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

reuters.com

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

#191

Post by beembeem »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #151
cmxch wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

LLC annual registration is up to $800/yr in CA, including foreign LLC's. I don't think $800/yr for privacy is a "very tiny". Not to mention you would need to pay an owner of record, probably a professional, to have their name on the LLC.

EDIT: A quick web search shows that an estimated annual cost of $50-$400 for a registered agent in CA. So the cost is closer to $1k/yr.

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

#192

Post by ceejayoz »

xnx wrote: post #152
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.

Except land is one of a city's most important resources, and they often aren't paying much property tax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13).

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

#193

Post by JoshTriplett »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #189
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.

Why should you be allowed to create a corporation that has no actual purpose other than a shield for your own private concerns?

Ideally, it should not be possible for random hateful people to easily get name/address records from local governments, but that's unfortunately not the world we live in yet.

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

#194

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

only-one1701 wrote: post #123
chasd00 wrote: post #112

idk how this would work effectively. There's lots of affordable homes they're just located where no one wants to live. You'd have to focus on HCOL locations and make them not so high cost which seems something that should be done at the local level. You can increase supply but investors would just snatch them up. Maybe the feds could put a cap on the value of a single-family home that an institution can own and then…

Just tax non primary residences at a much higher rate. Housing crisis solved.

They already are.

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

#195

Post by oceanplexian »

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…

> But most of the "investors" buying up property are individuals purchasing investment properties.

Maybe they should clamp down on that as well, especially individuals who are only purchasing SFH in residential neighborhoods as a way to park their overseas cash.

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

#196

Post by londons_explore »

threecheese wrote: post #119
londons_explore wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making it hard for cities to deny all permission to build new housing through impossible zoning laws should also be on the cards.

Making this decision as a politician in this country is death to your career though; how could we incentivize our leaders to bite the hand that elects them?

If your local mayor decides to allow a tower block to be built next to your house, you might be pissed.

But if the president says 'we're gonna take away mayors powers to restrict housebuilding', you won't be pissed yet.... And when a builder comes along to build later it'll be too late.

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

#197

Post by cmxch »

kleton wrote: post #63

They will continue trading the ones they have as LLC holding companies.

Then expand the definition and scope to make it more painful to circumvent. Describe the structure such that it’s hard to not be able an individual non-investing homeowner.

Of course that’s unpopular to those who want to freely commit to bad practices.

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

#198

Post by stvltvs »

silisili wrote: post #110
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…

In raw numbers of ownership, sure. But make no mistake, during the housing boom post 2019, in a lot of 'hot' metro areas, "wall street" was buying way more homes than individuals. Especially in the south. In the area I lived in, Invitation Homes, some weird shell company of Blackstone, was buying up every piece of tract housing they could get their hands on. At one point, they were making agreements with builders bui…

Exactly, absolute ownership numbers matter less for housing prices than the proportion of corporate buyers in the market.

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

#199

Post by tbrownaw »

roywiggins wrote: post #162
jay_kyburz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would that not make rental properties entirely illegal? That seems... complicated

I think the idea is that nobody would prefer to rent if given a choice, and that everybody could afford to own if not for the presence of landlords in the market.

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

#200

Post by JoshTriplett »

beembeem wrote: post #191
JoshTriplett wrote: post #151

Earlier 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.

LLC annual registration is up to $800/yr in CA, including foreign LLC's. I don't think $800/yr for privacy is a "very tiny". Not to mention you would need to pay an owner of record, probably a professional, to have their name on the LLC. EDIT: A quick web search shows that an estimated annual cost of $50-$400 for a registered agent in CA. So the cost is closer to $1k/yr.

Living in California is expensive in general. Average LLC costs in the US are under $100.

> Not to mention you would need to pay an owner of record, probably a professional, to have their name on the LLC.

Whether that is public record depends on the legal requirements in your state. And in any case, costs for registered agent services are typically comparable to the costs of an LLC.

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