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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

#661

Post by acchow »

BeetleB wrote: post #65
acchow wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't most mom-and-pop investors getting real estate exposure via their Blackrock holdings?

I believe GP is referring to "regular folks with jobs" who buy houses on the side to supplement their income (as opposed to investing in funds).

I understood this.

But there's been a general backlash on the internet the past few years about giant pools of money like Blackrock buying up housing supply. I don't think it's that different from your typical "mom and pop" real estate investor buying up homes to rent out. Ultimately, much of Blackrock's funds are held by regular mom-and-pop investors.

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

#662

Post by desperadovisa »

surfpel wrote: post #636
thepasswordis wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the heck is so wrong with the Midwest in your mind? Do you seriously think living in Ohio, a couple of hours from the Great Lakes, is equivalent to living on some remote parcel of land in rural Alaska?

You’re missing the forest for the trees.

No, he isn't. Being able to live in any one particular city is not an inherent right of humanity.

It's perfectly reasonable to be priced out of some areas of the world, there is nothing at all wrong with that as a general concept.

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

#663

Post by nikanj »

barbazoo wrote: post #265
nikanj wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve had it for a few years. It hasn’t done squat. Turns out having 10 people and 9 homes remains a problem, even if you enact more policies. They’ve tried everything, except build enough homes. I’m under the impression this is the popular modern across North America

> It hasn’t done squat. By what metric? I'm not sure that's accurate [0]. It looks like the vacancy rate has seen a steady decline and the money raised ($86.6m) helped Community Housing Incentive Program (CHIP) and Land Acquisition/Development opportunities. [0] https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/vancouver-2021-empty-homes-ta...

By the one metric that matters: how much do homes cost?

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

#664

Post by barbazoo »

hahaxdxd123 wrote: post #560
barbazoo wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It hasn’t done squat. By what metric? I'm not sure that's accurate [0]. It looks like the vacancy rate has seen a steady decline and the money raised ($86.6m) helped Community Housing Incentive Program (CHIP) and Land Acquisition/Development opportunities. [0] https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/vancouver-2021-empty-homes-ta...

If I am reading the chart correctly, it says a total of (13 + 130 - 7) homes are no longer vacant? That's not a lot

That's from 2019-2020. If you look at the data since this program has been implemented it looks like this more successful (1096 + 706 + 21). It's somewhat expected for this program to have a reduces effect over time as people start making their decision with this policy in mind.

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

#665

Post by barbazoo »

nikanj wrote: post #663
barbazoo wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It hasn’t done squat. By what metric? I'm not sure that's accurate [0]. It looks like the vacancy rate has seen a steady decline and the money raised ($86.6m) helped Community Housing Incentive Program (CHIP) and Land Acquisition/Development opportunities. [0] https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/vancouver-2021-empty-homes-ta...

By the one metric that matters: how much do homes cost?

This policy doesn't intend to address real estate affordability but the supply of rental housing in Vancouver. From the document I linked:

> Vancouver continues to experience the lowest rental vacancy rates and highest rents among Canada’s major cities, making rental housing affordability and availability a significant challenge for those who live and work in Vancouver, and those who would like to in the future. In an effort to address this and increase the supply of rental housing in Vancouver, in 2017, the City of Vancouver introduced the Empty Homes Tax (EHT), also known as the Vacancy Tax.

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

#666

Post by throwoutway »

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…

> that discourages housing as investment if we are to maintain housing as shelter.

There’s a difference between owning two properties and owning a fund of thousands of homes (PE and REITs). The former is fine, the latter should be banished

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

#667

Post by everforward »

travisathougies wrote: post #348
ROTMetro wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want higher density for the same reason I don't go on vacations on cruise ships and don't use public transportation. People are gross and assholes. The more people the more chance of tragedy of the commons, and once it sets in it is hard to stop. Most college educated Americans lived in college dorms, and went on to NOT want to live in shared building environments. It's not about racism, it's about not wantin…

Actually, zoning laws are not part of your property rights. Zoning restriction dictate what you can build on your property, but ownership interest in your property does not entitle you to 'buy' zoning laws. This is easily seen as you cannot sell zoning laws. Zoning laws ultimately restrict your property rights as you lose the right to do what you wish with your property. They ought to be abolished to protect property…

Zoning laws are meant to protect ownership interest in your property (not that they're always perfect).

A totally free-market approach allows one party to reduce the use or value of another party's property. E.g. in the above, the high-rise blocks the sunlight, which will could kill any plants on the property and preclude a backyard. That combined with the lack of sunlight could dramatically diminish the value of the property. Meanwhile, the highrise increases in value because they got X extra floors that get sun.

There is absolutely utility in the sun; in the most obvious form, it can be used with solar panels to generate electricity which can be sold for cash. My neighbor shouldn't be able to build a solar array that blocks all the light that would hit my property.

Zoning laws, to me, are just a shortcut to avoid having to enumerate and manage those rights individually, per property. There's a lot of things that can contribute to the value of a property, and it would be a mess to manage them individually.

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

#668

Post by lupire »

notch656a wrote: post #594
currydove wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely not the case. Example: a .1% increase in shadow over Dolores Park in SF almost stopped a new 19 unit development - https://twitter.com/sam_d_1995/status/1415839145386196993/ph... It was approved years later after adjustments - https://sfyimby.com/2022/04/supervisors-approve-shortened-pl... Granted...this particular situation was unique as the development was market-rate units, not low-income, in a…

SF real estate is just bitcoin HODLing with real life homeless camp attached. The entire property value is propped up by artificially voted on rules greatly raising the mining difficulty to entrants and it's getting exponentially more difficult with time.

Banning new housing is nothing compared to NYC where they build ghost apartments and don't let anyone move in.

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

#669

Post by lupire »

kaashif wrote: post #482
jaywalk wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad? Hilarious. Stay in your concrete hellhole, and stop acting like you know what's best for everyone else. If I wanted to live like you, I'd live where you do. And no matter how much you want my area to change (because you clearly can't stand for people to live in ways you don't agree with) it's not going to.

> Stay in your concrete hellhole, and stop acting like you know what's best for everyone else. So the side advocating for upzoning (allowing people to build what they want on their own properties) is "acting like they know what's best for everyone else" while you, advocating for strict limits on what others can do on their own properties according to your desires, aren't? I guess we can make this consistent if you ad…

It's pretty obvious how GP values other people vs themselves. They've stated it clearly and repeatedly.

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

#670

Post by dang »

jaywalk wrote: post #123
davidw wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are reasons for that, but they are generally bad ones involving people not wanting to live near other people who look like the author of the article, even if they won't say that part out loud. Higher density housing is a massive component of building lower carbon footprint cities, as well as making our cities more financially resilient. It's also something that can increase equity a lot by giving people with lo…

You're never going to win anyone over with the tired "if you disagree with me, you're a racist" BS. Low-income, high-density housing attracts problems. It has literally nothing to do with race. You could guarantee that the high-rise apartment building you want to construct down the street from me would be 100% filled with people who look like me, and I'd still oppose it. Keep your YIMBY nonsense IYBY.

Please don't take HN threads into flamewar hell. Your comment was a noticeable step hellward. You can make your substantive points without swipes, name-calling, and flamebait, so please do that instead.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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