US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes • Hacker News Board

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

#511

Post by Aurornis » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 11:40 PM UTC

newtonsmethod wrote: post #150

Aurornis wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After all, it's not like a lacking supply of housing is a new issue they suddenly appeared out of nowhere within the last dozen months. The main lumber and building materials tariffs went into effect January 1st 2026. If you thought the current situation was bad, it's only going to get worse. This announcement is a distraction to get people blaming Wall Street. It's a "look over there!" announcement literally days…

I think you're getting your facts wrong: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/01/business/trump-furniture-... "President Donald Trump has delayed new tariff increases on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets, and vanities for a year, pushing their implementation to 2027, according to a White House statement."

You're right, I probably got some of the increases delayed.

But those are increases on top of the already high tariffs.

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

#512

Post by Noaidi » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 11:40 PM UTC

WackyFighter wrote: post #254

Noaidi wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's say Blackrock, with all their wealth behind them, buys a home in your neighborhood. What do you think they will charge for rent? Market average? Ha! No way. They jack up the rental prices because they can. That makes rental prices rise everywhere in the area.

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

#513

Post by throwaway2037 » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 11:41 PM UTC

observationist wrote: post #283

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…

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…

    > 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.

I assume that you are already aware that regular home buyers use debt, and, thus lots(!) of leverage to buy their homes. The average down payment for first time buyers in the US is about 10%. That is a lot of leverage! Probably much more than corporate buyers of residential homes.

    > instrumentalized

What does this term mean? I have never seen it before. My spell checker does recognize it as a word.

    > securitized

Regular home buyers almost always enter into borrowing agreements with their bank that fit loan buying programmes with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This allows for most of these loans to be securitized into MBS.

    > with derivative products

Can you give an example scenario / product? Else, this feels like handwaving. CDS on MBS is an absolutely tiny market these days.

    > speculation

There is already plenty of speculation from regular home buyers in the US. Do you have any suggestions to reduce the existing speculation by these regular buyers?

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

#514

Post by klipklop » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 11:41 PM UTC

christkv wrote: post #280

Corporations can build their own buildings and rent them out, keep them out of the second hand market.

They are already doing this. They build entire SFH communities exclusively for rent. Nobody even has an opportunity to buy them. Build to rent, etc.

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

#515

Post by Aurornis » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 11:41 PM UTC

potato3732842 wrote: post #157

Aurornis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The material costs are high too because of regulations that require specific lumber for framing etc. Having done some extensive remodeling and building work in recent years and going to great lengths to follow building codes, this just isn't it. The type of lumber you can use for most framing jobs isn't that special. Having walked through a number of new construction properties and seeing what passes code, I don't…

Single and few number family residential and owner stuff gets all sorts of exemptions in just about every town's zoning code because if not the townsfolk would revolt. This is why everyone on the internet screeches "well I put up a deck and it wasn't so hard". Try and do a new build of literally any structure and get back to me. Or worse, a construction type that is not the regional default for whatever it is you're…

I've worked in new construction previously.

It's so much easier than the renovation work I'm doing.

> Try and do a new build of literally any structure and get back to me. Or worse, a construction type that is not the regional default for whatever it is you're doing.

Please don't be so condescending. I'm talking about my experience with home building in a thread about building homes. I'm sorry you had a bad experience with whatever you were building, but we're talking about homes.

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

#516

Post by presentation » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 11:43 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #421

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…

The problem with "increase supply" is that existing property owners rarely want that. In almost all cities land has run out, so the only way to actually increase supply is to increase density. That means fewer single-family-homes, and more townhomes, multi-family, condos, and apartments. The "American Dream" is a single-family-home, surrounded by other single-family homes, but even with urban sprawl we simply run int…

That means the American Dream is unsustainable, and until people can break through the entrenched interests and do something rational, American cities will continue to decline.

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

#517

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 11:43 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#518

Post by observationist » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 11:44 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #478

observationist wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just raising prices - it's holding prices steady at some point without the concurrent pressure to sell, for example, or manipulating other markets in order to raise or lower prices in an area, or using other mechanics to manipulate pricing, across the entire market, depending on the intended actions. If they intend to purchase properties, it benefits them to depress pricing in the area, if they intend to ren…

You're telling a just-so story, and you can tell because there isn't a simple schematic 1-2-3 story you can make from this about how these people exert control over home prices. Words mean things; wielding scarcity requires you to control enough inventory to manipulate scarcity, and REITs and corporate buyers empirically don't. I get why people like telling stories like this: it suggests there's a single boogeyman th…

I don't mean to convey that it's intentional. There's no conspiracy of cigar smoking financiers in tuxedos smoking cigars in dark rooms. It's just like the Carlin observation - there doesn't have to be a big conspiracy. They just know what's good for them.

They behave accordingly. The do things that they can, and because those things are relatively new, it's a type of information asymmetry and policy / good intentions / competence arbitrage that we haven't had to cope with before.

You might end up banning certain types of institutional participation in the housing market, because there's no way to protect against the negative consequences that doesn't have even worse consequences for either the participants or the population at large.

It'll probably have to be arbitrary, and the cost will be a bunch of firms no longer get the opportunity to make a bunch of money by leveraging their resources in that way.

And we see the influence and impact constantly, with outlandish asking prices being immediately met by institutions that have decided they want a particular property in a particular region. Or house prices being set to an outlandish level with no reduction in price over months and months on the market, because they can afford to sit and wait for the market to change. And if they can afford to do that, then all of a sudden they've got an incentive to drive prices up in that region, because local and state governments, banks, and realtors tend to use the same basic rubric to evaluate price. If a lower valued area sees home prices go up, properties in the higher valued area will be raised accordingly. There's no secret quant voodoo, it's just using a level of liquidity and staying power not accessible to non-institutional homeowners.

Supply and demand normally influence pricing feedback at much more granular levels which benefits individuals, and our policy and regulation and evaluation models are largely built around those assumptions. Without the negative feedback driving prices down, bad things happen for consumers, good things happen for those who already have lots of money and property.

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

#519

Post by triceratops » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 11:44 PM UTC

mapontosevenths wrote: post #499

Plasmoid wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renting out property isn't rent seeking.

Ok. I'll bite. Why is the thing thats literallly the basis for the term rent seeking not rent seeking?

That's not the basis for the term.

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

#520

Post by Aurornis » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 11:45 PM UTC

mycodebreaks wrote: post #261

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.

> Controversial, but for affordability reasons, there even should be a cap on how many homes an individual can own for rentals

Price controls and limits like this rarely work out in history.

Around here, many landlords renovate or build new high density construction. Put a cap on how many properties they can own and they'll switch from building/renting as many units as possible to maximizing the rent on the limited number of properties they can own.

Restricting the market in one dimension rarely has the desire effect.