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Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

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Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#531

Post by ghaff »

ethbr0 wrote: post #516
ghaff wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's a typical more rural New England town. There is zero public transit of any sort. Essentially no businesses in town except barely when they merge with an adjacent small old mill city. So even in the town center where there are some sidewalks basically nowhere to walk to other than the library or post office. About 7K population total. About an hour drive from a major city. Though not that different really f…

That's one thing that fascinated me about CT when I was up there. It seemed bizarre that even "one strip mall" towns didn't have certain categories of business. Down in the south, you can't measure a mile without hitting two serviceable Tex-Mex restaurants. Up north? The nearest Tex-Mex is often 30 minutes away, and the nearest pizza place (which often isn't great) is 20 minutes.

I'm not sure how much decent Tex-Mex I've seen in the Northeast generally. I do have a few decent pizza places around where I live west of Boston. But generally speaking I find I'm on my own with respect to food. Which is a reasonable tradeoff I make.

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#532

Post by Dracophoenix »

thepasswordis wrote: post #299
Dracophoenix wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been told that "housing is a right" An easy reply to these same people is to ask if they think they have a right to wood, brick, concrete, sewer pipes, electrical wire, all the other materials that go into making a livable house, and, on top of that, if they think they're freely entitled to the labor required to construct a house out of these properties.

Their reply is that the land beneath the house shouldn’t be available for private ownership.

If the land beneath the house isn't owned by anyone, then how does one build a house on it? A future homebuilder would have to take the land, or rent it from another owner to justify building upon it.

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#533

Post by desperadovisa »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #340
desperadovisa wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but with all due respect, "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere" is absolutely an acceptable answer. You're acting like you're entitled to live where ever you want, but the simple reality is that this is not possible. You need to come to grips with that objective fact.

This is a pretty silly response. Are people entitled to live wherever they want? No. But the situation is very obviously not that black and white. We allow many things in society that people aren't entitled to, largely because we believe it will build a better society. Am I entitled to own my investment properties? No. Am I entitled to block neighbouring housing from being built? No. But society allows both of these…

> But should a middle-class person be able to build a life in places where there are opportunities for job growth (and like it or not, right now, that's the big cities)?

No. You are not entitled to access to specific jobs or a specific area.

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#534

Post by _HMCB_ »

These same people are the ones that will want bailed out when the economy crashes and their tenants can’t afford their ridiculously high rent. It’s greed. A buddy of mine wants to rent his home because then he can afford to buy a new home off what his renters are paying. Watch things crumble and he’s stuck with two mortgages.

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#535

Post by 8note »

brianwawok wrote: post #294
quantified wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renting is always worth 0 as equity, so it's a total loss regardless.

* It guarantees you do not lose money if the home values around you drop * It gives you a fixed monthly houseing cost. No "10k new roof" or "1k new stove" suprises hit you. * If you are say, saving 50% vs buying, you can put this difference in an index fund. This would over 10 or 20 years potentially give you a LOT of money over buying. Look, buying is mostly great. It's one of the biggest builders of wealth for most…

> * It gives you a fixed monthly houseing cost. No "10k new roof" or "1k new stove" suprises hit you.

When the new roof goes in, what happens to you as a renter? I'm pretty sure you still have to pull together 4k for moving/security deposit/first several months

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#537

Post by foogazi »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #300
crisdux wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The high rate of rentals owned by individual investors is bad too if our goal is to maximize the number of home owners. I know a lot of people in my cohort who bought and moved into a new home, but kept their previous home as a rental. IMO this option is only accessible to large amount of people during this unique time because of government policy, ultra low interests rates, and societal trends. I think a large part…

It will be interesting to see how that plays out now that interest rates are rising. Honestly it feels a lot like 08 all over again. Somebody decided to go and get another home as an investment property, they leveraged themselves but took advantage of the low interest rates and a 20 year mortgage, it was a smart idea at the time, prices kept going up, they could just keep bumping rent because where would anyone else…

> Interest rates go up, there are problems with people affording the rent, suddenly their unit is sitting vacant for a month,

Hopefully they got a fixed rate mortgage that way their payment never goes up

OTOH everyone argues that there’s not enough housing and now here you say that homes will actually be vacant for months- which is it ?

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#538

Post by pickovven »

nineplay wrote: post #285
undersuit wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about housing in the most expensive and populated ares in the US is a necessity? If there can't be housing available for all the workers in an area then there needs to be a change. Whether it be higher wages, changes in zoning, or public housing depends on the area, but doing nothing doesn't fix things. Having all the low paying workers commute 2 hours to work every day to make frappes and burgers for the rich lo…

There are no magic wands here. Property is a limited commodity, it can't be expanded to fit demand. > then there needs to be a change No there doesn't > Having all the low paying workers commute 2 hours to work every day to make frappes and burgers for the rich locals is not a viable option. Viable is in the mind of the beholder. Viable solutions include - low income workers moving to more affordable areas, leaving t…

> Property is a limited commodity, it can't be expanded to fit demand.

Explain to me why we can't build more housing?

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#539

Post by anon291 »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #154

"but many Republican lawmakers oppose such controls." — I'm not American and not in in the US, so I'm wondering, why in many articles I read, "Doing Good Things For People™" tend to be opposed by Republicans? 1. Are there a scheme to vilify them? Bcoz it's not even mentioned why they oppose (maybe they see Bad Things™ far ahead). 2. Are they not elected by the people?

Because republican lawmakers come from states where this is not a problem.

Perhaps many houses in red states are owned by corporate landlords but housing is way more affordable in those states.

So this is a case of lawmakers simply not seeing the problem amongst the people they represent and thus being unwilling to pass what they view as unnecessary regulation.

Ultimately housing affordability is a blue state problem.

Moreover for all the lip service democrats pay to housing, in my state of Oregon, where the democrats have supermajorities of both houses in the legislature and the governorship, they do nothing.

I think that if you spent time on American politics you'll find that the democrats rarely vote for actual regulation, they just promise it to you and then make excuses.

Re: Investors bought a quarter of US homes sold last year

#540

Post by throwaway_4ever »

larkost wrote: post #478
trhway wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes, the investors are the symptom and not the cause. absolutely. If anything investors provide for liquidity of the market. The real issue is that investors, ie. the rich, are getting more and more ability to buy real estate while the middle and the low class are getting less and less capable of doing so. The reason is the huge sloshing amounts of money being given to the top, and thus those money causing a strong…

> absolutely. If anything investors provide for liquidity of the market. No, no, no. "providing liquidity" is not a good thing unless liquidity is actually a problem almost everywhere people talk about this. The "liquidity" provided by high-frequency traders in the stock market does not benefit anyone but themselves. For everyone else the difference between trading in minutes and hours (or even days) is near-meaningl…

Liquidity is a huge problem in real estate. Right now, every single person forfeits 5-6% of their home value every time they exchange homes. That's $20k on average. Reducing the spread on homes by providing liquidity would be a huge financial boon to all classes except realtors.
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