Corporations are people under the current SCOTUS interpretation. Which means they have the same rights under the US Constitution, so this should be struck down in no time in the courts. Another nothing burger likely to end up just manipulating the equity market and the derivative markets in the short term for large investors to capitalize.
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
#392I feel the numbers that show investment groups that own X number of homes is highly misleading. More than likely these investment groups form multiple companies when they buy up the homes. Likely state or regional. From there the larger parent company is invested. So I wonder if there are hundreds or thousands of "small" investment groups that are essentially a shell for a larger private equity group.
So my big worry is that the Trump admin will say they are going to only eliminate the most obvious cases and the problem will remain. The LLCs and shell corps, etc.
EDIT: Also it does not address the massive amount of housing stock that is foreign owned by people that don't even live in the country.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#393Churchill was right!
We’ll try everything except for a land value tax, so that we can eventually prove once and for all that LVT is the right thing to do! :)
But actually, it’s good to see movement on the underlying problem (affordability of home ownership). This is The Domestic American Problem of our times, and it deserves to be closer to the center of the Overton window of our politics and policy-making.
Even if we think this step is kind of meaningless, it draws more attention to the problem, which is a good thing.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#394Earlier 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 /…
The title of the article - "3 companies own nearly 38,000 metro Atlanta homes"
Metro Atlanta has a population of 6 mil, say 2/3 live in detached homes with 2 persons per home. So that's 38,000 out of 2 mil homes, so about 2%
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#395The 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…
Random private equity newspaper isn't the most convincing source.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They are a tiny portion of the market, but a huge driving force in setting and manipulating prices, because their properties get leveraged, instrumentalized, and securitized, with derivative products, speculation, and all sorts of incentives that you don't normally want operating in the arena of housing. Raising prices when you only have a tiny portion of the market does not work. People won't buy them when there's…
Define "tiny portion of the market", especially "market". There are many houses in the US. Not all of them are for sale. There's a difference between having a "tiny portion of the market" when you define "the market" as all houses in the US, and "tiny portion of the market" when you define "the market" as the houses that are actively being bought and sold. I would not be surprised if corporate involvement was a signi…
To add to this: the "total stock" is also completely different to any other asset in terms of market forces, because it varies widely depending on the buyer in question. People don't shop for "a house" and address the entire available market of houses in the country. They shop for a house in a particular area/city, of a certain value, with certain amenities, in proximity to other things, etc. etc. etc.
In this way houses are virtually unique in terms of financial vehicles and it introduces all manner of complexity and otherwise strange forces into the market. You can't simply treat it like any other commodified asset.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#397The 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…
It's not that simple - the problem is that those institutions are market makers. They are a tiny portion of the market, but a huge driving force in setting and manipulating prices, because their properties get leveraged, instrumentalized, and securitized, with derivative products, speculation, and all sorts of incentives that you don't normally want operating in the arena of housing. The things that they do have mass…
> you allow for policy that doesn't maximize the cost of real estate over the interests of the majority of the population.
How do you think homeowners would feel about a policy that doesn't maximize the value of their homes. That's just another way to phrase "maximizing the cost of real estate"?
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#398The 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…
It's not that simple - the problem is that those institutions are market makers. They are a tiny portion of the market, but a huge driving force in setting and manipulating prices, because their properties get leveraged, instrumentalized, and securitized, with derivative products, speculation, and all sorts of incentives that you don't normally want operating in the arena of housing. The things that they do have mass…
I somehow doubt these institutions are market makers in the housing market, if they had been ones then they'd be offering to sell and buy houses all the time, this is a market maker's function.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#399Earlier 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.
Possibly but that is not the main argument. The main argument is about the lesser of two evils. Do we want to prioritize the open market of SFH ownership, or do we want to prioritize (maximize) the number of people who can own a SFH. Banning multiple SFH ownership would target the latter, with the tradeoff of a restrictive ownership path for wealthy individuals.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#400Wow this is exciting. I tend liberal, but I think this sounds like a bad policy lol. My understanding of the existing research is that rent control tends to decreases the motivation to increase supply, and I think this should do the same
Yeah if investors are no longer buying from home developers then it'll definitely limit the demand, the price homes sell for, and the motivation to build new homes. I believe that metropolitan areas are the problem and my unpopular opinion is that people have to get used to the idea of moving to sparser areas for affordable housing.