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

reuters.com

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

#991

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because commercial real estate works on weird counter-intuitive things, and dropping rental rates adversely affects their entire portfolio more than leaving a building vacant does.

I should have mentioned a bit more - residential real estate (e.g., your house) is valued on comps for the purposes of a mortgage backed by that property alone - commercial real estate is valued by the local rent multiplier and mortgages are against bundles of it, or the entire company. So (simplified) an "empty building, but it rents at $2k a month" is valued at 200k say; if you drop the rent to $1500 and now are ge…

But … none of this is commercial real estate? It’s all single family homes

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

#992
post #758

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.

> 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 I have a hard time believing lots of people care to do that - not many take steps for privacy - or have the resources or time to setup an LLC.

[deleted]

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

#993

"Real estate investors, both individual and institutional, bought one-third of all single-family residential properties sold in the second quarter of 2025" https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/07/home-sales-investors-make-up... As long as we have this focus on using homes as investment and rent prices are kept high through collusion, the industry refusing to build "non-luxury" units, and regulation hurdles stopping new entra…

Houses are expensive because supply is constrained. This new rule would do nothing to increase the housing supply.

In fact, quite possibly it could do the opposite because we’re softening the demand signal.

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

#994
post #945

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasons people do chose to live some place are mostly man made. The reason to buy a property somewhat overlaps but not entirely. The giant machine alone delivers enough hype for some to just buy one. Take care of the boring things and lure them in with killer features. The line is/was planned to have way to many of them. In Japan real estate people already get excited if there is a subway station planned. Houses…

> The reasons people do chose to live some place are mostly man made Where's the water coming from.

a pipeline

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

#996

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Personally, I think unoccupied homes in general ought to be penalized As is done in the UK

That sounds like the "empty home premium" - which only kicks in after a year: https://www.gov.uk/council-tax/second-homes-and-empty-proper...

Which is fair compromise as it can take that long to find a tenant.

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

#997

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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) ?

So I realized who you are. Of course it’s you, living so far away from any and all effects or impacts of those people you have no problem thrusting on others. You’re really a bad person just alone for that mentality, a pure narcissist, prescribing for others that which you want nothing to do with just so you can live a delusional fantasy of being a good person. Again, if you’re so convinced of how wonderful foreign n…

Methinks you the sick and evil person...

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

#998

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be much more punishing from the 4th home like 45%. One can understand 2/3 homes, e.g., one to live in and the rest as investment for retirement income. More than that is just greed. Also, if you don't live in one of your properties, either sell one to keep the total number within 3 or pay additional tax.

if you allow each person to have 1-2 investment homes then you have the exact same problem but now it's decentralised and more people (more voters) benefit from the problem continuing to worsen

I mean that can be adjusted/tightened - you can say one to live in and one for rental and that's it. Other factors like other investment income etc can also be part of the criteria.

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

#999
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…

It's all a policy choice, though. The USA could, for example, increase property taxes on non-primary homes and offset investor losses by adding an incentive to sell non-primary residences for some length of time (say, 2 years). The problem isn't that the solution is a mystery. It's that we barely live in a democracy and the people that own multiple homes have more power than the young-ish (median first time home buyer is up to 40 years old now) population that doesn't vote in large (enough) numbers to offset the power imbalance.

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

#1000

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the industry refusing to build "non-luxury" units This is a government policy failure. Because no one is allowed to build fast enough, there is always a demand for luxury (higher profit) and thus that is what gets built.

You have to completely satiate the demand for luxury housing before it becomes "desirable" to build new standard housing. In years past the "starter home" market has completely been reselling past housing, even what was lux at the time of building. Why would you spend your time and effort building a house that earns you $50k when for the same time and effort you could build a house that earns you $150k? You'd only do…

> Why would you spend your time and effort building a house that earns you $50k when for the same time and effort you could build a house that earns you $150k?

Luxury housing is exempt from rent-control laws in places where those exist.

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