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If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

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Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#291

Post by beforeolives »

bplatta wrote: post #227
yabones wrote: post #102

Things went off the rails at the end... > Well, the banks are controlled by and in bed with the same cabal buying everything up. You think this will be corrected by market forces when it is a financial and political pincher movement pushed by the same cabal that stole the 2020 election & hid COVID Truth? You are fucked. https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402449561864577024 IMO, weakens the entire 'thread' and m…

Ok, cabal is a strong word and the election stealing/truth hiding is certainly off the rails in my opinion as well. But here's some perhaps interesting information on top 5 shareholders of largest US banks [1]: JP Morgan Chase: Blackrock 6.4 Vanguard 4.7 State Street 4.5 Blackrock 2.7 Blackrock 2.5 Bank of America: Berkshire 6.9 Blackrock 5.3 Vanguard 4.5 state street 4.3 Fidelity 2.1 Citigroup: Blackrock 6.1 Vanguar…

Aren't most of these holdings through funds? It's not Blackrock, Vanguard or Fidelity that's holding those shares, it's people and institutions who are investing in their funds.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#294

Post by duxup »

p_j_w wrote: post #182
duxup wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah what the heck happened there. "same cabal" Everything is a grand singular conspiracy to someone these days. Happens on HN too, every few bad news type post has some accusation that whatever outcome was because of a conspiracy.

The crazy thing is that no grand conspiracy is required, this is just a function (and an entirely predictable one) of the ever increasing levels of wealth inequality that we see. No political "pincher" movement required, it's just people with money finding ways to use that money to make more money. As an aside, this isn't a username I expected to ever see again.

Agreed. Most of this is just obvious motivations to do a thing.

Recent HN article about the SCOTUS and CFAA ruling was full of folks who felt that CFAA must have been some corporatism-ish conspiracy to pass (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) a law back in 1986 and then criminalize basic policy rules as a serious crime. And yet apparently they just chose not to do that at any sort of scale...

Rather, the most logical explanation is that some folks made some bad choices when it came to applying that law, because it was convenient for them.

As far as my username, duxup loves you.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#295

Post by [deleted] »

woodruffw wrote: post #187
world_peace42 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clicked it. Looks like he's a Republican and a Christian (and has pretty standard opinions for that intersection) who likes to write long political essays. Are you sure he's a nut job, or could you possibly just be a bigot?

COVID denialism, election denialism, and “The Great Reset” are high profile crank subjects. Being a conservative Christian doesn’t make you a crank; those things do.

[deleted]

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#296

Post by scotuswroteus »

joshlemer wrote: post #204
scotuswroteus wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lost me at the end. You lack political acumen if you think this is how politics works: " If there's a credible threat to build plenty of housing, they'll move on." The Yimbies supported Mayor Breed. She hasn't changed the political problems in SF that you're (for the most part, accurately) diagnosing here. The problem with most anti-activist government screeds like this is that they lack the same nuance and sophi…

Do you have any ideas to propose then, as actionable advice for activists to improve their effectiveness?

Yes. Do better than this: "If there's a credible threat to build plenty of housing, they'll move on."

What's needed is a mainstream, national name-n'-shame strategy that identifies specific officials and offices that are causing the block in housing. Make the target highly specific and concrete, and ensure the messaging is big tent -- don't make it anti-municipal government. Make it anti-zoning.

It's a waste of political bandwidth that most Americans know the name of at least one random House Rep that represents their partisan opponent either because Fox News or MSNBC, but none of us has any idea about the bureaucrats who are making terrible anti-housing policy decisions every day and driving up the cost of owning shelter.

Read this article and tell me how the amount of pro-YIMBY energy hasn't yet turned this into a major, populist outcry against specific people and specific government agencies: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/place/article/The-quest-...

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#297

Post by rmah »

coverband wrote: post #5

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why would an entity trying to maximize profits pay an extra 20-50% to purchase an illiquid asset?

It doesn't make sense because the headline and linked tweets misrepresented the facts of the WSJ article it sourced its info from. I quote "Blackrock is buying every single family house they can find, paying 20-50% above asking price and outbidding normal home buyer..." and then he links to https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-...

The general thrust that institutional investment groups have increased their purchasing of single-family residential homes over the last decade is true (around 20% to 25% of all such transactions now, IIRC). And it may be true that such buyers are pushing up home prices in many areas. I haven't done any analysis of that so I cannot comment on it.

However, the tweets are ... not quite correct. First off, the transaction in the article was a deal where Blackrock purchased a set of 124 rental properties that was already owned by an institution (D.R. Horton). It was this complex https://www.amberpineshomes.com/floorplans. The seller is quoted as saying "We certainly wouldn’t expect every single-family community we sell to sell at a 50% gross margin", which isn't the same as 50% above asking price. Various groups bid on the complex and, from another linked article, all bids came within a few % of each other. Any seller would hope to sell with some sort of positive gross margin. The seller's statement indicates that 50% may be high for residential real estate and thus is an indicator that the market in that area is quite hot.

The average price per home in the deal was $258k. Perhaps a bit high given the average size in the complex, but... If you examine the location (because real estate is all about location), we're talking about a small town outside of Houston that has grown in population from 56k to 91k between 2010 and 2019. The median family income there in 2016 was $60k. So this looks like a high growth area with upside potential.

The buyers are probably making a bet that the homes there will see substantial appreciation in the future because of this growth. The seller probably either wanted the cash injection, didn't want to manage rentals anymore or otherwise prioritized some short term concerns over long term asset yields.

To sum up, the people at Blackrock is not stupid. They won't pay a premium everywhere. They'll only do it in areas where their analysis shows that they will make it back along with a substantial profit. Is this good for society as a whole? Perhaps not. But that's not their problem.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#298

Post by anthony_romeo »

xdennis wrote: post #257
TheCowboy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People using "The Great Reset" as a pejorative tend to have their views deeply rooted in right-leaning garbage conspiracy theories. Surely there's a better source for what Black Rock is doing than this person's Twitter thread. > Only the worlds largest asset manager and the leading proponent of The Great Reset. https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402437638423035906

What conspiracy? “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.” is something they said.

Who is "they"? Some article in a newspaper? A handful of researchers and futurists?

Edit: Got it. It's from a list of unsurprising predictions from [at least] the marketing department of the World Economic Forum. Thanks.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#300

Post by tachyonbeam »

gowld wrote: post #206
whoisburbansky wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like this would effectively bar any person born in India who tried to immigrate to the U.S. in the last ~5 years from ever buying a house, unless they got married to a citizen. Broad strokes, I agree that residency requirements might help with reducing speculative investment, but maybe phrased in terms of how long you're in the country, not literally permanent residency as a legal threshold.

"permanent" residency was your contribution, so there's no need to rebut it -- just don't propose it in the first place.

I edited my comment, I had written "permanent resident", when what I actually meant was just "resident".
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