3 ms·

The issue is that demand isn't from 'households'. It's from REITs, speculators and foreign capital. I would love it if you could forward a source for this stat

The issue is that demand isn't from 'households'. It's from REITs, speculators and foreign capital. I would love it if you could forward a source for this statement. Speculators I understand, and they are out there and every down turn burns a bunch out. But REITs and Foreign Capital is less clear. There was a big "the Chinese are buying all the houses" narrative that went around on Nextdoor and elsewhere so we analyzed the County Assessors data base of tax assessments to try to identify how many homes were owned by companies vs individuals. Only a small percentage of homes were owned by corporate entities. But that was just one county so if people have done this in their county and come up with different results it would be great to see them.

ABCLAW 8y ago
>I would love it if you could forward a source for this statement. You can look up any of the mortgage and housing industry financial reporting pieces. I normally use the ones produced by RBC when looking at the issue, because they're well put together. There's a few put together for assets in the US and EU that I respect, but they're a lot more work to sort through - maybe who has good material for those areas could chime in? To your second main point: 1) you don't need to be a majority owner of the market to move the market. 2) Foreign laundered capital is not channeled through corporate entities. I think the published literature is conflicted but leans towards what I'm saying, but there's a lot of behind the scenes things that make the picture s bit more clear, but I can't disclose more for professional reasons.
bleriot 8y ago
There’s no way to know how many of those were Chinese nationals because the only group with that data is FINCEN. So how exactly did you do this, and which county was it?
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  The county tax assessor records are public in California. They include the person or entity who is on the hook for paying the property tax and their address. Most homes in Santa Clara county are owned by the people who live in them and their name and the address of the parcel match the title (also a public record). Companies and property managers have the tax bill sent to the company office. Typically (but not always) LLC ownership included the "LLC" in the name so "Snow garden LLC" was a good sign that it was owned by an LLC but if it went to the same address as the parcel we counted it as being the owner. Similarly for trusts (a lot of people put their property into living trusts) and they have the same sorts of rules. It was possible to just crawl the web for this information however California has tightened things up a bit and made it harder to do so, you can always go into the county clerk's office however and get access there. Realtors use a service which collects this data and I got access to it through a friend who owns a realtor's license.

ABCLAW 8y ago

>I would love it if you could forward a source for this statement. You can look up any of the mortgage and housing industry financial reporting pieces. I normally use the ones produced by RBC when looking at the issue, because they're well put together. There's a few put together for assets in the US and EU that I respect, but they're a lot more work to sort through - maybe who has good material for those areas could chime in? To your second main point: 1) you don't need to be a majority owner of the market to move the market. 2) Foreign laundered capital is not channeled through corporate entities. I think the published literature is conflicted but leans towards what I'm saying, but there's a lot of behind the scenes things that make the picture s bit more clear, but I can't disclose more for professional reasons.

bleriot 8y ago

There’s no way to know how many of those were Chinese nationals because the only group with that data is FINCEN. So how exactly did you do this, and which county was it?

ChuckMcM 8y ago
The county tax assessor records are public in California. They include the person or entity who is on the hook for paying the property tax and their address. Most homes in Santa Clara county are owned by the people who live in them and their name and the address of the parcel match the title (also a public record). Companies and property managers have the tax bill sent to the company office. Typically (but not always) LLC ownership included the "LLC" in the name so "Snow garden LLC" was a good sign that it was owned by an LLC but if it went to the same address as the parcel we counted it as being the owner. Similarly for trusts (a lot of people put their property into living trusts) and they have the same sorts of rules. It was possible to just crawl the web for this information however California has tightened things up a bit and made it harder to do so, you can always go into the county clerk's office however and get access there. Realtors use a service which collects this data and I got access to it through a friend who owns a realtor's license.