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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

#261

Post by mycodebreaks »

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…

Controversial, but for affordability reasons, there even should be a cap on how many homes an individual can own for rentals. For the sanity in the housing market, members of society need to be driven to participate in other business activities for income/revenue, not rentals.

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

#262

Post by robotsquidward »

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…

Perfect for a big splashy press release. Populist policy with no practical benefit to the average American.

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

#263

Post by rcpt »

BeetleB wrote: post #230
silisili wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here's a report where you can see which areas have a high percentage of big investors (not just people who own 2-3 homes): https://go.lincolninst.edu/whoa-mapping-corp-ownership-repor...

Looking at the map one might conclude that big investors buying up single family homes is a recipe for affordable housing.

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

#264

Post by eli »

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

Significantly complicates getting a mortgage though

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

#265

Post by sharpy »

bs7280 wrote: post #260
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 enti…

That sounds nice, but I think that increased tax will just be passed down as higher rent.

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

#266

Post by cyberax »

iamnothere wrote: post #155
cyberax wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 H…

> The problem with this is that you can’t forcibly reduce population.

We don't need to. The population growth in the Western world is mostly over, the US will likely peak at barely +10% to the current population numbers. Europe is likely already at or near the peak number.

And Tokyo managed to get a bubble within a country with a _falling_ population. Not just stagnant like in Europe, but actually numerically decreasing.

> Halting growth in one area just displaces it.

That's EXACTLY what we need. The US already has 1.1 houses per household, except that they are not where the demand is.

So the fix is to shift the demand, not try to satisfy it. Ironically, this is exactly the same method that urbanists propose to fight congestion: instead of just adding more lanes to busy roads, you shift people to other modes of transportation.

How can this be done? Exactly like we did it with pollution: tax negative externalities, incentivize clean technology. For cities: tax dense office space (cap-and-trade can also work), incentivize work-from-home, incentivize offices in less dense cities, etc.

This doesn't even have to be a huge policy shift.

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

#267

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

cmxch wrote: post #242
commandlinefan wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then expand the scope to include all interested parties in the chain, whether owners or service providers.

So now you’re going to make it illegal for individual landlords to use external property management companies?

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

#268

Post by galleywest200 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #193
IncreasePosts wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They could just buy it from data brokers.

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

#269

Post by iknowstuff »

bs7280 wrote: post #260
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 enti…

Opportunity cost means makes purchasing with a mortgage wiser than buying cash. $1000/month more for a few years is nothing compared to the property value increase of a $1M property

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

#270

Post by kasey_junk »

tptacek wrote: post #249
tootie wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Building wealth through home ownership directly implies homes becoming unaffordable for new buyers.

Right. There are good financial reasons to own a home even if you don't think it's going to be a great investment, just as there are very good reasons not to own a home even if you have the means. It's the absolute, which is the premise of this policy proposal, that's the problem.

And home ownership rates are well within the normal range for the US post war regime! So this is a policy proposal that will likely decrease affordability to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.
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