Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 1001 posts

Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes

#151

Post by JoshTriplett »

cmxch wrote: post #136
JoshTriplett wrote: post #23

One additional important detail: if this gets implemented at all, hopefully it does not affect the common practice of having a self-owned LLC owning your home. This is common for the purposes of keeping your personal name out of public records; it is far too easy to link someone's name and address, and people at risk of doxing can do this to protect themselves.

So basically you want to give a loophole for Wall Street to cosplay as regular people. No thanks.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46532033

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46532004

It costs relatively little to create an LLC. This is not an uncommon pattern for people in groups commonly targeted by hate-motivated doxing and similar attacks. This is not a "rich-person trick", and if you can afford a house, the cost of an LLC is a very tiny expense by comparison.

Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes

#152

Post by xnx »

georgeburdell wrote: post #52

This will help out home prices in a lot of lower priced markets, but do little in higher priced markets. In the Bay Area, many houses are bought up by non-occupying internationals. I've been in a couple of such houses. It's bizarre walking into a $5M+ hilltop mansion that's completely bare inside except for a token "student" living out of one room.

Kind of great to have someone paying property taxes and using minimal city resources.

Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes

#153

Post by potato3732842 »

reactordev wrote: post #46
Aurornis wrote: post #42

Even if this goes through without a mountain of loopholes and exceptions, I doubt it will have a significant impact. "Wall Street Investors" implies they're targeting large institutional ownership, which is only around 0.5% of housing ownership as cited in the article. That number is also flat-ish or maybe decreasing depending on the chart you look at, from what I recall. Outside of a few metro areas where institutio…

The material costs are high too because of regulations that require specific lumber for framing etc. It’s more complex than just reducing tariffs and inviting cheap labor. It’s systemic red tape put in by the large builders to prevent anyone but them to be able to build. When they do build, it’s never to code. The code they themselves help write. Ryan Homes for example…

This. They don't want the local septic man and the local roofer partnering up to GC a development of a dozen houses or even worse, an individual doing the bulk of the work of building anything, so they get it all saddled with requirements that amortize away nicely when vertically integrated but absolutely crush anyone else.

Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes

#154

Post by chucksta »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #48

The key word here is "Wall Street". And this statement is playing off a popular misconception around corporate investors buying up American houses. There has been a bit of a panic around "Investors buying up all the property!!!" With people often citing Black Rock and Blackstone as the main culprits. But most of the "investors" buying up property are individuals purchasing investment properties. Here's an article on…

Depends where you are

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/henry-county/3-companies-ow...

|“I’d say at least 60 percent of the homes around here are owned by corporations,” Clark said.

Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes

#155

Post by iamnothere »

cyberax wrote: post #109
iamnothere wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds backwards? Density means more units available, which should lower costs. Supply and demand. Rentals in a dense complex are cheaper than standalone rentals or duplexes, townhomes are cheaper than SFH, etc. I don’t think cities should force density, but there’s no reason to go the other way either as long as growth is managed properly in terms of traffic, transit, and infrastructure.

> This sounds backwards? Nope. The ONLY way to get cheaper housing is by reducing the city population. > Supply and demand. Sigh. No. You assume that the demand is fixed. It's not. By building new housing, you _increase_ the demand. And always faster than you can satisfy it. I just love this example: Forbes 2016 - "Tokyo's Affordable Housing Strategy: Build, Build, Build", "The Great Urban Myth: 'Cities Can't Build T…

Well technically that’s true, in the same sense that the only way to roll back inflation is demand destruction (and an extended recession or depression).

The problem with this is that you can’t forcibly reduce population. Halting growth in one area just displaces it. This can be a good trade if the area into which growth is displaced is underdeveloped with few other potential uses. But it can also create Atlanta or Houston style sprawl, or destroy natural areas that would be better to preserve.

Japan is an unusual example because most job opportunities are in a handful of areas. You can get impossibly cheap properties in the countryside but there are few jobs or young people. Properties in the city keep getting more expensive because of demand and because building codes are constantly evolving to keep up with new developments in earthquake protection. There are older urban properties available for cheap outside of trendy areas, but the cost of renovation is often too high to be worth it. There’s also a cultural stigma around older properties.

Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes

#156

Post by chasd00 »

iamnothere wrote: post #41
cyberax wrote: post #25

It might help in the long term, as it can force cities to stop densifying. And as we all know by now, densification is the leading cause of unaffordability. The US has more houses than households, but people are forced by economic forces to move into denser and denser areas. But short-term it'll hurt availability. One of the most common ways to enshittify cities is buying an SFH, demolishing it, and plopping a 3-4 ap…

This sounds backwards? Density means more units available, which should lower costs. Supply and demand. Rentals in a dense complex are cheaper than standalone rentals or duplexes, townhomes are cheaper than SFH, etc. I don’t think cities should force density, but there’s no reason to go the other way either as long as growth is managed properly in terms of traffic, transit, and infrastructure.

i can see what they mean. Another way to think about it is like how adding a lane to a highway doesn't decrease traffic it increases it. There's no shortage of demand in densely populated areas otherwise they wouldn't be densely populated. Adding more units will be met with more demand like adding a lane to a highway is met with more cars on that highway. Fix it by making the area less dense and prices will drop like how the way to fix a busy highway is to decrease the cars on it and traffic will lighten up.

Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes

#157

Post by potato3732842 »

Aurornis wrote: post #75
reactordev wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The material costs are high too because of regulations that require specific lumber for framing etc. It’s more complex than just reducing tariffs and inviting cheap labor. It’s systemic red tape put in by the large builders to prevent anyone but them to be able to build. When they do build, it’s never to code. The code they themselves help write. Ryan Homes for example…

> The material costs are high too because of regulations that require specific lumber for framing etc. Having done some extensive remodeling and building work in recent years and going to great lengths to follow building codes, this just isn't it. The type of lumber you can use for most framing jobs isn't that special. Having walked through a number of new construction properties and seeing what passes code, I don't…

Single and few number family residential and owner stuff gets all sorts of exemptions in just about every town's zoning code because if not the townsfolk would revolt.

This is why everyone on the internet screeches "well I put up a deck and it wasn't so hard". Try and do a new build of literally any structure and get back to me. Or worse, a construction type that is not the regional default for whatever it is you're doing.

Reality for new construction is way, way, way worse than homeowners think.

Unless you know a guy, in which case it's all open doors and green lights because that's how local politics always is.

Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes

#158

Post by 63 »

mattmaroon wrote: post #118
georgeburdell wrote: post #52

This will help out home prices in a lot of lower priced markets, but do little in higher priced markets. In the Bay Area, many houses are bought up by non-occupying internationals. I've been in a couple of such houses. It's bizarre walking into a $5M+ hilltop mansion that's completely bare inside except for a token "student" living out of one room.

Banning people from other countries buying home is both more sensible and more practical than this, which is why very many countries do it.

"From" other countries is overly broad and I assume not what you intended. I am actually interested though in the idea of legislating how frequently home owners have to actually be within range of the home, for example. A friend has had a hell of a time with a landlord in Malaysia who's never seen the property.

Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes

#159

Post by mikkupikku »

alephnerd wrote: post #137
KumaBear wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not solve the problem but we also have other countries buying up homes for pension accounts. Take AU for example doing this. Should be illegal regardless of the size.

Pension funds like Ontario Teacher's are institutional investors who would be barred as well according to this proposal.

As they should be.

Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes

#160

Post by [deleted] »

potato3732842 wrote: post #116
bdcravens wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IF it results in dramatic reduction of home prices, this sounds great at first, but in actuality, it throws the market into disarray, since many sellers and also buyers, and it may trap home owners who need to sell into bankruptcy.

God forbid someone not sell out of their home. /s Home ownership isn't exactly a crappy life milestone to be stuck at. Yeah it would suck for a select few people who need to get out of one and into another RFN due to life reasons and surely some municipalities would leverage that to really screw people but I think the upside is orders of magnitude higher than the downside. Come to think of it, I bet making homes less…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN