the conversations people get in around housing. They want to live in the most desirable places on planet earth, and seem to think that we should just abolish the concept of property ownership to accomplish this. What do you guys think happens when you get what you want, and nobody can "own" property anymore? Do you think there is an unlimited amount of single family 3000 square foot homes…
Abolish propery ownership? I’d settle for ”let the newcomers also build homes, the same way the previous generations did”.
Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Likewise, the person who buys the house and lives in it takes it off the market for renters, thereby increasing costs to the "unprivileged" renters bracket.
Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year
#117In 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.
[deleted]
Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
There are reasons for that, but they are generally bad ones involving people not wanting to live near other people who look like the author of the article, even if they won't say that part out loud. Higher density housing is a massive component of building lower carbon footprint cities, as well as making our cities more financially resilient. It's also something that can increase equity a lot by giving people with lo…
>There are reasons for that, but they are generally bad ones involving people not wanting to live near other people
Could have just ended the sentence there.
Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article, speaking to your point, is pretty convincing in terms of the data: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22524829/wall-street-housin... > The role of institutional investors is still being studied, but the popularity of the narrative strikes at something dangerous: People want a convenient boogeyman and when they get it, they often ignore the structural problems that are harder to combat. Housing undersupply…
Quoted post unavailable.
People gotta live somewhere
Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are reasons for that, but they are generally bad ones involving people not wanting to live near other people who look like the author of the article, even if they won't say that part out loud. Higher density housing is a massive component of building lower carbon footprint cities, as well as making our cities more financially resilient. It's also something that can increase equity a lot by giving people with lo…
>There are reasons for that, but they are generally bad ones involving people not wanting to live near other people Could have just ended the sentence there.
That's not it though, really. People with a bit of cash - the kind who show up to planning commission hearings at 2 in the afternoon on weekdays - can very easily go buy some land in a remote place and do just that. They like city amenities though.