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Agreed. It's important to evaluate policies regardless of the party promoting them.
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
#52This 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.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#53There is a conservative case for this in that the 30 year fixed mortgage, combined with all of the foreclosure protections both old and new, amount to a government benefits program. Historically, this type of mortgage was developed to promote family homeownership. The mortgage systems have continually blown up in "crises" in part because it's a product of policy more than it is a market product. This is partly why investors both corporate and small flipper types actually do cause serious distortions: the US housing market is a welfare program first and a market for bundled land and houses second.
No one wants to abolish this welfare program (you would have an easier time abolishing Social Security), but also the government wants to keep the trappings of a market price system. It is easier to have serial crises and to blame some guys for the predictable explosions every time, adjust the laws to create enormous numbers of lawyer billable hours nationwide, and then set the stage for the next crisis and the next round of patsies to be blamed. Fortunately, this time we have AI to write all the think pieces about what it really means.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#54Even if this goes through without a mountain of loopholes and exceptions, I doubt it will have a significant impact. "Wall Street Investors" implies they're targeting large institutional ownership, which is only around 0.5% of housing ownership as cited in the article. That number is also flat-ish or maybe decreasing depending on the chart you look at, from what I recall. Outside of a few metro areas where institutio…
Not sure. But I’ve been hearing of this being an issue from both progressives, leftists as well as conservatives and rightists. Maybe they’re all misinformed by their bubbles, but there seems to be some smoke…
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#55I wonder if this would include the real estate investment startup that Jared Kushner co-founded.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#56What about the many, many thousands of homes that have already been bought up?
If they cannot be resold to other speculators their price can go waaay down
The vast majority of home purchases aren't from speculators or institutional investors.
Institutional investors only own about 0.5% of homes. If they're forced to stop buying, nothing will really change in a noticeable way. At best, small landlords and investors will scoop attractive properties up for slightly less.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#57Interesting that Blackstone stock is the same as a week ago. Either this can't be done, or it can be done and they're exempt, or it will be reversed.
Or it won't materially impact Blackstone's business because single-family homes are a tiny sideline for them and not where they make most of their money.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#58It might help in the long term, as it can force cities to stop densifying. And as we all know by now, densification is the leading cause of unaffordability. The US has more houses than households, but people are forced by economic forces to move into denser and denser areas. But short-term it'll hurt availability. One of the most common ways to enshittify cities is buying an SFH, demolishing it, and plopping a 3-4 ap…
> And as we all know by now, densification is the leading cause of unaffordability.
This is the first time I see this bold claim, what evidence do you have to prove it?
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#59Even if this goes through without a mountain of loopholes and exceptions, I doubt it will have a significant impact. "Wall Street Investors" implies they're targeting large institutional ownership, which is only around 0.5% of housing ownership as cited in the article. That number is also flat-ish or maybe decreasing depending on the chart you look at, from what I recall. Outside of a few metro areas where institutio…
Not sure. But I’ve been hearing of this being an issue from both progressives, leftists as well as conservatives and rightists. Maybe they’re all misinformed by their bubbles, but there seems to be some smoke…
It's a populist issue because it sounds vaguely correct and being angry at Wall Street is ever popular. That's also why this idea is being floated before the mid terms.
That doesn't make it correct.
Re: US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
#60Even if this goes through without a mountain of loopholes and exceptions, I doubt it will have a significant impact. "Wall Street Investors" implies they're targeting large institutional ownership, which is only around 0.5% of housing ownership as cited in the article. That number is also flat-ish or maybe decreasing depending on the chart you look at, from what I recall. Outside of a few metro areas where institutio…
Not sure. But I’ve been hearing of this being an issue from both progressives, leftists as well as conservatives and rightists. Maybe they’re all misinformed by their bubbles, but there seems to be some smoke…
It's because of emotionally charged response. Leftists largely don't want corporations owning houses, because it's "impure" and capitalist. Rightists largely don't want renters to live in homes that used to be exclusionary on the basis of being able to buy a home. Though there's crossover on the reasons, of course.