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Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

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581–590 of 691 posts

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

#581
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> absolutely. If anything investors provide for liquidity of the market. No, no, no. "providing liquidity" is not a good thing unless liquidity is actually a problem almost everywhere people talk about this. The "liquidity" provided by high-frequency traders in the stock market does not benefit anyone but themselves. For everyone else the difference between trading in minutes and hours (or even days) is near-meaningl…

> The "liquidity" provided by high-frequency traders in the stock market does not benefit anyone but themselves. For everyone else the difference between trading in minutes and hours (or even days) is near-meaningless.

That liquidity is also what's driving the price of executing a retail trade to or below zero. You used to have to pay fees whenever you bought or sold stock.

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

#582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sold my houses in a booming market for a $70,000 loss intentionally. It has a nice effect of lowering the value of all my neighbors homes and housed a deserving family. Little did I know when I went to claim the loss on my taxes: I could not claim the loss at all. Since it was an owner occupied house and not a house owned by a corporation, it did not count as a loss I could deduct from my income nor from my capital…

Was it a paper loss or an actual loss? I.e, did you buy for $200k and sell for $130, or had you bought for $200k and sold for $330 which was $70k under the current market value? The latter isn't a loss; and likely wouldn't be even for a corporation. You'd have to sell at full value and donate the $70k or something to get it to "work". Amusingly enough, if one of the 87k IRS agents hears about it, they could go after…

Actual loss.

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

#583
post #40

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 have spent decades telling American families that homeownership is the safest investment. We then spent decades enacting policies to ensure this is true. Do we think investors were going to just sit that out and ignore a safe and government protected investment? Of course the more attractive we make home ownership as an investment, the more investors will flock to the market. We need policies specifically benefiti…

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

#584

Key piece of information from the article: > 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 mega investors only make up 3% of that 25%. I'd love to see data on what the remaining 22% are, but my guess is: * flippers * midd…

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

#585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But should a middle-class person be able to build a life in places where there are opportunities for job growth (and like it or not, right now, that's the big cities)? No. You are not entitled to access to specific jobs or a specific area.

What kind of worldview is this? We should sacrifice social and economic mobility for people's Zucchini gardens?

The world exists beyond San Francisco, you are not entitled to one specific city.

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

#586
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but with all due respect, "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere" is absolutely an acceptable answer. You're acting like you're entitled to live where ever you want, but the simple reality is that this is not possible. You need to come to grips with that objective fact.

Why is it not possible? The only "objective fact" is that people in certain areas in this country have lobbied hard to make sure that no one else should be able to move in anywhere around them. These rules are all reversible.

It’s not possible because there is limited space. Someone loses, always. There is no version of reality where everyone who wants to live in San Francisco gets to.

You can disagree with how we divvy up SF but claiming you should get to live there is in direct contradiction with the idea that everyone should get to live there.

Someone, somehow, will get bumped. You’re just advocating for a system that would put you there at the expense of someone else.

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

#587
post #385
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make a decent argument that concentrated poverty does cause some problems. Which is why you should do your best to spread all kinds of housing throughout a city, including plenty of upzoning in wealthier areas.

Good idea. We'll start with where you live. You get to put up with the noise at all hours, the high crime, and the generally shit condition lazy people keep their neighborhoods in. After living in it for a few years, you can come back and tell us how great it is.

By all means, upzone where I live!

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

#588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> absolutely. If anything investors provide for liquidity of the market. No, no, no. "providing liquidity" is not a good thing unless liquidity is actually a problem almost everywhere people talk about this. The "liquidity" provided by high-frequency traders in the stock market does not benefit anyone but themselves. For everyone else the difference between trading in minutes and hours (or even days) is near-meaningl…

> The "liquidity" provided by high-frequency traders in the stock market does not benefit anyone but themselves. For everyone else the difference between trading in minutes and hours (or even days) is near-meaningless. That liquidity is also what's driving the price of executing a retail trade to or below zero. You used to have to pay fees whenever you bought or sold stock.

Can you explain why that's true? I understand why it would be true if the broker provides that liquidity for you and settles the trade immediately, while taking the risk that on his end it may settle at a different time and place. But If I just put an order directly on the exchange book using full collateralized cash in my trading account, why would that cost my broker more? Wouldn't this liquidity thesis mean that brokers should charge more for stock trades that have less liquidity?

To be honest, I just figured they were able to eliminate fees by front running and/or selling my trading information.

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

#589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> absolutely. If anything investors provide for liquidity of the market. No, no, no. "providing liquidity" is not a good thing unless liquidity is actually a problem almost everywhere people talk about this. The "liquidity" provided by high-frequency traders in the stock market does not benefit anyone but themselves. For everyone else the difference between trading in minutes and hours (or even days) is near-meaningl…

Liquidity is a huge problem in real estate. Right now, every single person forfeits 5-6% of their home value every time they exchange homes. That's $20k on average. Reducing the spread on homes by providing liquidity would be a huge financial boon to all classes except realtors.

Is that true if you sell your home yourself? I've never bought a home, but I know I can transfer a title to a vehicle without forfeiting anything beyond the sales tax and the $50 title fee. Is there no way to sell/buy real estate directly like that using cash transactions direct between parties?

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

#590
post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Van life isn’t a scalable alternative to permanent housing. The reasons for this are many. One of the obvious ones is that if a wealthy investor class can buy up houses and extract rent they can certainly buy up vans and extract rent. So it isn’t even resistant to the very problem you suggest it can solve. Take a look at how much a 1980s VW Westfalia is these days. It’s as absurd as house prices.

Land in desirable areas seems to me to be a much more scarce resource than the inputs and labor that go into a vehicle, especially if you add time - aka decades to make such things cheaper. Not sure how time and technology can do the same for land ownership.

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