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

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Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 5:37 AM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #530

tshaddox wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Landlord, or property management, is a job, same as any other job you might have. Let's ignore property management for now and focus on landlords (i.e. people who own homes and collect rent from the people who live in the homes). That is very much not the same as any other job. Most jobs do not consistent entirely of literally rent-seeking.

> people who own homes and collect rent from the people who live in the homes). That is very much not the same as any other job. Why are you thinking of it as a job? Is putting money into the stock market a job? Owning property to rent out isn't a job, and that's perfectly fine . People make money off non-jobs all the time.

They said that because upthread someone else said that being landlord was just like any other job ...

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

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Post by mgraczyk » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 5:38 AM 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.

What is the mechanism that you believe would cause this to lower home prices? Early signals are that the announcement alone will increase prices

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

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Post by drekipus » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 5:41 AM 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…

And reduce demand, by not importing 3% year on year, where we can't keep up

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

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Post by jazzyjackson » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 5:42 AM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #341

jazzyjackson wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not sure if this is what you mean by secret society, but I could well imagine that these kind of limits would be hard to enforce. Like a person creates shell corporations to own their properties on their behalf, or buys them in the name of their kids, or employs randos to "own" pieces of their portfolio.

Check out the origin of freemasons, a originally a secret society of stone masons whose labor was in such high demand after the black plague rolled through Europe and England that London set a maximum wage. I forget exactly what the meetings were for but it was something like a union / underground political resistance / price-fixing agreement club that worked in all the Pythagorean and Egyptian ritual later on .

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

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Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 5:43 AM UTC

hopelite wrote: post #487

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 would not be useful. A far better solution would be to drive up rates to make/force landlords unload properties they could only afford at lower rates and also deport the roughly 30 million foreign nationals that are currently in the USA driving up costs of everything. It’s basic supply and demand, but ironically the immigrant supporters are allied with the billionaires and generally wealthy who profit from pilin…

> also deport the roughly 30 million foreign nationals that are currently in the USA driving up costs of everything.

Nothing like middle school economics to help a debate along ... have you checked on the level of economic activity that is due to those 30M foreign nationals, and considered if there might be any downsides to them no longer being here (and presumably not being replaced by other foreign nationals) ?

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

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Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 5:45 AM UTC

bs7280 wrote: post #555

WalterBright wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rich investors and companies effectively get to buy homes at a discount vs average joes. Suppose you had $100,000 in cash, and buy a house for $100,000. You'll not be paying 5% interest on a mortgage. But if you did not buy the house, you would be investing that $100,000 for a 5% return. So, you're either paying 5% on the mortgage, or foregoing 5% return for investing that money. The rich person is not getting a di…

This is a good point, and I was curious to see exact numbers on the invest vs be a landlord opportunity cost. The rich person gets to rent the house, while the "newly weds" are living in it. And most importantly - the house itself will appreciate in value at a rate near 5% Assuming they both buy a $500k house w/ a 20% down payment and a 5% loan. Realistically the young couple would get a worse rate but lets say they…

> And most importantly - the house itself will appreciate in value at a rate near 5%

or 0.7% ... or 20% ... or ... -2.3% ... or ...

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

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Post by jazzyjackson » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 5:46 AM UTC

selfmodruntime wrote: post #402

jazzyjackson wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I guess not most, all of mine were fine, mostly individuals with one or two investment properties who were friendly neighbors I happened to pay rent to.

Point is, in choosing to be a landlord and buying property, an ideal world would respond to this demand pressure by building housing, didn't mean to suggest the landlords themselves put on their hard hats and frame a new building. Just that they're also part of the marketplace.

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

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Post by jazzyjackson » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 5:48 AM UTC

pepperball wrote: post #376

jazzyjackson wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

I've lived in studio apartments smaller than the homes that are allowed to be built, and a tiny home has a yard you can grow produce in ...

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

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Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 5:48 AM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #387

WalterBright wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rich investors and companies effectively get to buy homes at a discount vs average joes. Suppose you had $100,000 in cash, and buy a house for $100,000. You'll not be paying 5% interest on a mortgage. But if you did not buy the house, you would be investing that $100,000 for a 5% return. So, you're either paying 5% on the mortgage, or foregoing 5% return for investing that money. The rich person is not getting a di…

Except they do, as the original comment already said. The rich “person” has cash and access to much cheaper credit, is buying multiple properties, not paying the bills and earning rent, the other will have a mortgage.

This seems to depend an awful lot on your conception of a "rich person".

My wife and I have owned (at separate times) a couple of rental properties over the years due to various life circumstances (we no longer do). Both properties were valued in the mid $200k range. While being even in that situation certainly makes us unusually fortunate, it gave us no access to cheaper credit.

Now, I appreciate that there is a version of a "rich person" who does. But the GP's example wasn't specifically restricted in that way.

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

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Post by tadfisher » Thu, Jan 08, 2026, 5:56 AM UTC

happyopossum wrote: post #720

abustamam wrote: post #590

There's a service called Arrived (I believe Jeff Bezos invested) that lets people buy fractional shares of single-family homes and earn a proportional share of the rent. If you sell, you're effectively selling your percentage of the property. As a renter, I was drawn to this as a way to get some exposure to real estate, and I ended up investing in a vacation rental. At the same time, I'm pretty conflicted about it. P…

> Profiting from vacation housing feels different to me than profiting from people’s primary shelter, which is a basic necessity. If you believe that nobody should profit from providing housing, what do you propose as the incentives for people to build, capitalize, and maintain said housing?

Well, the primary incentive today, for most people, is a place to live. Profit just skews the preference on how that is accomplished.