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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

#251

Post by CPLX »

rick_dalton wrote: post #202
CPLX wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely, violently, incorrect. Private equity has absolutely been buying up (and building ) U.S. residential stock, and this is addressing a real problem. The fact that Trump's doing it doesn't change my opinion at all, but it's absolutely the right thing to do and hopefully will be bipartisan.

Do you have any source? Googling it tells me otherwise.

Here's a few examples:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-with-texas-how-bi... https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-corpora...

It's not confusing at all. There's definitely issues with private equity ownership of single-family homes. Although it is fair to say that the BlackRock meme might not be accurate, they aren't necessarily the key player.

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

#252

Post by ryandrake »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #244
oceanplexian wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Once you try to clamp down on investment properties, you have couples getting divorces so they can own two homes (this happened in China), and all your kids are going to have their own home as well. It isn't a bad idea, people will game whatever. A singapore public housing system might work better, but I doubt it would work for SFHs.

This comment always comes up when regulation is proposed: "But people will just game it!" The solution is not to throw our hands up and say "Well, we just can't regulate this!" The solution is to prevent the gaming, too. Laws should iterate as often as people find clever ways to work around their spirit.

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

#253

Post by seanmcdirmid »

lewdev wrote: post #201
rgmerk wrote: post #165

It will make very little difference in the end. Australia's land tax system makes it effectively impossible for large corporations to own large chunks of residential property, but our real estate is amongst the world's most expensive and landlords are still awful - it's just that the landlords are hundreds of thousands of dentists and, yes, software engineers rather than corporate entities. If you want housing to be…

> It will make very little difference in the end. I feel like there will be a difference between a handful of large corporations owning a majority of properties vs thousands of dentists and software engineers. Are you saying that all of these property owners are also soulless profit-optimizers? I remember watching some video of tenants being priced out of their rental apartments so when they tried to contact the prop…

> I feel like there will be a difference between a handful of large corporations owning a majority of properties vs thousands of dentists and software engineers. Are you saying that all of these property owners are also soulless profit-optimizers?

Do we want to trade crazy high prices in the American real estate market for absolutely crazier high prices in the Australian real estate market?

That is a bit simplistic though, there could be other things going on in Australia, and all the other rich countries (e.g. Switzerland, England, China) where American prices look like a good value. I'm sure at the end of the day supply is the main factor, and not having a hot economy also helps, so I'm sure the USA will get there fairly quickly.

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

#254

Post by WackyFighter »

Noaidi wrote: post #218
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…

If "Black rock isn't buying up all the housing" then how do you explain why Blackrock lost $17 billion in capital today? https://xcancel.com/KobeissiLetter/status/200899449445747946... It matters, you just dont want to know it matters.

A hit in the stock price doesn't prove or disprove their claims. What would disprove their claims is the number of properties Blackrock is buying and if it is affecting pricing at the margin.

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

#255

Post by program_whiz »

epistasis wrote: post #224
program_whiz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like in some areas (the good ones) its much higher (12%): https://econofact.org/factbrief/do-private-equity-firms-own-... It also seems like it might be important to determine what share of _new_ development is being created for investment. The share of existing homes being owned isn't as important. There's also the 2nd order effect. The price of property might go down if there weren't investors with tons of…

All housing is investment due to the way it's owned, regardless of who owns it. For most people, it's by far their biggest investment, resulting in extreme political activity. We must confront that fact, or negate it, for example by taxing away the investment opportunity. Investors buy housing to rent it out to others, that's the investment. People who own their own home implicitly pay themselves rent, by choosing to…

Isn't that circular reasoning? Charging rent means its an investment, but also just living in a home is "paying yourself". Is there any way to live on a property that isn't an investment (I suppose just staying there while the government owns it?).

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

#256

Post by kccqzy »

dpoloncsak wrote: post #240
nospice wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 /…

I've been told that, for privacy reasons, you should even buy your own home under an LLC as well

Depends on how unique your legal name is. Buying your own home as an individual creates a public record with your address and your name. This gets ingested by lots of people search websites like https://www.fastpeoplesearch.com/ (which I have used). But if your legal name is really common, it would be harder for anyone else to deduce which one is actually you.

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

#259

Post by bluGill »

mikkupikku wrote: post #159
alephnerd wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As they should be.

If they then rent these houses out and keep them maintained I don't care that they own them. Of course they should not be allowed to have a monopoly on houses in any area (including indirect monopoly by agreeing to minimum prices with others). Landlord is an important job that someone needs to do for the people who owning their own house is the wrong decision.

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

#260

Post by bs7280 »

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…

I propose two changes to (try) and broadly solve this: - Additional property tax if you do not live in your home fulltime. This includes vacation homes. - First time, US Citizen, non-corporate homebuyers can get a loan at the federal interest rate.

If I were to try and buy the condo I rent, due to interest rates, taxes, and HOA's I would be paying $1000 more per month. At the end of my mortgage I would given the entire cost of the property to a bank in the form of interest payments.

Rich investors and companies effectively get to buy homes at a discount vs average joes.

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