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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

#91

Post by aprdm »

JamesBarney wrote: post #83
aprdm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of credit score isn't something that has always existed in humanity. It's something that we can go on without, even more so given the ridiculous profitability of banks

If banks stopped lending based on creditworthiness they'd be doing a lot less lending causing far more people to not be able to afford a house.

IMO they need to change their model. If someone has been affording rent at 2k for many years, then they can afford a mortgage at 1.5k, that's not the case nowadays.

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

#92

Post by pwinnski »

didgetmaster wrote: post #41
itake wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the concern is local investors keep the money in the local economy, whereas 'foreign' investors are extracting value from the local community.

I think the concern is that rents are being controlled (and increased) by investors unfairly. There is always a market for rental properties (who wants to own when they know they will move in less than a couple years?); but there is concern that investors wield too much power. I think this is only possible when large scale investors 'corner the market' by buying up a large percentage of homes in a given area. They ca…

Imagine going one step further and having each home owned by a separate owner, not just each second home.

Rents are being affected by every investor, including those that own only two houses. Perhaps more explicitly by large companies with hundreds or thousands of properties, perhaps not. I've certainly spent enough time on threads in which people who own only a single rental property in addition to their own home compare notes on how to raise rents for more income in their pockets.

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

#93

Post by Test0129 »

aprdm wrote: post #69
JamesBarney wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just need to remember that banning housing investment means banning rentals which is problematic for people who don't have good credit and a down payment.

The concept of credit score isn't something that has always existed in humanity. It's something that we can go on without, even more so given the ridiculous profitability of banks

Credit scores are probably the most useful metric for a person in general. The reason isn't because it's an assessment of creditworthiness, but it saves the time interviewing each person for each loan, asking for quite literally thousands of pages of documentation proving they are creditworthy, etc.

If you recall how these things were done before credit scores it was not pretty. Without them lending would virtually cease to all but the most obviously creditworthy people.

I generally agree the system for credit scores needs to change. In particular it should not be controlled by a veritable monopoly. But this does not discount the utility of it in general.

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

#94

Post by sudden_dystopia »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #47
JamesBarney wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just need to remember that banning housing investment means banning rentals which is problematic for people who don't have good credit and a down payment.

You can crowd out usury private investment (which this specifically is an example of) with government investment. Have the Fed buy treasuries, use federal funds to build and manage affordable housing. Capital is make believe, a fiction, rows in a database. Physical laws are mandatory, everything else is a shared delusion or a suggestion. The rules can change at anytime with enough will. Broad strokes, if Capital is p…

You realize that we are already running trillions of dollars in deficit for the programs we already have in place? The first step, should be to lower the deficit and actually fund the programs we have in place. We cannot just keep printing money without worsening the deficit and worsening the inflation. Yes, consumer sentiment is all hopes and dreams, but monetary policy is not. There are real world implications.

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

#95

Post by quantified »

boringg wrote: post #67
brianwawok wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In much of the US (read, in the Midwest where I am right now).. mortage monthly payment is indeed cheaper, sometimes a lot. And this is after taxes / repair issues. Renting is very much a poverty trap where the poor with bad credit get poorer and worse credit.

Depends on where you live - this "renting is a poverty trap" only applies to certain places and depends on home values constantly increasing. If home values crash where you live then you spent years putting money towards a worthless asset.

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

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

#96

Post by pwinnski »

jimbob45 wrote: post #46

This is why I can't take the "we just need more supply!" crowd seriously. Building more supply is just sacrificing more stock to the investor class.

Is anybody saying "just" in that sentence?

We do need more supply. We also need changes to existing policy to prevent what this article describes.

Both and, not either or.

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

#97

Post by tshaddox »

slg wrote: post #40
sillystuff wrote: post #12

In 2012 I was looking at investing in REITs. One REIT's pitch was that they owned such a large percentage of the rental housing in Tampa Florida, that even though vacancy rates were high, and rents were going down throughout the nation and other areas in the state of Florida, they were able to keep rents high in Tampa. Disgusted, I realized the harm that REITs and private equity are doing to housing markets, and want…

We have spent decades telling American families that homeownership is the safest investment. We then spent decades enacting policies to ensure this is true. Do we think investors were going to just sit that out and ignore a safe and government protected investment? Of course the more attractive we make home ownership as an investment, the more investors will flock to the market. We need policies specifically benefiti…

> We have spent decades telling American families that homeownership is the safest investment. We then spent decades enacting policies to ensure this is true. Do we think investors were going to just sit that out and ignore a safe and government protected investment?

So one group wants to maintain a financial investment that was sold to them as a sure-fire way to make money with little work and little risk, and another group wants...shelter. If it truly is the case that the desires of these two groups are butting up against each other and are mutually exclusive, is it really hard to decide which group should get what they want?

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

#98

Post by davidw »

jaywalk wrote: post #87
davidw wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article, speaking to your point, is pretty convincing in terms of the data: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22524829/wall-street-housin... > The role of institutional investors is still being studied, but the popularity of the narrative strikes at something dangerous: People want a convenient boogeyman and when they get it, they often ignore the structural problems that are harder to combat. Housing undersupply…

Quoted post unavailable.

There are reasons for that, but they are generally bad ones involving people not wanting to live near other people who look like the author of the article, even if they won't say that part out loud.

Higher density housing is a massive component of building lower carbon footprint cities, as well as making our cities more financially resilient. It's also something that can increase equity a lot by giving people with lower incomes access to nicer areas and schools.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/we-cant-beat-the-climate-...

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

#99

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sillystuff wrote: post #12

In 2012 I was looking at investing in REITs. One REIT's pitch was that they owned such a large percentage of the rental housing in Tampa Florida, that even though vacancy rates were high, and rents were going down throughout the nation and other areas in the state of Florida, they were able to keep rents high in Tampa. Disgusted, I realized the harm that REITs and private equity are doing to housing markets, and want…

> they owned such a large percentage of the rental housing in Tampa Florida, that even though vacancy rates were high, and rents were going down throughout the nation and other areas in the state of Florida, they were able to keep rents high in Tampa

Is there antitrust statute for housing stock?

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

#100

Post by infogulch »

Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020) | 379 points | 6 days ago | 794 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32493549

On this post I wrote:

> A couple ideas for how to fix some real estate problems:

> 1. A zoning rule that requires home owners to live in the owned home. ...

And the general response?

> The mega reit buying residential properties is also overblown. 70% of rental properties are owned by individual investors.

> None of this would have much impact.

> This would reduce the housing stock.

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