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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

#351

Post by travisathougies »

twoodfin wrote: post #341
ethanbond wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High LVT means you pay a high tax on the land itself and little or no tax on what you do on top of that land. It encourages highly efficient land development which means increased supply of commercial and residential units (thus reducing rents), and it makes lots of speculation prohibitively expensive. Since holding undeveloped land is just as expensive as holding developed land, you’re going to want to put it to pro…

At the levels where an LVT is effectively coercive, it’s functionally indistinguishable from rent paid to the government for land you don’t actually own. I expect most citizens would recognize this and any effective LVT would be politically DOA.

I mean property tax is already rent.

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

#352

Post by xur17 »

ddevault wrote: post #33
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.

Correct. Landlords are reprehensible, including small ones.

I rent an apartment, and am pretty happy with the arrangement. Obviously I wish I was paying less, but at the end of the day, I chose to live here, and enjoy the flexibility it allows me. (For a few thousand dollars and a moving truck, I can move across the country on a whim. I can go on vacation for months at a time by just locking my door and walking away. My landlord is responsible if any major repairs are necessary.)

My point here is that a blanket statement such as "landlords bad" doesn't match the experience of everyone out there.

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

#353

Post by game_the0ry »

pickovven wrote: post #323
game_the0ry wrote: post #306

Now, it's about 25%. In the future it will be 50%, the 100% - the trend is going in that direction. Millennials and the generations after will look at era of home ownership like the "good old days" while coughing up 75% of their income for rent. There is so much to be said for this problem, but...its exhausting. I give up.

If only there was a way to reduce the return to landlords...

The landlords pay congress in order to not worry about that.

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

#354

Post by nineplay »

jmyeet wrote: post #177

Let me summarize all the problems here: 1. In most of the US it is quite literally illegal to build anything other than single-family homes ("SFHs"). This is a form of NIMBYism and reduces housing supply; 2. Part of (1) is that absolute necessity of car ownership in the US. This is by design to keep the riffraff (ie poor people) out; 3. We need robust public transit infrastructure to give people the option of living…

> Homeowners that own an extra unit or two on the same site as where they live is about the most ethical form of supply private rentals

I'd never build or buy a MFD at least partly because I don't trust that the current vilification of landlords wouldn't eventually expand to MFD owners. MFD owners will still raise rents, they will still evict, they will still have disputes with tenants over maintenance and common-area rules.

The righteous anger will still bubble up. Only an idiot would risk it.

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

#355

Post by bobthepanda »

giantg2 wrote: post #242
bobthepanda wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can lead a horse to water but you can‘t make it drink. Job poor areas in the US have no shortage of incentives or policies designed to lure companies there, but have had little success over the past few decades.

I'm wondering why that is. I would think that with the growing movement against NIMBYism that there would be enough people fed up with those sorts of policies to start moving out of the areas they don't agree with.

* people find the stability of the known more compelling than the danger of the hypothetical. Employers want to be where their clients and employees will be, residents want to be in a place with decent shops and services. This kind of chicken/egg problem is usually the failure of most planned towns, and the only successful ones are usually a new capital or something because the government doesn‘t care as much. And even then that isn‘t guaranteed; Sejong is supposed to be the capital of South Korea but employees still hate it because even with cost of living issues and long commutes Seoul is more compelling.

* cheap land is usually cheap for a reason. Land in the middle of the desert West probably doesn‘t have the required water rights to support habitation. Land in the middle of nowhere in general has few services and high logistics costs. Former industrial land requires environmental remediation. Foreclosed land may require paying outstanding tax bills. And those are the relatively straightforward problems, to say nothing of places with high crime, bad schools or other complex societal issues.

* a lot of these places are going to turn NIMBY if a bunch of outsiders come, buy up housing and export their cost of living crisis to their community. It doesn‘t take that many people to tighten up the housing market in a town of 10,000.

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

#356

Post by com2kid »

JamesBarney wrote: post #24
sillystuff wrote: post #12

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…

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.

IMHO cities need to limit how many large multi-national conglomerates are allowed to build huge rental complexes.

A large % of the high density housing being built around Seattle is rental only, all that does is funnel money out of the city. Residents don't get to build equity, and rental prices keep going up year over year, vs mortgage payments that, except for the property tax portion, stay the same over 30 years.

Also large rental complexes don't build communities.

Someone who bought a small 2 bedroom house 10 years ago and who now rents it out, those people aren't the problem. Heck odds are they are renting that 2 bedroom out for less than what a large corporation would charge.

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

#357

Post by xienze »

ryukafalz wrote: post #209
jaywalk wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is not Europe. It will never be Europe. Things that work in Europe may not work in America, and vice-versa.

This always strikes me as an unsatisfying response. What about America is so fundamentally different than Europe that would make the same policies that work there not work here? Every time I’ve seen this type of argument brought up, it’s fallen flat when the same infrastructure is built here because it does end up working . We’re really not so unique.

> What about America is so fundamentally different than Europe that would make the same policies that work there not work here?

And yet, if I suggested that the US do something a lot of (all?) European countries do, like having to present ID when voting, I’d get an endless stream of replies about why that’s fundamentally impossible in the US (and racist, naturally). And that’s a FAR easier problem to solve than pie-in-the-sky “make everything more dense and have high speed rail everywhere and European-style public transit in every city” daydreams that are so popular.

Maybe some things really aren’t that easy to do in the US.

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

#359

Post by chollida1 »

wizofaus wrote: post #328
chollida1 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea about the US, I'm in Canada and housing has only gone off the rails in the past 4-5 years. So those 3 generations all had legit chances to buy a home at a reasonable price. I'd assume every country is its own special mess:) In Canada last year we had a stat released that said 1 in 5 Millennials that own property own more than one. This was inline with both GenX and Boomer stats. Millennials are just as much a…

"Speculators" sure, but most people who own multiple properties I wouldn't think fall into that category. We own a rental property - it's very much a long term investment, and we charge rent below market rate (it's still positively geared!). I don't believe our purchase locked out any first home buyers, it's a tiny 1BR flat, and priced at a point those just getting onto the property ladder could've afforded it (and o…

> I don't believe our purchase locked out any first home buyers, it's a tiny 1BR flat

I mean, by definition that property would have sold to either a new home buyer or another speculator like yourself.

And by definition, if you own a property you rent out, you are a speculator:)

i have no problem with you being a speculator:)

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

#360

Post by fourstar »

driggs wrote: post #286

I have considerable experience in the Real Estate backend software industry, and so am occasionally contacted by headhunters hiring for Real Estate Investment startups. Here's a typical reply that I give to them: I am philosophically opposed to "investing" in real estate, as your industry exists entirely to snatch up affordable housing from actual homeowners as a get-rich-quick scheme, benefiting those who are alread…

Where did your "considerable experience" in the RE industry come from?
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