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

#401

Post by xvedejas » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 10:26 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #369

WalterBright wrote: post #325

Earlier 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…

I don't think that's quite what the comment is claiming. They're not saying that some small portion of homeowners are working together to raise prices. I think they're more talking about the concept of "marginal buyers." It's the marginal buyer that sets prices, not the average buyer. And particularly when supply is heavily restricted, the marginal buyers can be a very tiny portion of all buyers, and can look very di…

Marginal buyers have a big impact by adding a lot of liquidity, but I'm not sure they manipulate prices that much, given that if they ever tried to move prices far from the margin they would cease to be marginal buyers.

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

#402

Post by selfmodruntime » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 10:26 PM UTC

jazzyjackson wrote: post #324

mycodebreaks wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is basically a maximum wage for landlords, bound to start a secret society. IMO it's a crooked notion that landlords are rent seeking and nothing else - they do create supply and maintain housing. Issue is when they want to politically and artificially raise the value of their property by preventing more housing from being built, so, if you're going to ban something, ban artificial regulations on construction! N…

> they do create supply and maintain housing.

Clearly you have never interacted with most land lords

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

#403

Post by cloverich » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 10:27 PM UTC

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 a _small_ difference, and then also banning individuals from owning multiple homes would be a bigger difference (and then building enough supply, the biggest). We can do all three.

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

#404

Post by anthomtb » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 10:27 PM UTC

almosthere wrote: post #318

How about stopping all non-occupants from buying properties.

Sounds like a terrible idea. Have you heard otherwise?

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

#405

Post by AstroBen » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 10:27 PM UTC

jazzyjackson wrote: post #335

AstroBen wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it not also lower house prices, causing would-be renters to buy instead, reducing demand for rentals?

This kinda reminds me of student loans, why not get as many people as possible into 6 figure debt? Yes mortgage is often cheaper than rental, but the whole tradeoff is the commitment, just like all kinds of services, if you pay 40 years up front you can get a good deal, but do you really want to take out a loan to do that? Limiting landlords ability to buy property is reducing demand for construction, you want to inc…

I don't think this is a purely financial decision - my position on that is it's not a good investment if you're buying a single home. Taking on 5x leverage on a hugely concentrated asset is insane to me if it's a large % of your net worth

The bigger thing, though, is so many people are currently priced out from owning something for themselves. Your home is such a fundamental part of your life and for a lot of people renting fucking sucks. They can't live their lives the way they want to. To have that be the case because others are buying it up to profit? Ehh..

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

#406

Post by logicalmind » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 10:27 PM UTC

georgeburdell wrote: post #52

This will help out home prices in a lot of lower priced markets, but do little in higher priced markets. In the Bay Area, many houses are bought up by non-occupying internationals. I've been in a couple of such houses. It's bizarre walking into a $5M+ hilltop mansion that's completely bare inside except for a token "student" living out of one room.

It's the same in Southern California. When I sold my first starter home it was bought by internationals to rent. There were already multiple homes on the block owned by foreign interests.

And at the new home I moved into, the house next door is owned by foreign interests and rented out to the highest bidder. It makes it extremely difficult to get anything done that involves shared areas (like common fence or overhanging trees) because the owner is essentially unavailable and doesn't speak english. Not to mention that every year or so we have to deal with renters who are minimally vetted. We've had a group of 5 college kids turn the place into a frat house once. There is also a property management company involved, but they can't get in contact with the owner either.

In my experience, this seems to be a bigger issue than wall street investors.

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

#407

Post by ASinclair » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 10:27 PM UTC

Hopefully this happens so people can stop blaming institutional investors for high home prices once this fails to work. Then maybe we can work on actually building homes.

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

#408

Post by m4ck_ » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 10:27 PM UTC

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #113

If I were renting a house, I would much rather deal with a business than an individual landlord. On another note, it’s amazing that in only a year, we accept a dictatorship where we are okay with the President setting policy that should require a law to be passed.

I've dealt with both; anecdotal but I had a much better experience with the individual landlord than corporate. Ex: AC went out in both cases; Individual land lord showed up with a replacement window unit the next day after I reported it. Corpo landleech ignored my ticket and calls for 3 days while I slept in a house that was nearly 90F inside past midnight.

Corpo landleeches nickle and dime you (base rent + rent payment fee + pest control fee + trash fee + valet trash fee + fee for the service that bills water/sewage + mail room fee + others I'm no doubt forgetting) (but they only advertise the base rent), and they like to push straight up scams ( such as forcing mandatory renters insurance at 3x the market rate, expensive "benefits" packages with everything from HVAC filter delivery to credit monitoring, all heavily marked up.). The individual land lord? just a flat rent every month, no surprises.

I'm sure there are plenty of horror stories about individual landlords though; the same greed drives both to cut corners and maximize profits.

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

#409

Post by klipklop » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 10:28 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #23

One additional important detail: if this gets implemented at all, hopefully it does not affect the common practice of having a self-owned LLC owning your home. This is common for the purposes of keeping your personal name out of public records; it is far too easy to link someone's name and address, and people at risk of doxing can do this to protect themselves.

Personally I feel people and especially corporations/REITs do not have the right to hide what real estate they own. Sure put it in a trust, but the public has the right to know who controls it.

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

#410

Post by exabrial » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 10:29 PM UTC

One of rare instances I'll say it: make owning a second home a major tax liability and 0 takes breaks for building or ownership.

Not that because "we have a right to housing" or other catchphrases, but because getting rid of the government sponsored local monopolies is impossible.