So, REITs?
There is so much money there I expect some immediate pushback or a built in loophole.
Can’t buy a single home but an entire community is okay.
US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
181–190 of 1001 posts
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the moment I saw this in the WSJ this morning, I was wondering what people were going to come up with in order to be against this obviously-good idea, just because Trump said it. Now I know.
I don’t read this as being against it at all. They’re simply pointing out it doesn’t have that big of an impact because of a bigger problem that remains.
Institutional investors collectively nearly a million residential properties in the US, and continue to buy more. When turnover of inventory is only a couple percent a year, owning nearly 1% of the housing stock and not turning it over is a lot. Small landlord property turnover is much higher than institutions.
This action would have an impact.
Other problems will ALWAYS remain. That's no reason not to make a dent in what can be dented.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#183The 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…
Cover those individual investors too.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#184The 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…
Yes, It should be expanded that no company can own residential property, and more importantly, each person can only own one property. People should go find something else to invest their savings in.
each person can only own one property.
You're going to need some exceptions. What happens when someone dies and leaves their house to their kids? What if someone's home is temporarily unlivable (say due to a fire or flood which requires extensive renovation) -- do they have to live on the streets?
And that's not even addressing the obvious question of what happens to tenants if there are no landlords.
The problem is supply, not distribution.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#185The 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.
But is that Big Money Private Equity or "took a class from that Rich Dad, Poor Dad guy who said we should create a company and invest in real estate" corporation?
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#186Either a) this is window dressing and nothing material will change or b) there's a housing crash coming.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
The vast majority of home purchases aren't from speculators or institutional investors. Institutional investors only own about 0.5% of homes. If they're forced to stop buying, nothing will really change in a noticeable way. At best, small landlords and investors will scoop attractive properties up for slightly less.
Maybe the best part of this legislation will be that people will realize it's not institutional investors that are driving up home prices. No, that's far too optimistic.
When this doesn't make anything better, the conclusion won't be that it was a bad idea but that it somehow didn't go far enough.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
hate-motivated doxing? That doesn't sound like a real thing except for maybe famous people, so we're basically back to rich people.
This technique is used by a very solid fraction of people who's job is to do things that are somewhat bad for either a lot of people or very bad for a few people.
So your local cops, everyone on every local commission except the secretary, journalists, payday loan and tow company owners, etc.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#189One 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.
Why should you be allowed to create a corporation that has no actual purpose other than a shield for your own private concerns?
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the moment I saw this in the WSJ this morning, I was wondering what people were going to come up with in order to be against this obviously-good idea, just because Trump said it. Now I know.
I'm not against the idea per se, but "institutional investors are buying up homes" is an effect, not a cause. Boomers demanded that "house values are never allowed to go down, only up" and put all manner of construction-preventing policy in place to make sure this happened, so of course institutional investors showed up. If there's an asset class which is only allowed to go up, why wouldn't they? Banning institutiona…
I don't know if you've noticed, but politicians aren't in the business of root-cause analysis or actual solutions. They are in the business of making things either slightly better or significantly worse for certain people.
This would make the situation slightly better for people who want to buy houses.
Perhaps it's the case I'm 100% for this mainly because my extremely low expectations for politicians have been met and exceeded in this circumstance.
I don't know why we have to be negative about something that makes a small improvement in something that sucks.