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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

#641

Post by slg »

candiodari wrote: post #623
slg wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

Housing costs greatly outpacing inflation is not a recent phenomena of the last 15 years. In fact, home prices increased faster in the prior 15 years than the last 15 years.

>The government has no direct control over any kind of pricing except the price of money.

I'm not interested in debating the meaning of "direct control", but one rather direct control they have is the federal government could repeal the mortgage interest deduction. That would immediately decrease the financial incentive to buy a home therefore decrease demand and lower prices.

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

#642

Post by notch656a »

giantg2 wrote: post #621
notch656a wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a good point. The other idea I had was creating multiple <200 sq ft structures, so that none of them met the minimum area required for a permit and then using an outdoor hallway to join them.

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

#643

Post by silexia »

coryfklein wrote: post #386

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…

The 1/4 of houses being bought by investors makes this sound like way more than it truly is... I bet 90% of those "investors" are flippers.

Flippers are a necessary part of the market... lots of old people stop maintaining their home as they age. When they finally die, their homes are in extremely bad shape and no one would want to live there. A flipper makes the home habitable again.

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

#644

Post by notch656a »

mrep wrote: post #620
thaumasiotes wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The broker isn't selling your trading information. He is selling the opportunity to trade with you, and quantitative traders will pay him for that, because you are -- in all likelihood -- really bad at trading stocks. The professionals are so convinced that you have no idea what you're doing that they're happy to give you better-than-market prices, because the market is going to move against you anyway. (And of cours…

Yes, see https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make-mone...

That is wild, thank you both for for the link/explanation.

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

#645

Post by bobthepanda »

giantg2 wrote: post #566
bobthepanda wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So this shouldn't affect the possibility of moving to areas that have decent schools. It doesn't, but how much cheap land in Goldilocks-type areas really exists? The housing price problem is already becoming national in scale. > It doesn't have to be a huge influx, nor all at once. That ship sailed a long time ago. It already is. It turns out 1% of Californians leaving annually is still half a million people swarmi…

"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…

> That's my point - it doesn't have to be perfect. Otherwise nothing will solve it.

> They should be moving to places that are shrinking. That's what I'm suggesting.

And we're back to "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink."

> That food desert thing is a joke. They're talking about supermarkets, yet there are other sources like farm stands. 10 rural miles is nothing. That might be a 10-15 minute trip if you've ever driven in WV and seen the speeds people drive.

* Supermarkets in the US provide all kinds of out-of-season produce throughout the year. This is what consumers have come to expect, and is an inherent limitation of farm stands.

* Those most struggling with COL also struggle with the cost of transportation in the US, so driving a dozen miles is a non-starter.

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

#646

Post by nsv »

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #565
thehappypm wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors don’t get the same rates that homeowners do, but they are still quite low.

Of the two additional properties I own, marked as investment and vacation, they are 3.5% and 3%, refinanced, and bought during the pandemic. The former, five years prior, was marked as non warrantable, as in no bank would even give a loan for it. So, while investors don’t get the same rates as homeowners, they still got very good rates. If I had had capital, I would have bought a dozen more units at that time. <5% ==…

Anything under the inflation rate, which was 10% annual during that period, is free money.

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

#647

Post by danenania »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #619
danenania wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all depend on labor and resources that don’t belong to us. There’s no right to property, speech, or even life itself without institutions like the police, military, and courts. There’s no right to vote without a massive election bureaucracy. There’s no right to education without a school system. Why are we given rights like the ones I mentioned, but not housing or healthcare or basic income? It’s simply because th…

You have a very odd definition of rights and their defense. Rights are something every person is born with. They don't originate from government instituions, resources, or labor. Rather these things, protect or enhance them. There is a right to speech because I have the ability to speak, not because government has the ability to defend it or to take it away. There is a right to vote because people are freely able to…

You're just arbitrarily defining some things as rights, and others not. These things aren't etched into sacred tablets--they are decided collectively by a society and its government and are always evolving. There was no right to vote until enough people decided there should be one and made it so. Housing is no different.

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

#648

Post by random314 »

BeetleB wrote: post #556
random314 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP is talking about a situation where it would be cheaper to rent your home in the future, than make mortgage payments on it.

Yes, but are we splitting the payments between principle and interest? In most cases, after a number of years, the rental cost easily exceeds interest + insurance + tax for the same size property . Yes, it often seems the rental cost will be less than your monthly payments, but do realize that you lose all the rental cost, but not all your monthly payment.

Its simple to demonstrate scenarios where a loss in property value ends up being more expensive for the homeowners than renters in the long run. We had a crisis in 2008 because of this.

There are online rent vs buy calculators that you can use to generate these scenarios.

https://www.calculator.net/rent-vs-buy-calculator.html

Plug in negative appreciation for property values and watch how the comparison tilts.

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

#649

Post by edmundsauto »

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…

I often fantasize about taking a job like this for a year or so - just enough time to learn all the skeletons. Then whistleblow.

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

#650

Post by plonk »

sleepdreamy wrote: post #638
plonk wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it common to pay for longer periods at a time? Never heard of it.

Yes...usually you sign an agreement for the year in Apartment Complexes for instance. They also raise the price each year and make you sign. I do not miss apartment living

Not a native speaker so I'm not sure what you call an apartment complex, but I've lived in apartments that were in complexes of multiple buildings and never heard of paying per year. That sure seems to suck.
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