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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

#621

Post by giantg2 »

notch656a wrote: post #592
giantg2 wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It doesn't, but how much cheap land in Goldilocks-type areas really exists?" That's my point - it doesn't have to be perfect. Otherwise nothing will solve it. "Encouraging more people to do this is going to exacerbate the problem." They should be moving to places that are shrinking. That's what I'm suggesting. That food desert thing is a joke. They're talking about supermarkets, yet there are other sources like farm…

As someone who has wanted to desperately build on "goldilocks" land for a long time, the thing that has held me up is not zoning but the uniform building code. I simply only have enough money to build a shack. There are plenty of these out in the West, but at some point someone said "nah fuck them kids" and decided great-grandaddies shack is fine for somebodies grandkid to live in but if I build new property of liter…

There's the option of a tiny home on wheels. Most states have low sqft requirements for permanent structures, like 650 sqft. If you do the work yourself using professionally created plans, it's possible to do it cheaply and in stages. Once the shell of the house is complete, finishing the inside can be done cheaply by buying discount materials whenever they are available. This is stuff like returned paint and carpet or vinyl remnants (perfect for a small house with small rooms). You can even make a list and ask the local Lowes manager to give you a call if stuff is available. Then there's stuff like Craigslist for free or cheap sinks, counters, furniture, etc.

The biggest issue/cost isn't the actual building codes, as those are easy to meet in most places. It's the sanitation requirements. Those old shacks were allowed to have outhouses, or at least septic systems that would no longer pass. Septic systems are a pain to put in and are quite expensive.

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

#622

Post by wizofaus »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #577
wizofaus wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would if I thought I was one! A speculator I'd see as the sort of person who regularly buys and sells property hoping to make quick cash. While there is some tax regulation to discourage that here (you pay a lot more in CGT if you sell quickly etc.), I still don't think we have the settings right, it's too easy to make money if you already have it, at the expense of houses not being available to people who actually…

Where did you invest in CA that the Price-to-Rent ratio isn't abysmal? Or did you buy 20+ years ago?

Not in CA! And no, about a year ago now.

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

#623

Post by candiodari »

slg wrote: post #570
candiodari wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government goal already is 2% inflation per year. That’s why this is happening ...

I'm not sure exactly what the "this" is in your comment. The government has largely accomplished their inflation goal as that has been roughly what inflation was for 30+ years, but they aren't all powerful and can fail that goal like they have in the past year. The government could put the same energy to keeping housing costs in pace with inflation. They don't. Instead, the government tries to keep housing costs risi…

In order to get inflation up to 2% the extreme measures of the last 15 years which drove up the cost of housing to such extreme heights in the first place were taken.

> The government could put the same energy to keeping housing costs in pace with inflation. They don't

That's exactly what they did. Not just housing, but also food, cars, ... It's just that housing costs respond a lot better to credit availability than most other things. And yes, generally it's things that are seen as an investment that respond to credit availability.

The government has no direct control over any kind of pricing except the price of money. Also known as credit availability. They raise house prices 5% per year, so that when food and fuel refuse to adjust to inflation, it averages out to 2% per year. This caused larger price rises on everything that is seen as an investment (houses, education, cars, ...) than on things that are not.

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

#624

Post by vel0city »

yardstick wrote: post #613
vel0city wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mortgage + insurance + taxes is a lower monthly payment than what my rent was at the time I bought my house. Compared to that same unit renting today, its several hundred dollars a month cheaper. It has over twice the square footage and a private garage. This is in a pretty big metro area, not the middle of nowhere. One of the biggest benefit of owning is a hedge against housing inflation. Its not a perfect hedge,…

How much equity do you have in the house? 5%? More?

Due to house values rising considerably in the years we've owned, it's actually pretty high considering we're only a few years in. We only put 10% down but we were able to get rid of PMI in only a year because of home prices skyrocketing.

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

#625

Post by MrMan »

jaywalk wrote: post #404
jeromegv wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're building a straw man. The reality is that in a suburb far from infrastructure, investors won't want to build a 30 stories building. But they might want to build a 3-4 units building, something 2-3 stories maximum. But this is currently ILLEGAL. Only a single house is possible and ANY densification is impossible. You go to the downtown of older cities and you don't see giant cement buildings. But you do see liv…

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.

who is you people and what ideas are we talking about?

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

#626

Post by raxxorraxor »

bilsbie wrote: post #542
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…

Seems naive though. Wouldn’t that argument apply to investing in almost any product people need?

When it concerns basic necessities it certainly is. It would be sensible if nations restrict access to these markets and heavily tax people not using their real estate themselves with a progressive tax that increases quickly with additional objects. It could be fixed quickly if there was political will to do so.

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

#627

Post by driggs »

fourstar wrote: post #360
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?

I worked for several years at a small company whose primary products/services involved aggregating/normalizing/warehousing/publishing listing data, which grew to handle a large percentage of all listings in the country. I knew every quirk and metadata mis-feature of every MLS software in use, and was on the technical standards board of the National Association of Relators. Our company was bought out by one of the big user-facing Real Estate websites, and our team was responsible for the listing collection/normalization pipeline.

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

#628

Post by inetknght »

xienze wrote: post #407
inetknght wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a massive gap between someone being able to afford $1200 in rent and being able to afford a home with all of the added costs. Having recently bought a home, I think there isn't so much of a gap and in many cases the gap is inverted: it's cheaper to buy than to rent.

Key phrase here being “recently bought.” Get back to us after you’ve had to replace the roof, had a water main burst, or something of that nature that requires you to cough up $10K+ all at once. The mortgage is the _minimum_ monthly payment, not the maximum.

> Get back to us after you’ve had to replace the roof, had a water main burst, or something of that nature that requires you to cough up $10K+ all at once.

Only $10k? I've planned for and budgeted for repairs and additions averaging 20% of the loan for the lifetime of the house. It's still cheaper to buy than to rent even with 20% on top of PITI.

It's cheaper because I'm paying myself when I pay my mortgage: if I decide to sell then a lot of that mortgage is now returned to me. You will never pay yourself the same way by renting.

If I don't sell then 20% on top of PITI is what I was paying in rent anyway.

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

#629

Post by NikolaNovak »

davidw wrote: post #62
slg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I've moved from Toronto downtown(ish) to a commuting/satellite community (for love - my wife and her family all live there:).

It astonishes me how many people in that town are complaining how it used to be small and full of farm fields, and now there are all these new people and houses and neighbourhoods, and we need to stop the expansion.

Every.Single.One. of them moved there within their lifetime. NONE of them were born there. THey did the exact same thing they are now complaining and trying to stop others. None of them, when asked, are even remotely willing to move to a high density downtown condo, if they are so committed and passionate to preserving the fields and small community.

It absolutely astonishes me, the utter lack of self-awareness: why are you expecting others to be different than yourself?

---

(it's like when you're stuck in traffic, and somebody in your car gets frustrated "Why are all these people here? Where are they going??". It's not like everybody else has conspired to harm us - we are in this traffic, going somewhere else, contributing to it and making everybody else slower. It is US, not "them" )

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