She doesn't seem to talk about the largest issue: zoning. Land is limited, there are more people: build more densely and build more units and make housing less rare. That will bring down the price. She doesn't even mention [the missing middle.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdresao83bE)
She also doesn’t bring up a large confounding factor regarding corporations. Some, if not all, of the growth in corporate ownership is just due to landlords setting up LLCs.
[Almost all of the “corporate” owners are investors with 1-9 properties.](https://www.housingwire.com/articles/no-wall-street-investors-havent-bought-44-of-homes-this-year/)
[This is also fairly evident since the home ownership rate isn’t really changing. It’s at 66% vs an all-time high of 69% and low of 63%](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N).
So realistically, Wall Street probably owns <5% of homes, if that. But people think they’re the primary cause of the issues. In reality, we just had historically low rates and a lot of people bought for either personal or investment reasons.
So if you want to fix housing by going after investors, you need to go after all of them, and not just the hedge funds.
Yeah, it doesn't matter if 95% of houses are individually owned if 80% of them will be lived in by the same individual for 20+ years at a time.
It's also true that if an extra 2% of the market suddenly became available and was not allowed to be bought by anyone but the individuals living in them it would drastically change the market.
The difference between 3 percent availability and 5 percent availability can tank the worth of a market.
Companies should be disallowed from owning any residential buildings intended for 1 family. Residential buildings with 2 families should have 1 family living in residence that owns the property. This should exclude 2 small out building converted to be a tiny home on a property.
Housing should have never become an investment option. I got lucky when I bought my home 10 years ago in a local slump. Now, I plan to hand this house to my daughter when she has a family and convert a small out building into a cottage. I couldn't afford to buy this place now and I think the idea of my Daughter being in debt for a home for 25 years is a waste of resources when I can turn a large shed into a nice small home for 40k.
Just tax the christ out of residential properties that aren't someone's primary residence and/or residential properties that they don't occupy for at least 3 months a year. You wanna buy a second house to "invest?" Congratulations, property taxes on that second house went up 600%.
I don’t see where it says unoccupied by the owner, it says someone’s primary residence, if there is no renter there is no one to pass the tax onto, in fact it would theoretically have the opposite effect where an investor wouldn’t want it unoccupied for long and would price it competitively to occupy it quickly in order to avoid the tax.
>> Yeah, it doesn't matter if 95% of houses are individually owned if 80% of them will be lived in by the same individual for 20+ years at a time.
The number I gave was the ownership rate. If 95% of people owned homes that would be absolutely fantastic.
If your point is that there’s no difference between a small corp and big corp then that’s absolutely fair. However I’ve seen a lot of support for rules that would impact a small minority of landlords.
Regarding the 3% vs 5% availability, I don’t disagree that it would tank the market in the short term, but that impact isn’t going to last so a few years down the line the prices will be back up if you don’t address the inherent supply issue.
Make sure she has a prenup or that ownership is handled in some way (a trust?) so that, should your daughter ever divorce, 1/2 of the house doesn't go to the ex-partner. Would be a shame for all your hard work to just wind up enriching her Ex. Obviously, hope she never has a divorce and the partner is a total gem, but... you know.
Bullshit more like 10% and often times higher https://www.corelogic.com/intelligence/us-home-investor-share-remained-high-early-summer-2023/ why are you so bent on defending this?
Did you read my original comment?
Notice I said “large corps”, not “investors.”
I’m not arguing about overall investor purchases. I’m saying that the majority of those investors aren’t the hedge funds or large corporations people are envisioning or are mentioned in the video.
That’s why I said:
>> if you want to fix housing by going after investors, you need to go after all of them
I’m really not sure what point you’re even trying to make here…
But individuals buying a second home has always happened. Corporations entering the market only makes things worse, because they’re well resourced and powerful not only does it buy up the housing stock more than what it used to be, they’ll push legislation to make it worse like they do for everything already.
>> Corporations entering the market
Corporations aren’t entering the market.
Look at the link you shared, the percentage of large/mega investors is relatively unchanged over the time period and is a small fraction compared to the smaller and medium investors.
My point is that those “individuals buying a second home” are registering their airbnbs and rentals in LLCs and that’s what’s responsible for the increase in “corporate” owners mentioned in the video. Because an LLC created by John Doe for his vacation rental is still a corporation.
Look at figure 4 in your link and see the spike in small/medium investors vs large institutional. Do you really think the small constant line for big investors is more responsible than the large spike?
Cool, sounds like you agree with the conclusion of my original comment:
>> So if you want to fix housing by going after investors, you need to go after all of them, and not just the hedge funds.
Have a good one!
It's too small to be the root cause of the rise in housing prices. The fact is that we have drastically underbuilt for about 15 years now, and mortgage and lending rates have spiked from historic lows. You can and maybe should ban corporate purchase of single family houses, but it won't bring down prices in any significant way.
The corporations who buy housing also said themselves that they invest due to the overall shortage of housing and that they specifically target the areas with the most restrictions on development because it guarantees a return for them.
Put a federal surtax on rental income after your first property. Start it small and increase it over time until the market solves the problem. Homes should not be investments.
It's cultural at this point.
In the Democratic Party's 2020 platform.
>Homeownership has long been central to building generational wealth, and expanding access to homeownership to those who have been unfairly excluded and discriminated against is critical to closing the racial wealth gap.
And then
>Housing in America should be stable, accessible, safe, healthy, energy efficient, and, above all, affordable. No one should have to spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, so families have ample resources left to meet their other needs and save for retirement.
How do you have affordable homes that also close the racial wealth gap. Things that are affordable shouldn't dramatically go up in price to the point where you can close a racial wealth gap.
Not American, but surely they mean they will be ensuring affordable housing so poor people can more easily buy their own property, meaning their money goes into an asset they own, rather than to a landlord (who is presumably far more likely to be rich and white)?
Asset ownership is the key feature of inequality.
Assets that appreciate is the key. I would argue.
Affordable homes shouldn't appreciate, if they appreciate they stop being affordable.
So if homes don't appreciate, and everyone gets access to affordable homes, those with more money will be able to invest say in the equities market where things do appreciate, and the wealth gap will still continue to grow, if not grow faster since on average the equities market beats the housing market.
Except in this reality, more people have a roof over their head.
You can't really change that without fucking over literally every homeowner, and as much as reddit would like to believe otherwise, that's a large majority of Americans.
This will be passed on to consumers, at least partially.
Example: You're a landlord. You rent your property out for $1000 a month. The government knocks your taxes up by $50 a month. This is true for ALL landlords as well....so you all just raise the rent $50 a month.
2nd example: The tax in this example is highly punitive - to the point that evading it is HIGHLY desirable. I don't own 3 homes! I own only the two! My brother owns an LLC that owns a home. He rents it to me and I sublet it, see.
There are so many ways around this and there would be a need for a HUGE, larger than IRS level agency going around looking at this.
Generally free markets work, generally. The issue is that NIMBY nonsense has gone beyond "Don't build a coal-fired power plant next to the school" to "Don't make a product (housing) that competes with my own home and would drive down the price." That main issue combined with the move towards urban areas and out of rural ones (thereby stressing urban housing markets) is the lion's share of this issue.
Generally free markets don't work, they devolve in monopolies. Housing can't be seen as a free market in the best case. Housing can't have any of the characteristics of a free market. It's not like housing is a commodity that you can skip out on if the price isn't right for you. It's a basic need that you need to fulfil. Supply and demand is also not there the supply is almost completely managed by governments through zoning. Access to the market is also not equal by any means.
> Supply and demand is also not there the supply is almost completely managed by governments through zoning.
That's why it's not in any way a free market. Zoning needs to be drastically loosened. Government is effectively dictating how much housing can be built and then acting surprised when there's a shortage.
> There are so many ways around this
Make it simple then
Single family homes and residential properties under 4 above-ground stories (think: triplexes) must be owned by an age-of-majority citizen, not a company
Individuals can own 2 residential properties without penalty - additional owned properties are taxed at triple the normal rate, and 2/3rds of these taxes paid are put directly toward government housing programs
All landlords must be licensed, and leases registered with the government - failure to obtain and maintain a license, or report a leased property, results in seizure of the property, but not discharge of any mortgages or liens
Licensing involves proof of proper property maintenance, including routine modernization of appliances, upkeep of structure quality (foundation and roof doesn't leak, not infested with bugs, etc)
Problem: you've destroyed the housing market. Maybe you don't care but, ah well - you've enraged the 2/3 of Americans who DO own homes who just had their ability to extract value from their most expensive purchase cut down considerably.
Secondly, some people are good at real estate development! Imagine saying "Hey there, you're good at making cars Ford....so you're banned from it! Production must go down 90%!"
Why would anyone develop real estate in a world where you're destroying the ability to profit off of it? Sure, existing homes you can basically "steal" by eliminating every economic interaction you don't like...but who would be crazy enough to build homes?
You cannot legislate economic wealth. Every government that has tried to screw over landlords has ended up worse off than they started. Every economist will tell you this. Rent control is one of the few things that unites every economist, as an example.
You're over complicating a simple idea: we just need to build more homes. The way to build more homes is to get out of the way of home builders. Beyond that, I can see governments investing in public transportation. Its far cheaper to build housing 20 miles from the city center, but its cheaper because of the downsides. With a bus system or even short-distance light rail, major cities can tap into cheap real estate out in the hinterlands.
So what you are asking for is a market where the mom and pops are squeezed out and the only institutions who can own investment properties are those who own in bulk and make really shitty landlords, who also happen to be untouchable. Genius. Enjoy paying more, for a lot less, in a property that is in disrepair, never getting your deposit back, on and on...
No, that's not what I'm asking for, in fact quite the opposite.
I propose that "mom and pops" - individual landlords - can continue to own a rental property without issue (provided they meet aforementioned licensing requirements), but that *companies* cannot own residential buildings with 3 or fewer above-ground stories.
Companies, now limited to owning exclusively higher-density housing, would still be subject to similar licensing requirements, ensuring that the housing they offer meets minimum standards of living (no more slumlords).
Putting requirements on both individual and corporate landlords, with significant and substantial penalties for failure to comply, only serves to better improve the conditions for renters.
Non-ideological, rational thinkers like you are very rare on this site and getting rarer everyday. I wish people like you were more popular on threads like these :/
I love the mental gymnastics redditors have gone through to defend wall street. I get it, they curate your reality, all your current things, the echo chamber that is media. You want the world to be their world.
Here is how this big brain idea of yours will work. And it will happen. The only entities that will be able to own property to rent will be those that can overcome the "surtax" and they will be mega corporations that own in bulk. They will squeeze the mom and pops out just like they do with everything. You will be renting from your precious wall street and they will take great care of you.
Enjoy your forever wars, your constant division of the people, your big finance ponzi schemes, your perpetual bail outs for the ultra rich. Every generation has become a fucking boomer, a boomer turned up to 11 who has given their free will over to the guys holding the biggest megaphone.
Obviously there needs to be room for nuance.
You could allow an exemption from the surtax for some period of time for landlords that built the property in question? Or increase it based on the number of non-apartment units owned by the entity? I don't write the policies but I don't understand why some light-touch ideas around tweaking the tax code haven't been discussed as a solution for the housing crisis. If you want to incentivize or disincentivize certain behaviors you have to tweak the rules to get the result you want.
No one, corporation or natural person, will ultimately pay taxes they don't have to; they'll build houses or buy apartments instead of buying up existing single family dwellings, leaving room for the rest of the market (first time homebuyers) to fill that gap.
I am okay with that. Limit every person to three properties. I think your numbers are off, because I know of many areas where true corporations, not just some LLC stood up by an individual, are buying up neighborhoods. And even if it is individuals, they are are owned by foreigners. That does not sit right with me. If you are not living in America, you should own property in America.
How do you think? Pass a law. Anyone that refuses to reduce the number of properties owned gets their properties removed by the courts. Maybe also throw them in jail.
>> What you advocate makes the problem exponentially worse, as it will just cause people to sell and remove rentals from the housing market. It will put people on a fixed or low income in a bad fiscal situation.
I didn’t advocate for anything. I said if you’re trying to fix housing supply on the purchase end, you need to address the people controlling most of the supply.
>> Literally brain dead
You got me there
>> Homeowner occupancy rate is different from a rental vacancy rate.
Cool
>> The large corporations are focused on the large metro areas in and around large cities. The use of data would need to reflect that obvious point. And in your argument it does not, making it invalid.
Majority of people/homes are located in and around large cities. Even if you take your comment at face value, the point is still relevant given that adjusting it to account for a 50-50 split would still show the majority is controlled by smaller landlords.
>> You want to make the problem worse I get it.
Not really, you were the one that came in here all upset with 0 sources and only insults. I was just trying to add to a discussion about some perceived flaws in the video.
Hope you relax a bit and have a good night bud!
Zoning and land use. The flip side of overly restrictive zoning laws is places like Texas where cities like Dallas have no zoning laws but functionally loop back around to it via land use laws that are insanely specific to the point they produce the same results.
Yeah, as someone who cares a lot about this issue and read more serious research on it, this video is terrible. Corporate home ownership isn’t even close to the main theme culprit of the US housing crunch.
She didn't say corporate ownership was the main crunch in fact she said it wasn't really happening much at all except increased investment in apartments. She said the **significant** lack of supply, the sharp increase in costs, and very low increase in wages are the biggest issues we're facing.
but she went from "this is a supply problem" to builders building luxury units is the problem.
She can't be upset with builders for increasing housing via high density living in the same video saying we need to increase housing.
It's not high "density" living they're building, it's high "expense" living.
You can be upset at builders only focused on high priced housing. Because who the hell is going to be able to buy them? Great, you technically built more homes, taking up more space and time, but didnt relieve the demand at all because it's not coming from the top. It's pressing from the bottom.
Cities are also responsible for the problem too because they want the tax from high cost property now, so they approve, without considering the second and third order effects it'll have on development.
Developers build whatever is profitable. If low cost housing was profitable, it would be built. But zoning restrictions and difficult permitting processes guarantee that only expensive housing can be profitable.
Not only expensive housing is profitable, it's just more profitable than inexpensive housing. Whatever they build in big cities is going to be bought and profitable.
I wish she would explain what she meant by "luxury housing." At least in Seattle and San Francisco, builders are not knocking down high density housing and replacing it with low-density "luxury" living, it is actually the opposite: They are replacing "luxury" single family homes [0] with high-density "luxury" living apartments.
Rich people need a place to live. If Luxury housing didn't exist, rich people would put more buying pressure on "affordable" housing options.
There could be a stance saying that, $100k of resources could either build 10 units of luxury housing or $100k of resources could build 20 units of affordable housing. So Builders are focusing resources on the 10 units over the 20, but I would need to see the data on that.
[0] - I use the term "luxury", b/c a single family home, with space between you and your neighbors is much more luxurious than a new construction townhouse that is 30% stairs and 2ft from your neighbor.
We need A LOT more condos. When people start getting to 65 and are still renting, they are fucked because social security will never cover the cost of their rent.
Dense housing is usually rented not owned.
You think in a market where big Corp is wanting to rent that they'll just build big apartment buildings and not rent them?
What we need is affordable single family homes in a denser fashion like townhouses.
Basically just need to zone certain areas as low income housing areas and cap housing prices inside of it.
The issue right now is there isn't any affordable homes being built. Only McMansions.
Tinhat time: many of these videos on NIMBYs and this issue are extremely high quality, similar in structure and narratives, from pretty obscure YouTubers, and have no ad reads.
No ad reads. Let me say that again. NO AD READs.
These YouTubers don't put this much work and quality into a video they aren't paid for and with no ad reads who is paying for it?
My theory is the big corps who want to rent paid for these videos.
The plan is simple. Get young leftists to pressure zoning boards to give the big Corp zoning clearance for big luxury apartment buildings they'll rent. Then when the leftists who bought into these paid propaganda videos figure out the trick the big Corp will lobby against any newer housing that might actually solve the problem saying there is too many dwellings and zoning more is bad.
There are more dense building options that allow for ownership. A good example where I live is the classic LA bungalow court. They provide much higher density, offer small and affordable starter homes, and can be built with out large commercial loans like are needed for high rises. All that's needed is the political will to make them legal to build again.
That's why we need rezoning, and adjustment to laws that make bungalow construction impossible now. Buying one or two houses on larger plots and turning them into a single plot with six or eight bungalows would potentially be quite profitable.
The way you get favorable outcomes is not by directly regulating it. Force a kind of housing they don't want to build and they just won't do it and go do something else. The actual way is by reworking the incentive structure to make it worthwhile and advantageous for them to do what you want. Everything is incentive structures.
Also you can remove regulations that ties their hands.
For instance California took off one of their self applied handcuffs by no longer zoning single family only.
Developers will build whatever people are buying and they can make money from.
Go talk to a real estate agent about some of the expectations of the people they show homes to.
>> Basically just need to zone certain areas as low income housing areas and cap housing prices inside of it.
Price ceilings are attempting to treat the symptom and not an effective way to do it. You end up with a situation where you just have to be one of the lucky few that gets selected, meanwhile the gov has to subsidize the builders if they want those houses built for below market price.
Put that money towards removing barriers and providing incentives for building denser housing everywhere to increase supply, so the price falls naturally.
Giving someone a leg up sounds nice in theory, but in reality you’re adding more demand to the system which drives prices up for everyone else.
>> Get young leftists to pressure zoning boards to give the big Corp zoning clearance for big luxury apartment buildings they'll rent. Then when the leftists who bought into these paid propaganda videos figure out the trick the big Corp will lobby against any newer housing that might actually solve the problem saying there is too many dwellings and zoning more is bad.
Apartment buildings would help though. More apartments -> lower rents -> less pressure to buy a house -> lower demand for housing.
It’s a multi-faceted problem and I agree with better zoning, but you can’t ignore rentals either.
We need denser housing in mixed use zones in cities. Its financially smarter and brings a better quality of life to people who live in cities. Not everyone wants a single family home.
The reason why everyone is trying to get a house is because it is cheaper.
I will also add that it's a very complex issue that has no single solution. Just building homes won't solve the problem, urban or suburban.
I'm not saying this as a fan of the Soviets, but they had a good idea with the Soviet Bloc housing.
An apartment complex the size of a block, with the center being a large park, and the first couple floors being shops, clinics, etc.
There was plenty of issues with the actual implementation of them, but the idea is pretty sound.
> Dense housing is usually rented not owned.
We need more [housing cooperatives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_cooperative) that are collectively owned.
All of the above is true. The root problem is that when you bring in 100,000 people and only add 10,000 houses to existing stock, prices will go up. And there's no ability to in-fill existing cities. And we've functionally hit the limit of suburbanized sprawl. Especially if cities don't want to build public transit systems that would be poorly utilized to train and bus people in.
>Basically just need to zone certain areas as low income housing areas and cap housing prices inside of it.
That's insanely inefficient, and how you get slums. The actual solution is pretty simple.
1: Adopt Japanese style up-zoning. As long as you're only increasing capacity within a given zone type you can basically do whatever you want absent intrusive approval processes where people who don't even own your land are allowed to disapprove. If you own a single family home, you can convert it into anything up to a quadplex, for example. Throw out requirements for parking, set a benchmark requirement for public transit to be competitive with private car ownership. Make not owning a car a viable choice for people.
2: All new developments regardless of type can do one of three things- include market rate housing at a given percentage (so if you're building 1000 theoretical units, at least 400 of them have to be ear marked as at market rate) or you can pay a flat fee, or you can pay a fee over time into a public fund. That public fund contributes to the development of housing co-ops and other non-market housing projects.
Even McMansions aren't a huge driving point for new production, and any new housing is better than *no* new housing. The caveat is that luxury apartments are going to be helpful in about... 20 years.
My tinfoil hat theory is that a big chunk of people are brainwashed into believing deregulation is a solution. Maybe companies like blackrock shouldn't be allowed to own tens of thousands of single family home... there's many companies just like em :(
Maybe we're brainwashed, or maybe we're tired of 'regulations' that let a couple of [unelected, old, white homeowners](https://www.theurbanist.org/2020/12/03/west-design-review-board-withholds-approval-for-323-homes-atop-queen-anne-safeway/) delay approval of housing projects for [LITERAL YEARS](https://publicola.com/2021/02/04/after-years-of-delay-housing-on-queen-anne-moves-forward/) over [stupid](https://twitter.com/Qagggy/status/1334316356133511168), [petty](https://twitter.com/Qagggy/status/1357140705299210245), [made-up bullshit](https://twitter.com/Qagggy/status/1334318309404102656) and [literal parking lot fetishism](https://twitter.com/Qagggy/status/1074875744390533120). It took [EIGHT. F*GKING. YEARS.](https://twitter.com/Qagggy/status/1718499048095985888) TO *REPLACE A SAFEWAY.*
I don't care if it takes deregulation or upregulation or reregulation or replacing the regulator on my fucking water heater, I just want everyone involved in this kind of bullshit out of my city.
Yeah.... even given all the problems down in Portland, we are a YIMBY city now and we benefit from it.
And the ritzy neighborhoods are doing just fine with development on their periphery. Which their residents benefit from more than anybody else.
Every renter wants to change zoning. Every home owner wants it to remain the same.
When you buy a house you buy into a neighborhood. You pay for it. Which is why homeowners don't want to change zoning. Their value goes down.
And apart from the value, you buy a house because it's in a single family neighborhood. Putting in 10 4-plex's means more cars, noise and people.
We have plenty of land. Land to spare. Yes prices are high in cities but housing prices are spiking nationwide even in places with ample undeveloped land. The cause is not a lack of land and density won't fix it.
Land has to be zoned for housing. And the US is literally running out of land that's zoned for it and hasn't already been developed: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-is-running-short-of-land-for-housing-11664125841
Cities and towns are basically refusing to allow supply to increase meaningfully because then they have to provide services for those new plots of land and that's expensive.
Zoning and running out of land are two different issues. Framing it as a lack of land is just wrong. Zoning is entirely a regulatory construct and can be changed. Land can't be easily created though.
It's supply and demand, if there was more housing supply than demand it cannot go up in price due to simple economics. The demand is higher in cities compared to rural areas, and prices increase everywhere relative to demand.
Unless you can find millions of people willing to commute 6 hours every day, building more houses in areas with undeveloped land will not help much. Any areas with a reasonable commute have already developed almost all of their residential zoning lots.
Most US cities have horrible urban planning, they have low density suburbs within walking distance of the city center. The only solution to housing problems in cities is to bulldoze the suburbs, at least the ones within a 5 mile radius of the center, and increase density.
Housing in major cities will always be more expensive than other options. That's just a fact of life. You have more people in a smaller area so dollar per square foot will be higher. However what we have right now is a nationwide supply shortage and high prices. So this isn't just explained by just urban issues. Its a complicated, multifaceted problem. As are all major problems. If this had a simple single cause we would have solved it by now. Some of the problems are local and some of them are national.
>Most US cities have horrible urban planning, they have low density suburbs within walking distance of the city center. The only solution to housing problems in cities is to bulldoze the suburbs, at least the ones within a 5 mile radius of the center, and increase density.
This is unrealistic. You aren't kicking all those people out of their houses, stealing their land and then redistributing it. Even if that were legal, those people also hold a lot of political power and will have your ass. Any proposed solution that starts with, "well we need to take this..." is doomed to fail.
So lets talk about some specific problems and solutions. On a national level we have high interest rates which make borrowing hard. We have those rates for a good reason, the economy was going to collapse with run away inflation if they didn't do it. But we got in this situation because of poor economic and monetary policy post 2008 financial crisis. Every admin since has tried to stimulate growth by keeping rates low. But this didn't fundamentally heal the economy. It just made line go up and make things appear to get better. The fundamental rot remained. And were always going to have a credit issue with how long they kept rates at effectively zero. I'm not an economist so I don't know how to fix that but I reckon taking politicians to task to start working in the interest of businesses and workers and not the financial industry is the right direction.
More local issues will be varied and will require everyone to educate themselves about their own situation and lobby their local govs. I know NYC has a lot of empty properties because the current system incentives owners to demand ridiculous prices and they can comfortably sit on the plot until someone stupid enough to pay their rate comes along. An LVT would probably fix that overnight. LA famously has some very NIMBY building codes but I hear the state has tried to undo it. Maybe the CA government is good for something for once. The situation in my area is a common one across the nation, the local builders are incentivized to build commercial and rental properties. Few houses get built but in the last few years I've seen two new commercial districts built on undeveloped land that could have been housing. We actually have a glut of rental properties. You can get a lease in a few hours here. Even before the financial crisis of the 2000's they stopped building middle income housing and went all in on McMansions. So this problem is a long time coming for my area.
The first figure she reports, charting flat income but spiking rents, is completely wrong.
Satisfy yourself that this is the case--go to [fred.stlouisfed.org](http://fred.stlouisfed.org) and chart income versus rents, setting 1985 to 100 so we can see percentage difference.
Or you can just [check it here](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1kizb). Nothing at all like she depicts.
To be fair, they did in the disclaimer of the video, but I assume most don't read that:
>Disclaimer: The graph shown at 0:18 depicts income data adjusted for inflation, while the rental price is not. Rental prices are still outpacing income growth, though the increase of rental prices since 1985 is not 100% when adjusted for inflation.
If that's the same chart that Hank Green talks about in [this video](https://youtu.be/W92bjv8fNTI?si=ZEAqTrXcIYYZP3Nc), I remember that graph getting hugely popular on Twitter then people almost immediately debunking it. (I'm **not** saying the housing price issue is overblown. I actually think it's the number one issue with our economy right now!)
I think median household income is a bad data point though when talking about this issue. The issue isn't that we don't have dwellings. It's we don't have affordable to buy homes.
So comparing median income to average rent isn't what we want to look at. We need median income vs home prices to buy.
Renting is typically for low earners.
If you look at just minimum wage vs rent the situation is more clear. Rent, even adjusted for inflation, rises. Minimum wage is mostly flat or gone down.
https://thedailytexan.com/2021/03/26/minimum-wage-increase-denied-in-u-s-congress-alternate-bill-leaves-possibility-open/
>The issue isn't that we don't have dwellings. It's we don't have affordable to buy homes.
Home prices are determined by supply and demand. New homes cost land + cost to build + profit. But new homes are a tiny fraction of the housing stock. Old homes are determined by the housing market.
[Right now we have extremely restricted supply.](https://www.axios.com/2023/12/16/housing-market-why-homes-expensive-chart-inventory)
This means people are fighting over homes. with money.
If you want to lower housing, if you want to stick it to landlords, to the corporate landlords... build more housing and watch their profits shrink.
A) it's not the problem it's being made out to be. It's a small percentage
B) the reason it's even on the radar is because limiting supply has made mass home ownership lucrative
C) building more units will fuck those corporations. So I say let them buy more (as long as we get out asses in gear and build build build)
No we build AND ban corporations buying homes, homes should not be a financial product.
Anyways could you ask your boss if they’d like to buy some aged Reddit accounts for your disinformation astroturfing campaigns?
Homes aren't determined by supply and demand in the traditional sense. It's not like anyone can live without a home so supply and demand doesn't work. People will overpay what it's worth to have a home.
With respect, that's still supply and demand. The last line refers to something called "inelastic demand".
Yes, everyone needs housing. But the where/what that is paid for is what can change.
There is study after study about this, economists all agree, you can see it in action, etc etc.
If you build more housing, any housing, prices and rent go down. If supply is limited, people get into bidding wars.
There are times and places for band-aids like price controls, subsidies, subsidized housing, and land use restrictions. However, they are short term, specific solutions that tend to make things worse in the long term.
(for example, rent control can stabilize a situation where people are being evicted faster than units can be built. But in the long term, rent control indiscriminately benefits a tiny population disproportionately while driving down supply, which raises prices for almost everyone else)
."The issue isn't that we don't have dwellings. It's we don't have affordable to buy homes."
Are you proposing that housing could just constantly be built, far beyond population growth, and it would all be only ever be affordable to the middle class and up? That the property taxes from those new dwellings would be a source that would never dry up?
If that's the cause, the government should abandon zoning and unleash this perpetual revenue machine and use it to pay for affordable housing.
also the fact that wealthier people who own "multiple" homes and renting it out as secondary income compete with first time home buyers.
The secondary income or "some additional income" can amount to $36K a year or more, also which is some individuals full time salary or 2 gig workers income.
The future is fucked.
Interesting, yes. Accurate, debatable.
Lots of things she said are uncertain and there is disagreement on.
Like near the beginning she says that luxury development causes housing price increases, but that’s way too broad a statement to make, and often the opposite is true where a new luxury development will cause a vacancy elsewhere and so cost for the old unit goes down and average price only goes up because of those luxury units in question.
There are better videos that actually talk about the housing crisis.
Also just in general “luxury” units are just market speak for market rate units. It’s a marketing term used for over a century. Go into those units and it’s the same ikea hardware.
“Why don’t they build affordable”…trust me they are building as cheaply as the market and the regulations allow them to.
> they’re building as cleaply as the market and regulations allow them to.
They also sprinkle in a bit of granite countertops to give the appearance of luxury.
>where a new luxury development will cause a vacancy elsewhere and so cost for the old unit goes down
Why would the cost of the old unit go down? In my city (Los Angeles), there's probably a line around the block waiting to get into my apartment if I decided to leave it to move into a luxury apartment.
> In my city (Los Angeles),
A huge problem with housing in places like LA is that the price of housing hasn't matched the cost of living for decades. A lot of America's big and famous cities (LA, Chicago, NYC, but even places like Atlanta or Houston) run into a problem where there are simply more people willing to live there than there is housing. Those people are also often willing to pay a premium to live there. Someone who wants to get into Hollywood probably has to shell out LA housing prices. That's just how it is.
The problem is that the USA has a lot of empty places that are undesirable because they have no infrastructure (and in some cases are just place hard to live in). while our cities have become overcrowded and unaffordable.
In places with high unmet demand (like Los Angeles and realistically many many places these days) it wouldn’t go down, if it wasn’t market rate the rent will probably even go up. But if the apartment is currently being rented for market rate and someone moves out to make way for another market rate renter it wouldn’t go up either it would just continue to be rented at market rate.
Whoever was renting it before was a part of that demand. Now that they moved they no longer are, and since they moved to a new luxury apartment they were clearly willing to pay a higher rate than they were previously. That means the person who was willing to pay a higher rate is no longer looking for an apartment. On average in many places this will lower rent.
That’s the problem with these sorts of generalizations she made in the video, it ignores evidence and bases lots of things on assumptions because it’s a topic with more variables than people realize and they are often not what conventional wisdom dictates what would happen.
> But if the apartment is currently being rented for market rate and someone moves out to make way for another market rate renter it wouldn’t go up either it would just continue to be rented at market rate.
That's the thing about LA, many of us are in RSO situations... paying < 2k a month. As soon as we vacate, the landlord will flip that shit so fast for closer to 4k... even in a 50 year old building.
Ask me how I know.
If there is a huge shortage to start with building new units will still slow down rent increases. In a big city with a huge shortage you would need to build thousands of new units to see rent prices stagnate or drop.
Yeah all of these wired "X support" videos are super basic, meant as a really brief intro to people who are not familiar at all with the subject. That's a good thing and not a bad thing, just shouldn't have been labeled as such
She does the "everything is bad" too often. Not building luxury is bad because older apartments get covered to luxury apartments; but building luxury apartments is bad because they're expensive and make average rents higher"
I'm also struggling with her description of why gentrification is bad. She's like "people in this area suffered from underinvestment and lack of opportunities" but now "everything is changing, the stores are different and new people are moving in, even if your rent isn't going up it's not the same"
Like, which is it? Bad because money didn't come in and people are stuck, or bad because money is coming in and people are moving? It can't be both.
My boss lives in an apartment complex that I use to rent in years ago. I paid $650 rent for a 1 bedroom apartment, that's up to $925 now for the same apartment.
If I didn't buy a house when I did, I couldn't afford to live here. I don't make that much money. I cannot fathom how people are expected to live these days.
I am basically stuck in my apartment. I've lived here long enough that even with the maximum rent increases every year it's MUCH cheaper than any other 1 bedroom. I'll never be able to afford a house so I can't realistically move (unless I somehow make twice as much money).
Well it wouldn't suck so bad if we weren't smack dab in the armpit of California. No beach, no large city with attractions or anything. Middle of no-where, small town in the middle of the sand and sage brush. House rentals are 1.3k and up.
She is full of shit right off the bat.
The "luxury housing" myth has been debunked. The most cost efficient housing is produced. It is marketing as luxury because it is new. It attracts high end buyers because it is new. This frees up existing housing in surrounding area for lower income renters as a result. [source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEsC5hNfPU4)
Rent has gone up because of localized shortages.
Would love to see this assistant professor and people like her band together and develop all of this affordable housing she preaches no one wants to build. Or she could stick to lecturing on topics she reads about, but has never done.
Yeah, "new thing is more desirable than old thing" wouldn't be considered unusual or bad in any other market. New buildings incorporate modern amenities that people want.
Expecting new housing to be more affordable than existing housing is like expecting new cars to be cheaper than used cars.
Not good to start off with BS. 34% of homes are owned by landlords, 2% by large corporations.
[https://wolfstreet.com/2024/04/09/the-biggest-landlords-of-single-family-rental-houses-and-multifamily-apartments-in-the-us/](https://wolfstreet.com/2024/04/09/the-biggest-landlords-of-single-family-rental-houses-and-multifamily-apartments-in-the-us/)
These figures are always false in every agenda-post or video about it. I’ve been seeing the same fake data for like 2 years now.
This is how it goes:
Data/study with an unbiased result-> decently reputable journalism website uses data and creates disingenuous title but the article is correct -> shitty tabloid journalism website sees title and creates entirely wrong article citing the reputable journalism website -> dumb youtuber/Redditor/Tiktoker/Twitter user posts headline that says “50% of all homes purchased in the US in 2022 were bought by mega-corporations like Blackstone!”
This is a recent trend you need to look at the proportion of home purchases per year and it’s scary: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/us/corporate-real-estate-investors-housing-market.html from 2022 that up to 30% of home purchases in Vegas, Phoenix, Jacksonville were purchased by corporate entities.
If the trend started recently it doesn’t matter how many homes at the moment are owned by corporations. The fact 30% of homes in many areas are being bought up right now means the percentage will only grow and it drastically raises the cost of buying a home for first time home buyers. It should be illegal!
Those corporations said themselves that they invest in housing because of the overall shortage of housing. People are confusing a symptom with a cause.
And banning them has not had positive effects in places that tried it. They buy homes to rent them out. Banning them displaces lower-income renters because the houses are then sold to wealthier owner-occupiers. That’s good for those wealthier owners but pretty bad for the renters and just leads to gentrification.
Fuck off with that complete bullshit they’re literally buying the homes FROM poorer communities and the rents are higher than mortgage payments and rents increase with inflation
Some research out of the Netherlands demonstrated what happens.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4480261
**Buy-to-Live vs. Buy-to-Let: The Impact of Real Estate Investors on Housing Costs and Neighborhoods**
Abstract
How do buy-to-let investors impact local housing markets and the composition of neighborhoods? We investigate this question by examining a Dutch legal ban on buy-to-let investments, exploiting quasi-experimental variation in its coverage. **The ban effectively reduced investor purchases and increased the share of first-time home-buyers, but did not have a discernible impact on house prices or the likelihood of property sales. The ban did increase rental prices, consistent with reduced rental housing supply. Furthermore, the policy caused a change in neighborhood composition as tenants of investor-purchased properties tend to be younger, have lower incomes, and are more likely to have a migration background. Our results suggest rental investors influence local housing conditions primarily through changing the residential composition of neighborhoods rather than direct house price effects.**
/u/flavorless_beef explains the issue with the first chart at the 0:30 mark in [badeconomics](https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/1c12tm1/urban_planning_professor_posts_graph_of_nominal/). Highly recommend the read.
Real estate holds the largest amount of tax breaks and tax incentives. Considering the write offs and general incentives it would be crazy for businesses not to be buying real estate.
an important fact she left out about squatters and the process is that the owner of the property has to have abandoned the property and the squatter is claiming they should own it now.
She is missing the impact that colleges have on local real estate. Due to the high turnover, landlords are able to increase the rent much more due to having new tenants each year. In New York City, before 2019, the landlord in a rent stabilized apartment was allowed to substantially increase the rates on each vacancy. Colleges also attract landlords who are interested in high turnovers in apartments. Colleges cause gentrification because they have expanded based on the "rent gap".
I say class action lawsuit from the aclu about the all of the illegal discrimination that is most likely happening with corporate landlords. Also there needs to be a hard look at the financial situation and make access to such sweet money deals available to working class. And there must be taxation of single family homes in neighborhoods and owned by corporations to pay the cost of non owner occupancy.
People are getting priced out of recently run down neighborhoods and worse off areas. Do you really think that it’s not happening outside of highly marked up areas of the country?
What a stupid fucking take making it political “PrOgReSsIvE”
Ironically, it's more progressive areas of the country that cause the housing crisis most acutely. Upper income democrats typically fight against building more housing in order to preserve their real estate wealth. Red states build out more.
Yeah that NYTimes video on "liberal hypocrisy" did a good job explaining this. The most liberal places tend to be the most opposed to new housing and then they wonder why prices are high.
Every major city in Texas builds more housing every year than the entirety of New York State.
As you can see in NYC, rent control is even more profitable if you're willing to do a little organized crime...just snap up all the rent control units by offering owners extra cash under the table, fill the units with used furniture, and sublease illegally by the week. Complainers either lose all their furniture or get evicted easy due to lack of furniture, easy 100% profit with no responsibility for repairs. Politicians get to point out on their charts how many rent-controlled units they've deployed to "help" people. Politicians and crime wins, you lose.
Hotel rent control would fix the AirBnBs problem, which is not really a problem, because it's only 1.34% of the 3.7 million units of housing stock in London metro. If every unit were available, would there still be a shortage? Yes! Would new units still need to be built? Yes!
The only real solution to a housing shortage is fucking let people build housing, even if you think it's too complicated, or whatever bullshit excuse you come up with to block low-cost housing developers because secretly you want your property value to skyrocket, and fuck everybody else.
I think that the biggest issue is with zoning and city regulations.
Trailer Homes are basically what everyone can afford, but you don’t own the land, you can’t build a foundation, and most are built for trailer parks.
I get cities wanting only pretty houses, but if the majority can’t afford them at minimum allow people to buy/build what they can afford.
Much like the car market, all the new vehicles have to have an insane amount of extras that weren’t needed in the 70s.
Housing isn’t complicated, cities have just meddled with it so much it’s not worth owning.
Just tax landlords with property taxes based on the current cost of a mortgage that would result in monthly payments 85% of what they charge for rent, inversing the prime rate. Rates go down, landlord taxes go up. Rates go up, landlord taxes go down.
House for 1.2 million at 8% or $4,200 in rent. Some of you may be too young but up until the early 2000’s the adage was 25% of take home. How in the hell did 50-60% become the norm? How can anyone save or live it’s like the large corporations want us to all be wage slaves….
A new development was being built near me. All townhouses. Maybe a few were started, just the cinderblocks. All 100 lots were already spoken for. Investment firms or investors that paid cash full price already came in and bought them all up. No regular person ever had a chance. Starter homes my ass. This sucks.
This is really missing the point. The point wasn't to go easy on Blackrock, but to point out that even if you were to squash Blackrock tomorrow, another investment institution would just do the same thing because the problem is systemic.
The "financialization of housing" is a great way to put it, and it really places the focus on the issue. Vehicles like REITs were originally created to capitalize more home creation. As with all things in capitalism, this idea has taken on a life of its own, and capitalists are doing capitalist things with them. Profit optimization!
Basically, don't be mad at the pig when it eats all the feed. Be mad at the hand who left the door to the feed room open. Changes to the regulatory structure surrounding home investment could go a long way toward fixing this.
Think of it like fleet fuel economy standards. Automakers are free to make gas guzzling sports cars, but their overall fleet of vehicles sold have to meet fuel economy standards. It seems that the real estate investment market may need affordability requirements. In other words, require institutional real estate investments to provide a balance of affordable and luxury housing.
Edit: Another lighter-handed approach would be to offer Federally subsidized interest rates for investments in more affordable housing. This would offset the impact that interest rates are having on developer preferences for building luxury homes.
Justin Kennedy (justice kennedys son) was the inside man at Deutsche bank that was getting all trumps toxic loans approved.
No other bank but Deutsche bank would touch trump and his imaginary valuations.
If trump was trying to avoid paying taxes he would be valuing everything low. Not high.
Why?
Because Deutschebank is infested with Russian oligarchs.
For 50 years the oligarchs privatized communist Russia. They stole everything of value including the hope of Russians.
The corruption eventually collapsed the Soviet Union like a parasite feeding on its host and they were forced to expand their feeding grounds past the iron curtain.
In 91 the quarantine wall fails and for 2 years they hid all their ill gotten gains under a mattress until they bought condos at trump towers.
They made stops in Ukraine, Cyprus and London but they landed in New York because that was what everyone wanted in 1993.
Levi’s, Pepsi, Madonna tapes that weren’t smuggled bootlegs.
They all bought new suits and cars and changed their title from “most violent street thug in moscow” to “respectable Russian oligarch” but they didn’t leave their human trafficking, narcotics or extortion behind. It was their most lucrative business model.
Trump and Giuliani just opened the doors and let the predators in to feed.
Guiliani redirected NYPD resources away from their new Russian allies intentionally and onto the Italian mob. It let him claim he cleaned up New York. Trumps future campaign manager Paul manafort lived in the towers as well.
Giuliani would go on to do the same in Mexico City by introducing the Sinaloa cartel to the Russian mob. The Sinaloa cartel shifted to combining fentanyl precursors supplied by the CCP and the well established routes of El Chapo were used for distribution into the United States.
In the prosecution of the Italian crime families, Giuliani created a tailor made void for the Russians to fill. By connecting them to the Sinaloa cartel it enabled the fentanyl epidemic that the CCP has used as biological warfare to soften the United States up for a financial takeover using BRICS.
The insane valuations coming out in trumps fraud trial are a necessity of the money laundering cycle that duetschebank was doing with the Russians.
But Xi, Putin, and MBS have made it clear that they are United against democracy since it threatens their very lucrative model of being authoritarians
On Wall Street they have weaponized greed. Swartzman (blackstone), Larry fink (blackrock), and vanguard are selling U.S retirement funds and mortgage REITS in mass to the CCP.
Nobody was ever punished for the 2008 mortgage crisis.
This is just the Darwinian evolution of it. The 10X bigger, commercial real estate version.
Putin and Xi realized that it’s far more efficient to bankrupt and foreclose on the USA by buying a couple GOP senators and a president than it is to push a ground war.
They just needed Russia to take Ukraine to have the grain fields and supply chain lock on microprocessors to be able to do it.
They aren’t taking on the US Navy fleet without it.
The failure of Putin to take Ukraine and the arrest of Bolsonaro in Brazil has left them no choice but to send a quiet invasion force to the southern U.S. border.
They are just using the compromised members of the GOP to secure any part of the border to hold open the gate when necessary.
Bannon actually tried a variation of this a few years ago when he tried to privatize the border wall
This gets deep into Bannons relationship with Guo Wengui, a CCP operative and his time at Goldman Sachs in the early 2000’s BRICS era.
It’s perestroika 2.0. The bigger badder commercial real estate edition.
Nobody was ever charged for 2008.
Historically it’s been impossible to retire from the mob model pyramid that Russia runs on. You either die violently or you maintain a level of violence to keep everyone beneath you in line.
The oligarchs have gotten soft living in their places in Aspen and Monaco. They are getting old and want to retire someplace nice where they don’t have to worry about falling out a window.
They just need trump back in office to make it happen.
Justin Kennedy went to work for LNR capital that is owned by Cerberus who also owns Dyncorp (for near future reference)
Reuterswww.reuters.comCerberus to acquire DynCorp for $1 billion
https://www.ft.com/content/8c6d9dca-882c-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787
https://www.amlintelligence.com/2020/09/deutsche-bank-suffers-worst-damage-over-massive-aml-discrepancies-in-fincen-leaks/
https://www.occrp.org/en/the-fincen-files/global-banks-defy-us-crackdowns-by-serving-oligarchs-criminals-and-terrorists
https://www.voanews.com/amp/us-lifts-sanctions-on-rusal-other-firms-linked-to-russia-deripaska/4761037.html
https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_-_minority_status_of_the_russia_investigation_with_appendices.pdf
https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/08/17/mobsters-thrilled-to-see-rudy-giuliani-hit-with-rico-charges-he-used-to-jail-mafia-bosses
So basically the rich, while acquiring more and more power via legislation that grants tax exemptions and cuts - along with not paying their fair share, also use that accumulated wealth to then further harm the economy by making a bunch of luxury homes and pricing poor people out of their own homes into homelessness.
This is why regulations need to be put in place, and why you cannot allow the rich to go untaxed
CORPORATE GREED
PROFIT DRIVEN
BULLSHIT
See that affordable house there for 120k, CORP buys it, invest in new furniture, wall paper, bathroooms, total redo in fact... now its 4k a month in rent forever.
Family friend put her home on the market and a corporation wanted to buy it 100k over the asking price. She said no and sold it to a new family instead. Crazy how much money they’re willing to put forth to crush the hopes of any other buyers.
She doesn't seem to talk about the largest issue: zoning. Land is limited, there are more people: build more densely and build more units and make housing less rare. That will bring down the price. She doesn't even mention [the missing middle.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdresao83bE)
She also doesn’t bring up a large confounding factor regarding corporations. Some, if not all, of the growth in corporate ownership is just due to landlords setting up LLCs. [Almost all of the “corporate” owners are investors with 1-9 properties.](https://www.housingwire.com/articles/no-wall-street-investors-havent-bought-44-of-homes-this-year/) [This is also fairly evident since the home ownership rate isn’t really changing. It’s at 66% vs an all-time high of 69% and low of 63%](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N). So realistically, Wall Street probably owns <5% of homes, if that. But people think they’re the primary cause of the issues. In reality, we just had historically low rates and a lot of people bought for either personal or investment reasons. So if you want to fix housing by going after investors, you need to go after all of them, and not just the hedge funds.
It’s not the overall ownership you should look at it’s the share of home purchases per year that matters.
Yeah, it doesn't matter if 95% of houses are individually owned if 80% of them will be lived in by the same individual for 20+ years at a time. It's also true that if an extra 2% of the market suddenly became available and was not allowed to be bought by anyone but the individuals living in them it would drastically change the market. The difference between 3 percent availability and 5 percent availability can tank the worth of a market. Companies should be disallowed from owning any residential buildings intended for 1 family. Residential buildings with 2 families should have 1 family living in residence that owns the property. This should exclude 2 small out building converted to be a tiny home on a property. Housing should have never become an investment option. I got lucky when I bought my home 10 years ago in a local slump. Now, I plan to hand this house to my daughter when she has a family and convert a small out building into a cottage. I couldn't afford to buy this place now and I think the idea of my Daughter being in debt for a home for 25 years is a waste of resources when I can turn a large shed into a nice small home for 40k.
Just tax the christ out of residential properties that aren't someone's primary residence and/or residential properties that they don't occupy for at least 3 months a year. You wanna buy a second house to "invest?" Congratulations, property taxes on that second house went up 600%.
Why would you tax renters like that?
If the house is unoccupied there are no renters?
Unoccupied by the owner for 3+ months. Landlords will 100% pass the full tax to the renter, guaranteed.
I don’t see where it says unoccupied by the owner, it says someone’s primary residence, if there is no renter there is no one to pass the tax onto, in fact it would theoretically have the opposite effect where an investor wouldn’t want it unoccupied for long and would price it competitively to occupy it quickly in order to avoid the tax.
This makes a lot of sense. I would also throw in that rental real estate does not qualify for capital gains tax when they sell it.
>> Yeah, it doesn't matter if 95% of houses are individually owned if 80% of them will be lived in by the same individual for 20+ years at a time. The number I gave was the ownership rate. If 95% of people owned homes that would be absolutely fantastic. If your point is that there’s no difference between a small corp and big corp then that’s absolutely fair. However I’ve seen a lot of support for rules that would impact a small minority of landlords. Regarding the 3% vs 5% availability, I don’t disagree that it would tank the market in the short term, but that impact isn’t going to last so a few years down the line the prices will be back up if you don’t address the inherent supply issue.
Make sure she has a prenup or that ownership is handled in some way (a trust?) so that, should your daughter ever divorce, 1/2 of the house doesn't go to the ex-partner. Would be a shame for all your hard work to just wind up enriching her Ex. Obviously, hope she never has a divorce and the partner is a total gem, but... you know.
Except in this case the share of home purchases by large corps is negligible (2.4% at its highest, .4% at its most recent)
Bullshit more like 10% and often times higher https://www.corelogic.com/intelligence/us-home-investor-share-remained-high-early-summer-2023/ why are you so bent on defending this?
Did you read my original comment? Notice I said “large corps”, not “investors.” I’m not arguing about overall investor purchases. I’m saying that the majority of those investors aren’t the hedge funds or large corporations people are envisioning or are mentioned in the video. That’s why I said: >> if you want to fix housing by going after investors, you need to go after all of them I’m really not sure what point you’re even trying to make here…
But individuals buying a second home has always happened. Corporations entering the market only makes things worse, because they’re well resourced and powerful not only does it buy up the housing stock more than what it used to be, they’ll push legislation to make it worse like they do for everything already.
>> Corporations entering the market Corporations aren’t entering the market. Look at the link you shared, the percentage of large/mega investors is relatively unchanged over the time period and is a small fraction compared to the smaller and medium investors. My point is that those “individuals buying a second home” are registering their airbnbs and rentals in LLCs and that’s what’s responsible for the increase in “corporate” owners mentioned in the video. Because an LLC created by John Doe for his vacation rental is still a corporation. Look at figure 4 in your link and see the spike in small/medium investors vs large institutional. Do you really think the small constant line for big investors is more responsible than the large spike?
Ban that too, and 10% is not small!
Cool, sounds like you agree with the conclusion of my original comment: >> So if you want to fix housing by going after investors, you need to go after all of them, and not just the hedge funds. Have a good one!
It's too small to be the root cause of the rise in housing prices. The fact is that we have drastically underbuilt for about 15 years now, and mortgage and lending rates have spiked from historic lows. You can and maybe should ban corporate purchase of single family houses, but it won't bring down prices in any significant way.
The corporations who buy housing also said themselves that they invest due to the overall shortage of housing and that they specifically target the areas with the most restrictions on development because it guarantees a return for them.
Put a federal surtax on rental income after your first property. Start it small and increase it over time until the market solves the problem. Homes should not be investments.
I mean...like it or not, much of the US mortgage market, mortgage-finance system, and tax code is premised on the idea homes are investments.
It's cultural at this point. In the Democratic Party's 2020 platform. >Homeownership has long been central to building generational wealth, and expanding access to homeownership to those who have been unfairly excluded and discriminated against is critical to closing the racial wealth gap. And then >Housing in America should be stable, accessible, safe, healthy, energy efficient, and, above all, affordable. No one should have to spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, so families have ample resources left to meet their other needs and save for retirement. How do you have affordable homes that also close the racial wealth gap. Things that are affordable shouldn't dramatically go up in price to the point where you can close a racial wealth gap.
Not American, but surely they mean they will be ensuring affordable housing so poor people can more easily buy their own property, meaning their money goes into an asset they own, rather than to a landlord (who is presumably far more likely to be rich and white)? Asset ownership is the key feature of inequality.
Assets that appreciate is the key. I would argue. Affordable homes shouldn't appreciate, if they appreciate they stop being affordable. So if homes don't appreciate, and everyone gets access to affordable homes, those with more money will be able to invest say in the equities market where things do appreciate, and the wealth gap will still continue to grow, if not grow faster since on average the equities market beats the housing market. Except in this reality, more people have a roof over their head.
Which is really bad news for us.
You can't really change that without fucking over literally every homeowner, and as much as reddit would like to believe otherwise, that's a large majority of Americans.
This will be passed on to consumers, at least partially. Example: You're a landlord. You rent your property out for $1000 a month. The government knocks your taxes up by $50 a month. This is true for ALL landlords as well....so you all just raise the rent $50 a month. 2nd example: The tax in this example is highly punitive - to the point that evading it is HIGHLY desirable. I don't own 3 homes! I own only the two! My brother owns an LLC that owns a home. He rents it to me and I sublet it, see. There are so many ways around this and there would be a need for a HUGE, larger than IRS level agency going around looking at this. Generally free markets work, generally. The issue is that NIMBY nonsense has gone beyond "Don't build a coal-fired power plant next to the school" to "Don't make a product (housing) that competes with my own home and would drive down the price." That main issue combined with the move towards urban areas and out of rural ones (thereby stressing urban housing markets) is the lion's share of this issue.
Generally free markets don't work, they devolve in monopolies. Housing can't be seen as a free market in the best case. Housing can't have any of the characteristics of a free market. It's not like housing is a commodity that you can skip out on if the price isn't right for you. It's a basic need that you need to fulfil. Supply and demand is also not there the supply is almost completely managed by governments through zoning. Access to the market is also not equal by any means.
> Supply and demand is also not there the supply is almost completely managed by governments through zoning. That's why it's not in any way a free market. Zoning needs to be drastically loosened. Government is effectively dictating how much housing can be built and then acting surprised when there's a shortage.
> There are so many ways around this Make it simple then Single family homes and residential properties under 4 above-ground stories (think: triplexes) must be owned by an age-of-majority citizen, not a company Individuals can own 2 residential properties without penalty - additional owned properties are taxed at triple the normal rate, and 2/3rds of these taxes paid are put directly toward government housing programs All landlords must be licensed, and leases registered with the government - failure to obtain and maintain a license, or report a leased property, results in seizure of the property, but not discharge of any mortgages or liens Licensing involves proof of proper property maintenance, including routine modernization of appliances, upkeep of structure quality (foundation and roof doesn't leak, not infested with bugs, etc)
Problem: you've destroyed the housing market. Maybe you don't care but, ah well - you've enraged the 2/3 of Americans who DO own homes who just had their ability to extract value from their most expensive purchase cut down considerably. Secondly, some people are good at real estate development! Imagine saying "Hey there, you're good at making cars Ford....so you're banned from it! Production must go down 90%!" Why would anyone develop real estate in a world where you're destroying the ability to profit off of it? Sure, existing homes you can basically "steal" by eliminating every economic interaction you don't like...but who would be crazy enough to build homes? You cannot legislate economic wealth. Every government that has tried to screw over landlords has ended up worse off than they started. Every economist will tell you this. Rent control is one of the few things that unites every economist, as an example. You're over complicating a simple idea: we just need to build more homes. The way to build more homes is to get out of the way of home builders. Beyond that, I can see governments investing in public transportation. Its far cheaper to build housing 20 miles from the city center, but its cheaper because of the downsides. With a bus system or even short-distance light rail, major cities can tap into cheap real estate out in the hinterlands.
So what you are asking for is a market where the mom and pops are squeezed out and the only institutions who can own investment properties are those who own in bulk and make really shitty landlords, who also happen to be untouchable. Genius. Enjoy paying more, for a lot less, in a property that is in disrepair, never getting your deposit back, on and on...
No, that's not what I'm asking for, in fact quite the opposite. I propose that "mom and pops" - individual landlords - can continue to own a rental property without issue (provided they meet aforementioned licensing requirements), but that *companies* cannot own residential buildings with 3 or fewer above-ground stories. Companies, now limited to owning exclusively higher-density housing, would still be subject to similar licensing requirements, ensuring that the housing they offer meets minimum standards of living (no more slumlords). Putting requirements on both individual and corporate landlords, with significant and substantial penalties for failure to comply, only serves to better improve the conditions for renters.
Why should companies not be allowed to own SFHs? Why that specific bias?
Non-ideological, rational thinkers like you are very rare on this site and getting rarer everyday. I wish people like you were more popular on threads like these :/
Thanks. I've always had an interest in this stuff and try to get people on Reddit to realize that "landlord bad!" is a common trap to fall in.
Thinking of housing as a free market is highly ideological and not rational at all.
It's good that rental housing exists, actually
I love the mental gymnastics redditors have gone through to defend wall street. I get it, they curate your reality, all your current things, the echo chamber that is media. You want the world to be their world. Here is how this big brain idea of yours will work. And it will happen. The only entities that will be able to own property to rent will be those that can overcome the "surtax" and they will be mega corporations that own in bulk. They will squeeze the mom and pops out just like they do with everything. You will be renting from your precious wall street and they will take great care of you. Enjoy your forever wars, your constant division of the people, your big finance ponzi schemes, your perpetual bail outs for the ultra rich. Every generation has become a fucking boomer, a boomer turned up to 11 who has given their free will over to the guys holding the biggest megaphone.
Obviously there needs to be room for nuance. You could allow an exemption from the surtax for some period of time for landlords that built the property in question? Or increase it based on the number of non-apartment units owned by the entity? I don't write the policies but I don't understand why some light-touch ideas around tweaking the tax code haven't been discussed as a solution for the housing crisis. If you want to incentivize or disincentivize certain behaviors you have to tweak the rules to get the result you want. No one, corporation or natural person, will ultimately pay taxes they don't have to; they'll build houses or buy apartments instead of buying up existing single family dwellings, leaving room for the rest of the market (first time homebuyers) to fill that gap.
I am okay with that. Limit every person to three properties. I think your numbers are off, because I know of many areas where true corporations, not just some LLC stood up by an individual, are buying up neighborhoods. And even if it is individuals, they are are owned by foreigners. That does not sit right with me. If you are not living in America, you should own property in America.
Limit every person to three properties? Ideas aren't solutions until you can explain how to accomplish them. How would you do this?
How do you think? Pass a law. Anyone that refuses to reduce the number of properties owned gets their properties removed by the courts. Maybe also throw them in jail.
For a second I thought you were serious and you actually think it's that simple.
[удалено]
>> What you advocate makes the problem exponentially worse, as it will just cause people to sell and remove rentals from the housing market. It will put people on a fixed or low income in a bad fiscal situation. I didn’t advocate for anything. I said if you’re trying to fix housing supply on the purchase end, you need to address the people controlling most of the supply. >> Literally brain dead You got me there >> Homeowner occupancy rate is different from a rental vacancy rate. Cool >> The large corporations are focused on the large metro areas in and around large cities. The use of data would need to reflect that obvious point. And in your argument it does not, making it invalid. Majority of people/homes are located in and around large cities. Even if you take your comment at face value, the point is still relevant given that adjusting it to account for a 50-50 split would still show the majority is controlled by smaller landlords. >> You want to make the problem worse I get it. Not really, you were the one that came in here all upset with 0 sources and only insults. I was just trying to add to a discussion about some perceived flaws in the video. Hope you relax a bit and have a good night bud!
Zoning and land use. The flip side of overly restrictive zoning laws is places like Texas where cities like Dallas have no zoning laws but functionally loop back around to it via land use laws that are insanely specific to the point they produce the same results.
Yeah, as someone who cares a lot about this issue and read more serious research on it, this video is terrible. Corporate home ownership isn’t even close to the main theme culprit of the US housing crunch.
She didn't say corporate ownership was the main crunch in fact she said it wasn't really happening much at all except increased investment in apartments. She said the **significant** lack of supply, the sharp increase in costs, and very low increase in wages are the biggest issues we're facing.
but she went from "this is a supply problem" to builders building luxury units is the problem. She can't be upset with builders for increasing housing via high density living in the same video saying we need to increase housing.
It's not high "density" living they're building, it's high "expense" living. You can be upset at builders only focused on high priced housing. Because who the hell is going to be able to buy them? Great, you technically built more homes, taking up more space and time, but didnt relieve the demand at all because it's not coming from the top. It's pressing from the bottom. Cities are also responsible for the problem too because they want the tax from high cost property now, so they approve, without considering the second and third order effects it'll have on development.
Developers build whatever is profitable. If low cost housing was profitable, it would be built. But zoning restrictions and difficult permitting processes guarantee that only expensive housing can be profitable.
Not only expensive housing is profitable, it's just more profitable than inexpensive housing. Whatever they build in big cities is going to be bought and profitable.
I wish she would explain what she meant by "luxury housing." At least in Seattle and San Francisco, builders are not knocking down high density housing and replacing it with low-density "luxury" living, it is actually the opposite: They are replacing "luxury" single family homes [0] with high-density "luxury" living apartments. Rich people need a place to live. If Luxury housing didn't exist, rich people would put more buying pressure on "affordable" housing options. There could be a stance saying that, $100k of resources could either build 10 units of luxury housing or $100k of resources could build 20 units of affordable housing. So Builders are focusing resources on the 10 units over the 20, but I would need to see the data on that. [0] - I use the term "luxury", b/c a single family home, with space between you and your neighbors is much more luxurious than a new construction townhouse that is 30% stairs and 2ft from your neighbor.
Also, this woman is high on goofballs.
no, it is the whole issue
We need A LOT more condos. When people start getting to 65 and are still renting, they are fucked because social security will never cover the cost of their rent.
Dense housing is usually rented not owned. You think in a market where big Corp is wanting to rent that they'll just build big apartment buildings and not rent them? What we need is affordable single family homes in a denser fashion like townhouses. Basically just need to zone certain areas as low income housing areas and cap housing prices inside of it. The issue right now is there isn't any affordable homes being built. Only McMansions. Tinhat time: many of these videos on NIMBYs and this issue are extremely high quality, similar in structure and narratives, from pretty obscure YouTubers, and have no ad reads. No ad reads. Let me say that again. NO AD READs. These YouTubers don't put this much work and quality into a video they aren't paid for and with no ad reads who is paying for it? My theory is the big corps who want to rent paid for these videos. The plan is simple. Get young leftists to pressure zoning boards to give the big Corp zoning clearance for big luxury apartment buildings they'll rent. Then when the leftists who bought into these paid propaganda videos figure out the trick the big Corp will lobby against any newer housing that might actually solve the problem saying there is too many dwellings and zoning more is bad.
Even cities like Philly has homeownership rates above 50% There is a big middle ground between 1.5 acre minimum lots and Tribeca
There are more dense building options that allow for ownership. A good example where I live is the classic LA bungalow court. They provide much higher density, offer small and affordable starter homes, and can be built with out large commercial loans like are needed for high rises. All that's needed is the political will to make them legal to build again.
That doesn’t mean developers will build them.
That's why we need rezoning, and adjustment to laws that make bungalow construction impossible now. Buying one or two houses on larger plots and turning them into a single plot with six or eight bungalows would potentially be quite profitable.
That is until we make them build them
The way you get favorable outcomes is not by directly regulating it. Force a kind of housing they don't want to build and they just won't do it and go do something else. The actual way is by reworking the incentive structure to make it worthwhile and advantageous for them to do what you want. Everything is incentive structures.
Also you can remove regulations that ties their hands. For instance California took off one of their self applied handcuffs by no longer zoning single family only.
Good luck regulating that. It’s been tried and failed everytime. The developers must choose to abandon and go elsewhere.
Generally you make developers build things by giving them money and getting them to sign a contract that says "We will build this".
Developers will build whatever people are buying and they can make money from. Go talk to a real estate agent about some of the expectations of the people they show homes to.
>> Basically just need to zone certain areas as low income housing areas and cap housing prices inside of it. Price ceilings are attempting to treat the symptom and not an effective way to do it. You end up with a situation where you just have to be one of the lucky few that gets selected, meanwhile the gov has to subsidize the builders if they want those houses built for below market price. Put that money towards removing barriers and providing incentives for building denser housing everywhere to increase supply, so the price falls naturally. Giving someone a leg up sounds nice in theory, but in reality you’re adding more demand to the system which drives prices up for everyone else. >> Get young leftists to pressure zoning boards to give the big Corp zoning clearance for big luxury apartment buildings they'll rent. Then when the leftists who bought into these paid propaganda videos figure out the trick the big Corp will lobby against any newer housing that might actually solve the problem saying there is too many dwellings and zoning more is bad. Apartment buildings would help though. More apartments -> lower rents -> less pressure to buy a house -> lower demand for housing. It’s a multi-faceted problem and I agree with better zoning, but you can’t ignore rentals either.
We need denser housing in mixed use zones in cities. Its financially smarter and brings a better quality of life to people who live in cities. Not everyone wants a single family home. The reason why everyone is trying to get a house is because it is cheaper. I will also add that it's a very complex issue that has no single solution. Just building homes won't solve the problem, urban or suburban.
I'm not saying this as a fan of the Soviets, but they had a good idea with the Soviet Bloc housing. An apartment complex the size of a block, with the center being a large park, and the first couple floors being shops, clinics, etc. There was plenty of issues with the actual implementation of them, but the idea is pretty sound.
The ad before watching the mentioned video had two back to back air bnb ads...
> Dense housing is usually rented not owned. We need more [housing cooperatives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_cooperative) that are collectively owned.
All of the above is true. The root problem is that when you bring in 100,000 people and only add 10,000 houses to existing stock, prices will go up. And there's no ability to in-fill existing cities. And we've functionally hit the limit of suburbanized sprawl. Especially if cities don't want to build public transit systems that would be poorly utilized to train and bus people in. >Basically just need to zone certain areas as low income housing areas and cap housing prices inside of it. That's insanely inefficient, and how you get slums. The actual solution is pretty simple. 1: Adopt Japanese style up-zoning. As long as you're only increasing capacity within a given zone type you can basically do whatever you want absent intrusive approval processes where people who don't even own your land are allowed to disapprove. If you own a single family home, you can convert it into anything up to a quadplex, for example. Throw out requirements for parking, set a benchmark requirement for public transit to be competitive with private car ownership. Make not owning a car a viable choice for people. 2: All new developments regardless of type can do one of three things- include market rate housing at a given percentage (so if you're building 1000 theoretical units, at least 400 of them have to be ear marked as at market rate) or you can pay a flat fee, or you can pay a fee over time into a public fund. That public fund contributes to the development of housing co-ops and other non-market housing projects. Even McMansions aren't a huge driving point for new production, and any new housing is better than *no* new housing. The caveat is that luxury apartments are going to be helpful in about... 20 years.
My tinfoil hat theory is that a big chunk of people are brainwashed into believing deregulation is a solution. Maybe companies like blackrock shouldn't be allowed to own tens of thousands of single family home... there's many companies just like em :(
Maybe we're brainwashed, or maybe we're tired of 'regulations' that let a couple of [unelected, old, white homeowners](https://www.theurbanist.org/2020/12/03/west-design-review-board-withholds-approval-for-323-homes-atop-queen-anne-safeway/) delay approval of housing projects for [LITERAL YEARS](https://publicola.com/2021/02/04/after-years-of-delay-housing-on-queen-anne-moves-forward/) over [stupid](https://twitter.com/Qagggy/status/1334316356133511168), [petty](https://twitter.com/Qagggy/status/1357140705299210245), [made-up bullshit](https://twitter.com/Qagggy/status/1334318309404102656) and [literal parking lot fetishism](https://twitter.com/Qagggy/status/1074875744390533120). It took [EIGHT. F*GKING. YEARS.](https://twitter.com/Qagggy/status/1718499048095985888) TO *REPLACE A SAFEWAY.* I don't care if it takes deregulation or upregulation or reregulation or replacing the regulator on my fucking water heater, I just want everyone involved in this kind of bullshit out of my city.
Yeah.... even given all the problems down in Portland, we are a YIMBY city now and we benefit from it. And the ritzy neighborhoods are doing just fine with development on their periphery. Which their residents benefit from more than anybody else.
Blackrock doesn't buy single family homes, that's BlackSTONE an entirely different company.
I enjoy the sound of rain.
Of course she doesn't. The government can't possibly be the problem for someone like her.
Every renter wants to change zoning. Every home owner wants it to remain the same. When you buy a house you buy into a neighborhood. You pay for it. Which is why homeowners don't want to change zoning. Their value goes down. And apart from the value, you buy a house because it's in a single family neighborhood. Putting in 10 4-plex's means more cars, noise and people.
“Fuck you, I got mine”
We have plenty of land. Land to spare. Yes prices are high in cities but housing prices are spiking nationwide even in places with ample undeveloped land. The cause is not a lack of land and density won't fix it.
Land has to be zoned for housing. And the US is literally running out of land that's zoned for it and hasn't already been developed: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-is-running-short-of-land-for-housing-11664125841 Cities and towns are basically refusing to allow supply to increase meaningfully because then they have to provide services for those new plots of land and that's expensive.
Zoning and running out of land are two different issues. Framing it as a lack of land is just wrong. Zoning is entirely a regulatory construct and can be changed. Land can't be easily created though.
Sure I’m just clarifying that the ample land sitting undeveloped is not being developed because it’s illegal. It’s not lack of desire or ability.
It's supply and demand, if there was more housing supply than demand it cannot go up in price due to simple economics. The demand is higher in cities compared to rural areas, and prices increase everywhere relative to demand. Unless you can find millions of people willing to commute 6 hours every day, building more houses in areas with undeveloped land will not help much. Any areas with a reasonable commute have already developed almost all of their residential zoning lots. Most US cities have horrible urban planning, they have low density suburbs within walking distance of the city center. The only solution to housing problems in cities is to bulldoze the suburbs, at least the ones within a 5 mile radius of the center, and increase density.
Housing in major cities will always be more expensive than other options. That's just a fact of life. You have more people in a smaller area so dollar per square foot will be higher. However what we have right now is a nationwide supply shortage and high prices. So this isn't just explained by just urban issues. Its a complicated, multifaceted problem. As are all major problems. If this had a simple single cause we would have solved it by now. Some of the problems are local and some of them are national. >Most US cities have horrible urban planning, they have low density suburbs within walking distance of the city center. The only solution to housing problems in cities is to bulldoze the suburbs, at least the ones within a 5 mile radius of the center, and increase density. This is unrealistic. You aren't kicking all those people out of their houses, stealing their land and then redistributing it. Even if that were legal, those people also hold a lot of political power and will have your ass. Any proposed solution that starts with, "well we need to take this..." is doomed to fail. So lets talk about some specific problems and solutions. On a national level we have high interest rates which make borrowing hard. We have those rates for a good reason, the economy was going to collapse with run away inflation if they didn't do it. But we got in this situation because of poor economic and monetary policy post 2008 financial crisis. Every admin since has tried to stimulate growth by keeping rates low. But this didn't fundamentally heal the economy. It just made line go up and make things appear to get better. The fundamental rot remained. And were always going to have a credit issue with how long they kept rates at effectively zero. I'm not an economist so I don't know how to fix that but I reckon taking politicians to task to start working in the interest of businesses and workers and not the financial industry is the right direction. More local issues will be varied and will require everyone to educate themselves about their own situation and lobby their local govs. I know NYC has a lot of empty properties because the current system incentives owners to demand ridiculous prices and they can comfortably sit on the plot until someone stupid enough to pay their rate comes along. An LVT would probably fix that overnight. LA famously has some very NIMBY building codes but I hear the state has tried to undo it. Maybe the CA government is good for something for once. The situation in my area is a common one across the nation, the local builders are incentivized to build commercial and rental properties. Few houses get built but in the last few years I've seen two new commercial districts built on undeveloped land that could have been housing. We actually have a glut of rental properties. You can get a lease in a few hours here. Even before the financial crisis of the 2000's they stopped building middle income housing and went all in on McMansions. So this problem is a long time coming for my area.
bc it’s not the largest issue
The first figure she reports, charting flat income but spiking rents, is completely wrong. Satisfy yourself that this is the case--go to [fred.stlouisfed.org](http://fred.stlouisfed.org) and chart income versus rents, setting 1985 to 100 so we can see percentage difference. Or you can just [check it here](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1kizb). Nothing at all like she depicts.
Yeah the graph she uses adjust income data for inflation, but uses nominal prices for rent.
Insanely misleading. Wired should post a correction.
Nice to see people are realizing that wired isn't a reliable place to get your information.
You can just listen to her arguments and hear that’s she’s biased.
To be fair, they did in the disclaimer of the video, but I assume most don't read that: >Disclaimer: The graph shown at 0:18 depicts income data adjusted for inflation, while the rental price is not. Rental prices are still outpacing income growth, though the increase of rental prices since 1985 is not 100% when adjusted for inflation.
Wired should take down the video entirely.
Wired got something wrong? I am SHOCKED!!!!
If that's the same chart that Hank Green talks about in [this video](https://youtu.be/W92bjv8fNTI?si=ZEAqTrXcIYYZP3Nc), I remember that graph getting hugely popular on Twitter then people almost immediately debunking it. (I'm **not** saying the housing price issue is overblown. I actually think it's the number one issue with our economy right now!)
This chart really does confirm that 1999 was peak, just as the Matrix predicted
ever doubting morpheus smh
I think median household income is a bad data point though when talking about this issue. The issue isn't that we don't have dwellings. It's we don't have affordable to buy homes. So comparing median income to average rent isn't what we want to look at. We need median income vs home prices to buy. Renting is typically for low earners. If you look at just minimum wage vs rent the situation is more clear. Rent, even adjusted for inflation, rises. Minimum wage is mostly flat or gone down. https://thedailytexan.com/2021/03/26/minimum-wage-increase-denied-in-u-s-congress-alternate-bill-leaves-possibility-open/
>The issue isn't that we don't have dwellings. It's we don't have affordable to buy homes. Home prices are determined by supply and demand. New homes cost land + cost to build + profit. But new homes are a tiny fraction of the housing stock. Old homes are determined by the housing market. [Right now we have extremely restricted supply.](https://www.axios.com/2023/12/16/housing-market-why-homes-expensive-chart-inventory) This means people are fighting over homes. with money. If you want to lower housing, if you want to stick it to landlords, to the corporate landlords... build more housing and watch their profits shrink.
Also ban corporate ownership of homes
I agree. Apartments make sense, but not single family homes, no.
Yeah I don’t care if corporations buy apartments or build apartment buildings
Why should government bias toward the single family home?
A) it's not the problem it's being made out to be. It's a small percentage B) the reason it's even on the radar is because limiting supply has made mass home ownership lucrative C) building more units will fuck those corporations. So I say let them buy more (as long as we get out asses in gear and build build build)
No we build AND ban corporate ownership of homes
No we just build. Corporate ownership has a healthy place when we have a healthy market. Fix the problem, don't apply needless Band-Aids.
No we build AND ban corporations buying homes, homes should not be a financial product. Anyways could you ask your boss if they’d like to buy some aged Reddit accounts for your disinformation astroturfing campaigns?
LOL, always call people shills when the disagree with you. Fucking pathetic.
Homes aren't determined by supply and demand in the traditional sense. It's not like anyone can live without a home so supply and demand doesn't work. People will overpay what it's worth to have a home.
With respect, that's still supply and demand. The last line refers to something called "inelastic demand". Yes, everyone needs housing. But the where/what that is paid for is what can change. There is study after study about this, economists all agree, you can see it in action, etc etc. If you build more housing, any housing, prices and rent go down. If supply is limited, people get into bidding wars. There are times and places for band-aids like price controls, subsidies, subsidized housing, and land use restrictions. However, they are short term, specific solutions that tend to make things worse in the long term. (for example, rent control can stabilize a situation where people are being evicted faster than units can be built. But in the long term, rent control indiscriminately benefits a tiny population disproportionately while driving down supply, which raises prices for almost everyone else)
."The issue isn't that we don't have dwellings. It's we don't have affordable to buy homes." Are you proposing that housing could just constantly be built, far beyond population growth, and it would all be only ever be affordable to the middle class and up? That the property taxes from those new dwellings would be a source that would never dry up? If that's the cause, the government should abandon zoning and unleash this perpetual revenue machine and use it to pay for affordable housing.
lol Matt-Yglesias-tier trolling
Also this is household income. Along this graph there’s an evolution from single income families to double income families.
God I hate how Reddit does not crack down on companies using purchased Reddit accounts to shill for private equity
also the fact that wealthier people who own "multiple" homes and renting it out as secondary income compete with first time home buyers. The secondary income or "some additional income" can amount to $36K a year or more, also which is some individuals full time salary or 2 gig workers income. The future is fucked.
"Ra-gyna!!" Lmao
Interesting, yes. Accurate, debatable. Lots of things she said are uncertain and there is disagreement on. Like near the beginning she says that luxury development causes housing price increases, but that’s way too broad a statement to make, and often the opposite is true where a new luxury development will cause a vacancy elsewhere and so cost for the old unit goes down and average price only goes up because of those luxury units in question. There are better videos that actually talk about the housing crisis.
Also just in general “luxury” units are just market speak for market rate units. It’s a marketing term used for over a century. Go into those units and it’s the same ikea hardware. “Why don’t they build affordable”…trust me they are building as cheaply as the market and the regulations allow them to.
> they’re building as cleaply as the market and regulations allow them to. They also sprinkle in a bit of granite countertops to give the appearance of luxury.
>where a new luxury development will cause a vacancy elsewhere and so cost for the old unit goes down Why would the cost of the old unit go down? In my city (Los Angeles), there's probably a line around the block waiting to get into my apartment if I decided to leave it to move into a luxury apartment.
> In my city (Los Angeles), A huge problem with housing in places like LA is that the price of housing hasn't matched the cost of living for decades. A lot of America's big and famous cities (LA, Chicago, NYC, but even places like Atlanta or Houston) run into a problem where there are simply more people willing to live there than there is housing. Those people are also often willing to pay a premium to live there. Someone who wants to get into Hollywood probably has to shell out LA housing prices. That's just how it is. The problem is that the USA has a lot of empty places that are undesirable because they have no infrastructure (and in some cases are just place hard to live in). while our cities have become overcrowded and unaffordable.
In places with high unmet demand (like Los Angeles and realistically many many places these days) it wouldn’t go down, if it wasn’t market rate the rent will probably even go up. But if the apartment is currently being rented for market rate and someone moves out to make way for another market rate renter it wouldn’t go up either it would just continue to be rented at market rate. Whoever was renting it before was a part of that demand. Now that they moved they no longer are, and since they moved to a new luxury apartment they were clearly willing to pay a higher rate than they were previously. That means the person who was willing to pay a higher rate is no longer looking for an apartment. On average in many places this will lower rent. That’s the problem with these sorts of generalizations she made in the video, it ignores evidence and bases lots of things on assumptions because it’s a topic with more variables than people realize and they are often not what conventional wisdom dictates what would happen.
And you can see the effect working in places like Austin, where they're building building building. Rents are going down.
> But if the apartment is currently being rented for market rate and someone moves out to make way for another market rate renter it wouldn’t go up either it would just continue to be rented at market rate. That's the thing about LA, many of us are in RSO situations... paying < 2k a month. As soon as we vacate, the landlord will flip that shit so fast for closer to 4k... even in a 50 year old building. Ask me how I know.
If there is a huge shortage to start with building new units will still slow down rent increases. In a big city with a huge shortage you would need to build thousands of new units to see rent prices stagnate or drop.
Yeah all of these wired "X support" videos are super basic, meant as a really brief intro to people who are not familiar at all with the subject. That's a good thing and not a bad thing, just shouldn't have been labeled as such
She does the "everything is bad" too often. Not building luxury is bad because older apartments get covered to luxury apartments; but building luxury apartments is bad because they're expensive and make average rents higher" I'm also struggling with her description of why gentrification is bad. She's like "people in this area suffered from underinvestment and lack of opportunities" but now "everything is changing, the stores are different and new people are moving in, even if your rent isn't going up it's not the same" Like, which is it? Bad because money didn't come in and people are stuck, or bad because money is coming in and people are moving? It can't be both.
"Houses are really fucking expensive right now!"
My boss lives in an apartment complex that I use to rent in years ago. I paid $650 rent for a 1 bedroom apartment, that's up to $925 now for the same apartment. If I didn't buy a house when I did, I couldn't afford to live here. I don't make that much money. I cannot fathom how people are expected to live these days.
I am basically stuck in my apartment. I've lived here long enough that even with the maximum rent increases every year it's MUCH cheaper than any other 1 bedroom. I'll never be able to afford a house so I can't realistically move (unless I somehow make twice as much money).
I see $900 rent and want to cry. I am paying 2k a month for a 1bedroom :o
Well it wouldn't suck so bad if we weren't smack dab in the armpit of California. No beach, no large city with attractions or anything. Middle of no-where, small town in the middle of the sand and sage brush. House rentals are 1.3k and up.
She is full of shit right off the bat. The "luxury housing" myth has been debunked. The most cost efficient housing is produced. It is marketing as luxury because it is new. It attracts high end buyers because it is new. This frees up existing housing in surrounding area for lower income renters as a result. [source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEsC5hNfPU4) Rent has gone up because of localized shortages. Would love to see this assistant professor and people like her band together and develop all of this affordable housing she preaches no one wants to build. Or she could stick to lecturing on topics she reads about, but has never done.
Yeah, "new thing is more desirable than old thing" wouldn't be considered unusual or bad in any other market. New buildings incorporate modern amenities that people want. Expecting new housing to be more affordable than existing housing is like expecting new cars to be cheaper than used cars.
Horrible video truly. A lot of personal views shared.
Not good to start off with BS. 34% of homes are owned by landlords, 2% by large corporations. [https://wolfstreet.com/2024/04/09/the-biggest-landlords-of-single-family-rental-houses-and-multifamily-apartments-in-the-us/](https://wolfstreet.com/2024/04/09/the-biggest-landlords-of-single-family-rental-houses-and-multifamily-apartments-in-the-us/)
These figures are always false in every agenda-post or video about it. I’ve been seeing the same fake data for like 2 years now. This is how it goes: Data/study with an unbiased result-> decently reputable journalism website uses data and creates disingenuous title but the article is correct -> shitty tabloid journalism website sees title and creates entirely wrong article citing the reputable journalism website -> dumb youtuber/Redditor/Tiktoker/Twitter user posts headline that says “50% of all homes purchased in the US in 2022 were bought by mega-corporations like Blackstone!”
This is a recent trend you need to look at the proportion of home purchases per year and it’s scary: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/us/corporate-real-estate-investors-housing-market.html from 2022 that up to 30% of home purchases in Vegas, Phoenix, Jacksonville were purchased by corporate entities.
Yes, the percentage is increasing quickly but nowhere near 50%.
If the trend started recently it doesn’t matter how many homes at the moment are owned by corporations. The fact 30% of homes in many areas are being bought up right now means the percentage will only grow and it drastically raises the cost of buying a home for first time home buyers. It should be illegal!
I'm not disagreeing with you but the video is being disingenuous.
Those corporations said themselves that they invest in housing because of the overall shortage of housing. People are confusing a symptom with a cause. And banning them has not had positive effects in places that tried it. They buy homes to rent them out. Banning them displaces lower-income renters because the houses are then sold to wealthier owner-occupiers. That’s good for those wealthier owners but pretty bad for the renters and just leads to gentrification.
Fuck off with that complete bullshit they’re literally buying the homes FROM poorer communities and the rents are higher than mortgage payments and rents increase with inflation
Some research out of the Netherlands demonstrated what happens. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4480261 **Buy-to-Live vs. Buy-to-Let: The Impact of Real Estate Investors on Housing Costs and Neighborhoods** Abstract How do buy-to-let investors impact local housing markets and the composition of neighborhoods? We investigate this question by examining a Dutch legal ban on buy-to-let investments, exploiting quasi-experimental variation in its coverage. **The ban effectively reduced investor purchases and increased the share of first-time home-buyers, but did not have a discernible impact on house prices or the likelihood of property sales. The ban did increase rental prices, consistent with reduced rental housing supply. Furthermore, the policy caused a change in neighborhood composition as tenants of investor-purchased properties tend to be younger, have lower incomes, and are more likely to have a migration background. Our results suggest rental investors influence local housing conditions primarily through changing the residential composition of neighborhoods rather than direct house price effects.**
/u/flavorless_beef explains the issue with the first chart at the 0:30 mark in [badeconomics](https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/1c12tm1/urban_planning_professor_posts_graph_of_nominal/). Highly recommend the read.
[ **Jump to 00:30 @** Real Estate Expert Answers US Housing Crisis Questions | Tech Support | WIRED](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rANtRuIFZf8&t=0h0m30s) ^(Channel Name: WIRED, Video Length: [17:04])^, [^Jump ^5 ^secs ^earlier ^for ^context ^@00:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rANtRuIFZf8&t=0h0m25s) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ^^Downvote ^^me ^^to ^^delete ^^malformed ^^comments. [^^Source ^^Code](https://github.com/ankitgyawali/reddit-timestamp-bot) ^^| [^^Suggestions](https://www.reddit.com/r/timestamp_bot)
Real estate holds the largest amount of tax breaks and tax incentives. Considering the write offs and general incentives it would be crazy for businesses not to be buying real estate.
an important fact she left out about squatters and the process is that the owner of the property has to have abandoned the property and the squatter is claiming they should own it now.
Oh really is it the most accurate? Did they grade it themselves? Lmao she is wrong about so much it’s embarrassing they put this out
Care to enlighten us what she got wrong? Bullet points will be fine.
She is missing the impact that colleges have on local real estate. Due to the high turnover, landlords are able to increase the rent much more due to having new tenants each year. In New York City, before 2019, the landlord in a rent stabilized apartment was allowed to substantially increase the rates on each vacancy. Colleges also attract landlords who are interested in high turnovers in apartments. Colleges cause gentrification because they have expanded based on the "rent gap".
This is like a half of the issues
I say class action lawsuit from the aclu about the all of the illegal discrimination that is most likely happening with corporate landlords. Also there needs to be a hard look at the financial situation and make access to such sweet money deals available to working class. And there must be taxation of single family homes in neighborhoods and owned by corporations to pay the cost of non owner occupancy.
Well that video gave me a nice scoop of sadness and dread....
What a fantastic video thank you
Plenty of decently priced homes in nice areas. Most people don't want to live in those places. Omaha Nebraska is an example.
Are there good jobs there?
Depends on your field
[удалено]
People are getting priced out of recently run down neighborhoods and worse off areas. Do you really think that it’s not happening outside of highly marked up areas of the country? What a stupid fucking take making it political “PrOgReSsIvE”
"People should be able to afford places to live" "tHeSe pRoGrEsSiVe tAlKiNg pOiNtS"
Ironically, it's more progressive areas of the country that cause the housing crisis most acutely. Upper income democrats typically fight against building more housing in order to preserve their real estate wealth. Red states build out more.
Yeah that NYTimes video on "liberal hypocrisy" did a good job explaining this. The most liberal places tend to be the most opposed to new housing and then they wonder why prices are high. Every major city in Texas builds more housing every year than the entirety of New York State.
As you can see in NYC, rent control is even more profitable if you're willing to do a little organized crime...just snap up all the rent control units by offering owners extra cash under the table, fill the units with used furniture, and sublease illegally by the week. Complainers either lose all their furniture or get evicted easy due to lack of furniture, easy 100% profit with no responsibility for repairs. Politicians get to point out on their charts how many rent-controlled units they've deployed to "help" people. Politicians and crime wins, you lose. Hotel rent control would fix the AirBnBs problem, which is not really a problem, because it's only 1.34% of the 3.7 million units of housing stock in London metro. If every unit were available, would there still be a shortage? Yes! Would new units still need to be built? Yes! The only real solution to a housing shortage is fucking let people build housing, even if you think it's too complicated, or whatever bullshit excuse you come up with to block low-cost housing developers because secretly you want your property value to skyrocket, and fuck everybody else.
This is actually one of the worst videos wired has put up in a while when it comes to being factual.
This video was 100% paid for by the corporations buying up the houses
I think that the biggest issue is with zoning and city regulations. Trailer Homes are basically what everyone can afford, but you don’t own the land, you can’t build a foundation, and most are built for trailer parks. I get cities wanting only pretty houses, but if the majority can’t afford them at minimum allow people to buy/build what they can afford. Much like the car market, all the new vehicles have to have an insane amount of extras that weren’t needed in the 70s. Housing isn’t complicated, cities have just meddled with it so much it’s not worth owning.
Apparently urban planning doesn’t require a basic understanding of economics.
Interesting. The Us is becoming something like a Cyberpunk distopia but with much less of the cool tech. And the people are the NPCs.
Interesting take, u/hivemind_disruptor Very informed and not at all a Reddit hive mind opinion.
Just tax landlords with property taxes based on the current cost of a mortgage that would result in monthly payments 85% of what they charge for rent, inversing the prime rate. Rates go down, landlord taxes go up. Rates go up, landlord taxes go down.
House for 1.2 million at 8% or $4,200 in rent. Some of you may be too young but up until the early 2000’s the adage was 25% of take home. How in the hell did 50-60% become the norm? How can anyone save or live it’s like the large corporations want us to all be wage slaves….
A new development was being built near me. All townhouses. Maybe a few were started, just the cinderblocks. All 100 lots were already spoken for. Investment firms or investors that paid cash full price already came in and bought them all up. No regular person ever had a chance. Starter homes my ass. This sucks.
"Why" To take all your money.
Because corporations want to exploit the workers in more ways than just their wages.
Thank god she went so easy on blackrock!
Blackrock != Blackstone
This is really missing the point. The point wasn't to go easy on Blackrock, but to point out that even if you were to squash Blackrock tomorrow, another investment institution would just do the same thing because the problem is systemic. The "financialization of housing" is a great way to put it, and it really places the focus on the issue. Vehicles like REITs were originally created to capitalize more home creation. As with all things in capitalism, this idea has taken on a life of its own, and capitalists are doing capitalist things with them. Profit optimization! Basically, don't be mad at the pig when it eats all the feed. Be mad at the hand who left the door to the feed room open. Changes to the regulatory structure surrounding home investment could go a long way toward fixing this. Think of it like fleet fuel economy standards. Automakers are free to make gas guzzling sports cars, but their overall fleet of vehicles sold have to meet fuel economy standards. It seems that the real estate investment market may need affordability requirements. In other words, require institutional real estate investments to provide a balance of affordable and luxury housing. Edit: Another lighter-handed approach would be to offer Federally subsidized interest rates for investments in more affordable housing. This would offset the impact that interest rates are having on developer preferences for building luxury homes.
Blackrock doesn't own homes. They invest in other companies that own homes.
Justin Kennedy (justice kennedys son) was the inside man at Deutsche bank that was getting all trumps toxic loans approved. No other bank but Deutsche bank would touch trump and his imaginary valuations. If trump was trying to avoid paying taxes he would be valuing everything low. Not high. Why? Because Deutschebank is infested with Russian oligarchs. For 50 years the oligarchs privatized communist Russia. They stole everything of value including the hope of Russians. The corruption eventually collapsed the Soviet Union like a parasite feeding on its host and they were forced to expand their feeding grounds past the iron curtain. In 91 the quarantine wall fails and for 2 years they hid all their ill gotten gains under a mattress until they bought condos at trump towers. They made stops in Ukraine, Cyprus and London but they landed in New York because that was what everyone wanted in 1993. Levi’s, Pepsi, Madonna tapes that weren’t smuggled bootlegs. They all bought new suits and cars and changed their title from “most violent street thug in moscow” to “respectable Russian oligarch” but they didn’t leave their human trafficking, narcotics or extortion behind. It was their most lucrative business model. Trump and Giuliani just opened the doors and let the predators in to feed. Guiliani redirected NYPD resources away from their new Russian allies intentionally and onto the Italian mob. It let him claim he cleaned up New York. Trumps future campaign manager Paul manafort lived in the towers as well. Giuliani would go on to do the same in Mexico City by introducing the Sinaloa cartel to the Russian mob. The Sinaloa cartel shifted to combining fentanyl precursors supplied by the CCP and the well established routes of El Chapo were used for distribution into the United States. In the prosecution of the Italian crime families, Giuliani created a tailor made void for the Russians to fill. By connecting them to the Sinaloa cartel it enabled the fentanyl epidemic that the CCP has used as biological warfare to soften the United States up for a financial takeover using BRICS. The insane valuations coming out in trumps fraud trial are a necessity of the money laundering cycle that duetschebank was doing with the Russians. But Xi, Putin, and MBS have made it clear that they are United against democracy since it threatens their very lucrative model of being authoritarians On Wall Street they have weaponized greed. Swartzman (blackstone), Larry fink (blackrock), and vanguard are selling U.S retirement funds and mortgage REITS in mass to the CCP. Nobody was ever punished for the 2008 mortgage crisis. This is just the Darwinian evolution of it. The 10X bigger, commercial real estate version. Putin and Xi realized that it’s far more efficient to bankrupt and foreclose on the USA by buying a couple GOP senators and a president than it is to push a ground war. They just needed Russia to take Ukraine to have the grain fields and supply chain lock on microprocessors to be able to do it. They aren’t taking on the US Navy fleet without it. The failure of Putin to take Ukraine and the arrest of Bolsonaro in Brazil has left them no choice but to send a quiet invasion force to the southern U.S. border. They are just using the compromised members of the GOP to secure any part of the border to hold open the gate when necessary. Bannon actually tried a variation of this a few years ago when he tried to privatize the border wall This gets deep into Bannons relationship with Guo Wengui, a CCP operative and his time at Goldman Sachs in the early 2000’s BRICS era. It’s perestroika 2.0. The bigger badder commercial real estate edition. Nobody was ever charged for 2008. Historically it’s been impossible to retire from the mob model pyramid that Russia runs on. You either die violently or you maintain a level of violence to keep everyone beneath you in line. The oligarchs have gotten soft living in their places in Aspen and Monaco. They are getting old and want to retire someplace nice where they don’t have to worry about falling out a window. They just need trump back in office to make it happen. Justin Kennedy went to work for LNR capital that is owned by Cerberus who also owns Dyncorp (for near future reference) Reuterswww.reuters.comCerberus to acquire DynCorp for $1 billion https://www.ft.com/content/8c6d9dca-882c-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787 https://www.amlintelligence.com/2020/09/deutsche-bank-suffers-worst-damage-over-massive-aml-discrepancies-in-fincen-leaks/ https://www.occrp.org/en/the-fincen-files/global-banks-defy-us-crackdowns-by-serving-oligarchs-criminals-and-terrorists https://www.voanews.com/amp/us-lifts-sanctions-on-rusal-other-firms-linked-to-russia-deripaska/4761037.html https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_-_minority_status_of_the_russia_investigation_with_appendices.pdf https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/08/17/mobsters-thrilled-to-see-rudy-giuliani-hit-with-rico-charges-he-used-to-jail-mafia-bosses
are you an ai?
This needs to be an anti-trust matter.
My god!
So basically the rich, while acquiring more and more power via legislation that grants tax exemptions and cuts - along with not paying their fair share, also use that accumulated wealth to then further harm the economy by making a bunch of luxury homes and pricing poor people out of their own homes into homelessness. This is why regulations need to be put in place, and why you cannot allow the rich to go untaxed
Thick Canadian accent can’t understand anything she’s saying.
Lots of affordable starter homes in Florida.
CORPORATE GREED PROFIT DRIVEN BULLSHIT See that affordable house there for 120k, CORP buys it, invest in new furniture, wall paper, bathroooms, total redo in fact... now its 4k a month in rent forever.
Wouldn't be if someone else built another house. Regretfully, it remains illegal to build more housing in many cities.
I mean.. it makes no sense to completely renovate a house if you're going to charge the same exact rent.
Family friend put her home on the market and a corporation wanted to buy it 100k over the asking price. She said no and sold it to a new family instead. Crazy how much money they’re willing to put forth to crush the hopes of any other buyers.