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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

#391

Post by JamesBarney »

giantg2 wrote: post #252
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…

... and pricing out existing residents in low density housing by taxing them to oblivion.

Only residents who own tons of land they aren't doing anything productive with.

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

#392

Post by toomuchtodo »

JamesBarney wrote: post #326
toomuchtodo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can crowd out usury private investment (which this specifically is an example of) with government investment. Have the Fed buy treasuries, use federal funds to build and manage affordable housing. Capital is make believe, a fiction, rows in a database. Physical laws are mandatory, everything else is a shared delusion or a suggestion. The rules can change at anytime with enough will. Broad strokes, if Capital is p…

Getting the federal government to manage all rental properties sounds awful. I sent a request the IRS last September and they still haven't replied yet with anything but letters saying they're backed up.

This is not very imaginative. Think how federal dollars are going to small jurisdictions to deploy municipal fiber, not HUD being your landlord. The federal gov is the VC, local government are the startups, sort of, if you want to twist the startup ecosystem analogy. You’re provided funds with strings and milestones; if you don’t perform, your funding is pulled (or something similar).

With regards to the IRS, even though there are occasional delays, I’ve always had a top notch experience even when my own mistakes would have incurred thousands of dollars in penalties (which were waived more than once). If you want effective delivery of government services, you must fund them at the necessary levels. Effective government is not free.

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

#393

Post by Ferrotin »

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…

What discourages owning housing as an investment is repealing legislation that inhibits construction. Nothing else (besides laws affecting population growth) changes the fundamental supply/demand meeting point, in the long run.

Other laws which discourage investment will also discourage construction.

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

#394

Post by pgwhalen »

aprdm wrote: post #69
JamesBarney wrote: post #24

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.

The concept of credit score isn't something that has always existed in humanity. It's something that we can go on without, even more so given the ridiculous profitability of banks

It hasn't always, but something of the sort _has_ existed for a long long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

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

#395

Post by boringg »

quantified wrote: post #95
boringg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where you live - this "renting is a poverty trap" only applies to certain places and depends on home values constantly increasing. If home values crash where you live then you spent years putting money towards a worthless asset.

Renting is always worth 0 as equity, so it's a total loss regardless.

Absolute statements rarely hold up when you shine a light on them.

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

#397

Post by ryukafalz »

heleninboodler wrote: post #365
ryukafalz wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your nice, quiet suburb is unlikely to get many high-rises if it’s actually far enough away from the nearest city center, because it doesn’t particularly make sense to build towers in the middle of nowhere. By contrast if your suburb is nice and quiet despite being right next to a city because decades of policy have locked it in place and it’s pricing people out… too bad? Other people need housing too and outward…

We should stop pretending it's a choice between single-family houses and 30 story high-rises. There are lots of seattle neighborhoods, for example, where people bought single family houses 20, 30, 40 years ago because of the character of the neighborhood and now suddenly the yimbys have changed the zoning to accept seven story buildings. A good friend of mine has lived in and cared for his home for 25 years and now t…

The fact that the change is “sudden” is a direct result of the fact that the ability to build has been restricted for so long. If building densely had been allowed all along, things would get built out whenever it made financial sense to do so, and you’d be able to see the trend coming gradually from a mile away. But now you’ve got all these low-density areas right next to (or in!) cities that have had artificial limitations on building for so long that when you do upzone a part of it it’s like letting out pressure all at once. The demand has grown with the population all this time but it hasn’t been met.

It’s more important to me that people have places to live than that existing homeowners everywhere can have a neighborhood that never changes. The two are incompatible. It would be preferable for that change to be gradual, but given the current state of things I don’t see how that’s possible.

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

#398

Post by trhway »

slg wrote: post #131
davidw wrote: post #62

Earlier 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…

Yes, the investors are the symptom and not the cause. They are going where the money leads them. However a big problem with institutional investors is that they also institutionalize NIMBYism. They won't just block housing in a select neighborhood, they will block housing everywhere and they put more pressure on the federal government to ensure that housing is protected as an investment class. Both will contribute to…

>Yes, the investors are the symptom and not the cause.

absolutely. If anything investors provide for liquidity of the market.

The real issue is that investors, ie. the rich, are getting more and more ability to buy real estate while the middle and the low class are getting less and less capable of doing so. The reason is the huge sloshing amounts of money being given to the top, and thus those money causing a strong push for the price rise of the assets (back at the beginning of pandemic i said that it will result in the biggest redistribution of wealth https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23924777 toward the rich and large ones)

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

#399

Post by boringg »

JamesBarney wrote: post #391
giantg2 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and pricing out existing residents in low density housing by taxing them to oblivion.

Only residents who own tons of land they aren't doing anything productive with.

The whole argument is how to make housing more affordable to live in. Your argument is ... pay more for land tax to avoid speculation however if you live somewhere in order to pay for it you need to consistently be more productive than the speculators (who would just charge the land tax to the renters anyways). Which doesn't solve the problem in any way shape or form.

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

#400

Post by akamia »

giantg2 wrote: post #215
ryukafalz wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you ignore the racist roots mentioned in a sibling thread (and I maintain that you shouldn’t), we will need low-income housing as long as there are people with low incomes! And it’s best for everyone involved if that housing is commingled in every community rather than being concentrated in one place. It’s well documented that the neighborhood you grow up in has a huge impact on how upwardly mobile you’ll be…

"And it’s best for everyone..." How exactly is it best for the well-off? I'm curious what pros and cons it would have for them.

One practical benefit for the well-off is having people in close proximity who can staff their local restaurants, shops, schools, etc.

It's much easier to hire and retain staff for your business when your pool of potential employees isn't a 30+ minute bus ride away.

For the well-off residents, it means better and more consistent service at their neighborhood grocery, coffee shop, restaurant, pharmacy, etc.

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