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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

#461
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.

Other people are playing the "enrich themselves at the expensive of the collective" game, so you should too. The move in this situation is to seek out rent control. That will cap rent increases for you at like 5% a year in most places. If you are able to swing a few promotions at work while staying in this same place, you might come out well ahead of any potential rent increases and manage to start actually saving and investing money. This is the route to property ownership a lot of people I know in southern california are taking.

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

#462
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people generally oppose [...] high-density, low-income housing. And there are good reasons for that. Are there, other than "I don't want to live near the poors" and "I don't want to see people who have problems"? That's not a good reason.

There’s a difference between people who have problems and people who cause problems for themselves and others. A good neighbor who has fallen on hard times will have plenty of sympathy.

What about a good person who was born poor, grew up poor, worked from the age of 16 supporting their family, and remains poor? There are many such people in the USA, and very few seem to support policies that would make housing more affordable to them.

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

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not building a strawman at all. Let me make my position even more clear: I don't want to live near multi-family housing. I want it to remain illegal for it to be built near me. Leave the suburbs alone. Every single place you people infect with your ideas turns to hell.

People need to live somewhere and the population is growing. Where do you suggest that the kids of current residents live?

Maybe Im naive, but whats wrong with building entirely bew towns and cities? Last time I flew across the US, I saw vast wilderness with a few tiny populated places here and there.

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

#464

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.

Would that really be a solution? We live in the "you will own nothing and be happy" timeline. I know I've read articles in the past that car manufacturers are considering turning to leasing agreements instead of purchases. That might be hard to get started in the US, but with the way every market turns to renterism, I would not be surprised if vehicles and RVs get swept up in the usury craze.

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

#465
post #86

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

It is because it is incredibly difficult to build new housing. Zoning is the supply constraint.

LA for example is built into the 90% range of its zoned capacity today of 4.3 million people with a population of just under 4 million by official counts (higher in actually no doubt). Meanwhile, in the 1960s when homes in LA were actually affordable, the population was 2.5 million, with a zoned capacity of 10 million. That means if we want to make LA as affordable as it was in the 1960s, then we should zone the city for at least 16 million people, instead of 4.3 million people as it is zoned today.

https://la.curbed.com/2015/4/8/9972362/everything-wrong-with...

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

#466

"but many Republican lawmakers oppose such controls." — I'm not American and not in in the US, so I'm wondering, why in many articles I read, "Doing Good Things For People™" tend to be opposed by Republicans? 1. Are there a scheme to vilify them? Bcoz it's not even mentioned why they oppose (maybe they see Bad Things™ far ahead). 2. Are they not elected by the people?

It tends to be that way because the Republican party line is to wring hands over how much any social program will cost, even if it's free school lunches for children who live in impoverished households, while over half of the government's yearly budget is a black box of untouchable military funds.

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

#467

"but many Republican lawmakers oppose such controls." — I'm not American and not in in the US, so I'm wondering, why in many articles I read, "Doing Good Things For People™" tend to be opposed by Republicans? 1. Are there a scheme to vilify them? Bcoz it's not even mentioned why they oppose (maybe they see Bad Things™ far ahead). 2. Are they not elected by the people?

Republican lawmakers by and large represent corporate business interests and the wealthy. They use social issues as their drumbeat to rally their base who won't benefit from these handouts to the wealthy. Many people don't understand economics but are happy to vote along social issues. Single issue voting is common for such issues.

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

#468
post #363

"but many Republican lawmakers oppose such controls." — I'm not American and not in in the US, so I'm wondering, why in many articles I read, "Doing Good Things For People™" tend to be opposed by Republicans? 1. Are there a scheme to vilify them? Bcoz it's not even mentioned why they oppose (maybe they see Bad Things™ far ahead). 2. Are they not elected by the people?

Media is mostly run by the left so easy to vilify the other side.

The media is centrist. There is no left represented in political discourse in the U.S. The democratic party is the centrist party.

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

#469
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…

Ah yes, regular folks who buy 5 extra homes to supplement their income.

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

#470
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you own the home you live in or are you renting? Renting is enabled by doing just that, someone owning a home they don't live in. So you want to outlaw renting?

There is a large and growing number of people who support the idea of outlawing renting from anyone other than the government (public housing). I don't think I agree, at least under current conditions, but then, I own my house.

> There is a large and growing number of people who support the idea of outlawing renting from anyone other than the government (public housing).

Yes I love the idea, the only thing that will be more efficient and effective than the mega corp, property management companies that cause most of the problems, due to size and bureaucracy will be the federal government. I love this idea, they are always a paragon of efficiency of virtue, they never succumb to politicians and bureaucrats selling out those they serve for political reasons, and of course who could object to the government having ownership of every non-occupied home in America, I see no problem with that. Especially giving the government the implicit right to then dictate all future housing that will be built.

I can see it now optimized for efficiency, compactness, and equality everyone lives in "the pod". Of course since you may move pods and it would be difficult to move your stuff you can't really have anything, but the American Housing Bureau would love to lease you everything you need for a much better price because they don't have to worry about "profit". It will be great we'll own nothing, we'll live in a pod, and of course at that point meat is going to be untenable so we can get protein from alternative sources like insects.

I can't wait for it, I'll live in a wonderful pod, I'll own absolutely nothing, I'll eat bugs and I am going to be so HAPPY!

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