Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 1001 posts

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

#651

Post by potato3732842 »

enceladus06 wrote: post #594
lufenialif2 wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d imagine it’s less taxes and more you want to buy a nice house in the Bay Area where a lot of people are high earners and would be driving up prices on the low supply.

Yes and for some weird reason, the bay and all the nice places to live are all single-family and expensive as hell. Just build some soviet or Chinese style apartment blocks and give people housing like Singapore does its not that hard. This is not a democrat or republican issue, it is a have versus have-not issue. The logical conclusion is that the residents of these desirable areas like the bay / San Diego / Seattle…

>its not that hard.

Repealing all the bullcrap from the last 50yr that makes that artificially expensive to the point of being a non starter if not outright illegal is the hard part.

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

#652

Post by renewiltord »

brightball wrote: post #617
tptacek wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

About 2 miles from my house, a housing development recently went up. No homes for sale. Rent only. Stuff like that is becoming a big problem.

My wife and I prefer to rent. Greater flexibility. This is not a big problem any more than the fact that Costco replaced stock of Spiceology rubs with Bang Bang Sichuan seasoning.

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

#653

Post by throw__away7391 »

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…

People are always looking for an outside villain in this story. Over the years it's been "Chinese buyers", AirBnBs, private equity, or "the rich" generally, but the thing is that the system is working exactly as it is supposed to. Middle class homeowners demand that their homes go up in value every year and they get what they want. Homes are explicitly called investments my every mainstream organization with any stake in the game. The ones responsible are indeed your neighbors, but not just the ones with investment properties. Talk to these people and between complaints about the price of eggs going up a buck or two you'll hear them mention "property values" frequently in casual conversation and beam with pride as they show you their Zillow Zestimate. Your government is happy for the increase in tax revenue (even as they carve out exemptions for their voter base). The ever increasing prices are all going to be paid by future generations, so there is no need to worry.

If Black Rock is guilty of anything here above all else, it's taking advantage of a situation deliberately created for someone else. If government policy wasn't already going balls to the wall trying to constantly pump up property values, there'd be no investment returns to be had.

Give me the levers of federal, state, and local government and I promise you I can completely tank property values in 48 hours or less.

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

#654

Post by potato3732842 »

woah wrote: post #448
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.

That's a surefire way to make sure that all rental properties are controlled by people who are able to de facto own a lot of properties with family members (or "family" members) on the paperwork, and who are able to enforce their ownership with extrajudicial means.

Ironically, supply would probably increase for no other reason than those are the kind of people who just add cash only units without giving a crap about expensive permission and permits.

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

#656

Post by carlosjobim »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #189
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.

Why should you be allowed to create a corporation that has no actual purpose other than a shield for your own private concerns?

You are right, it is completely absurd. And it's great! Anonymous companies and tax havens (domestic and international) are something completely contrary to how society at large is organized. And it is the best thing which has ever been invented. They are accessible to any person who has about a thousand dollars, no matter your race, sex, age, ethnicity, family name, political affiliation, or any other factors except that tiny sum. If you're not born into wealth or into a politically connected family, making an LLC is the only opportunity you have in life to not be a human battery in the Matrix. And it's easily accessible to anyone. Incredible.

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

#657

Post by Vicinity9635 »

antonymoose wrote: post #161
kleton wrote: post #63

They will continue trading the ones they have as LLC holding companies.

This guy wholesales ;) I recently worked on an MVP for a Zillow-for-wholesale startup. As a curveball, our state passed a law restricting where and how these contract-to-buy sellers operate. So their workaround, after consulting lots of lawyers, was to provide a standardized LLC / Contract flow such that you’re no longer marketing a house for sale. You’re marketing a stake in an LLC, only that LLC has a sole purpose…

[flagged]

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

#658

Post by itake »

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…

I think it depends on the market.

Atlanta specifically when I was flipping houses in 2012-2015 had a lot of corporate investors buying up low income properties, fixing them up, then renting them out.

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

#659

Post by rgmerk »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #587
ghaff wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, everywhere, it's about people wanting to live in some specific cities. Even a bit outside of those specific locations isn't necessarily particularly expensive. (Leaving aside ski resorts, especially nice college towns, and the like).

I don't know...some countries are just expensive full stop. Lausanne for example, and since public transportation is good enough, you can live outside of the city and still get to work...so those places just get expensive also. Australia I assume you mean the few places where people actually live in the country vs. the undeveloped outback?

Australia is so big that there's still plenty of land available where you could build new cities (and not just in the desert).

It's just that everyone[1], given a choice, would like to live near the beach in Sydney's eastern suburbs[2], and there is most definitely no more land available in those suburbs. So the only alternative is to build up, and the boomers sitting in their multi-million dollar houses that were originally bought for $3.95 don't like that prospect one bit.

[1] Not everyone, but you get the point.

[2] and Melbourne's inner east, and the desirable parts of Brisbane and Perth.

Post reply on HN