I wonder if we will one day look back and wonder at the morality of a society that considered homes suitable targets for investors of any stripe.
US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
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Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#232Earlier 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.
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…
Keep in mind, about half of all adults are married, so each couple can own two properties. One to live in, one to rent.
I imagine we could figure out some way to handle inheritance, perhaps we could give somebody 12 months to decide which house the want to keep, and which to sell.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'd wager about 25-50% of the population prefers renting. Lots of people don't want to be tied down.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#234If I were renting a house, I would much rather deal with a business than an individual landlord. On another note, it’s amazing that in only a year, we accept a dictatorship where we are okay with the President setting policy that should require a law to be passed.
If I were a business whose interest in owning houses was banned by legislation, I'd sell my "services" to the individual landlords who now owned the rental property. Blackrock manages the financial part (taking rent, scheduled repairs) and the silent partner gets a cut.
They also charge a lease renewal fee.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#235Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#236Earlier 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.
Most states allow for this - I don't know about California, though.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#237Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#238I wonder if we will one day look back and wonder at the morality of a society that considered homes suitable targets for investors of any stripe.
Not unless we decide that personal mobility is evil, and start just assigning people to plots of land when they reach adulthood.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#239None of this has anything to do with "affordability", which is not about shifting rentals to owner-occupied properties, but rather reducing the monthly cost of residing in areas with opportunity. The notion of home ownership as an absolute good is a driver of unaffordability.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"Corporations" is meaningless in this context. If you want to own a rental home in the US, you should set up an LLC, both for liability reasons and because it makes it easier to deal with taxes and expenses. In the parts of the country I lived in, I've never seen big corporations own single-family rentals en masse. They usually go for apartment complexes, which are far more profitable if you have the capital to buy /…