42 ms·
If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund
- nickthemagicman 5y agoFavorite part: """ Thats right! FEDERAL RESERVE FUNDED FINANCIAL INSTITUTE. Let that sink in for a minute. Got it? They’re using your tax dollars to fuck over the lower and middle class, and its permanent. Not 1 Pres. administration of bullshit. This is a fundamental reorganization of society """
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Ericson2314 5y agoSure, but that should be land held in the commons, not private home ownership. Private homeownership is just LARPing owning real capital to placate a new conservatized middle class, completely inefficient as rising prices cannot spur more land production and in fact preclude intensification use since the middle class homeowners don't have real capital to convert to apartments (even if zoning was relaxed), and historically tied up in all sorts of racist shit to boot (redlining, covenants, etc.).
- nickthemagicman 5y agoOne way that the govt can keep the economy stable is for the Federal reserve to just give the big banks money they call it 'injection'. It's framed as 'lending' but at extremely low interest rates. The expectation is that the banks will lend this out to companies to stimulate the economy. Apparently instead of loaning this money out to to small/medium businesses big banks have mastered operating small/medium businesses at scale and are combining their banking with asset acquisition. So banks having endless capital essentially given to them from the government in our tax dollars...while also having asset and business branches in their own closed system ultimately leads to massive banks owning the world. People think the government is on their side but it's not. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/economy/federal-reserve-to-lend-additional-1-trillion-a-day-to-large-banks https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/econom... https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081415/understanding-how-federal-reserve-creates-money.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081415/under...
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Private homeownership is just LARPing owning real capital to placate a new conservatized middle class If you don’t own real productive capital and depend on it broadly ad much as sale of labor, you aren’t even in the middle class to start with, your in the working class—just LARPing, to use your term, being part of the petit bourgeoisie. Of course, LARPing as a member of the petit bourgeoisie is the perennial pastime of a substantial portion of the upper income segment of the proletariat, especially the proletarian intelligentsia. > rising prices cannot spur more land production Sure they can, both literally (artificial land is a real thing, and its production is spurred by demand running into supply constraints) and more importantly economically (as “land”, the valued commodity, isn’t just raw square footage of the dry surface of the earth, but a product of access to infrastructure which makes it economically useful.)
- Ericson2314 5y agoI personally define middle class as the people with most of their wealth in the form of their home. So yes traditionally those people would be considered part of the working class as you say. I don't disagree. (My division is supposed to reflect how those people do behave, whereas the traditional Marxist one is supposed to be how they should behave based on the real relations behind the smoke and mirrors. That's fine, different categorizations for different purposes.) For the second part, well, we'll need to abolish SFH zoning and related things, which is very unpopular because it would undermine landowner's speculation in the short term! (It's especially annoying because taller buildings would lead to more valuable land area in the end, just cheaper floor area.) So nevermind there are efficient market-based things to do, like everyone rents land from the state at auction which pays out universal dividend. Our land markets are popular precisely because they are a speculative mess!
- 52-6F-62 5y agoI wish you didn't change your comment because I liked your original question.
- commandlinefan 5y agoThis hurts people who already own houses, too - property taxes are assessed on the appraised value of the home, which is a function of what the similarly-sized houses in your area sold for most recently. My property taxes have increased 10% every year for the past several years (and it would have been more if not for a legislative 10% annual cap). I worry that there will come a day when I've paid off my mortgage but won't be able to afford to pay the real estate tax any more.
- nickthemagicman 5y agoOnce you can't afford to pay the GOVERNMENT any more because property taxes have skyrocketed out of control I'm sure a private company will be happy to swoop in and buy your house out from under you.
- digitaltrees 5y agoSo you’d rather have an inefficient use of property that sits languishing just because some one owned it in the past? One of the benefits of taxing property is that it encourages productive use. Use it or lose it. The increasing velocity of property transfers helps increase economic activity.
- nickthemagicman 5y agoYes. I'm happy with inefficient use of our water supplies as well as our housing supply.
- digitaltrees 5y agoAnd are you happy with the concentration of wealth and power that results in fallow land being unused, Inherited and never conveyed to someone that would actually use it?
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
- coverband 5y agoThis doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why would an entity trying to maximize profits pay an extra 20-50% to purchase an illiquid asset?
- Faaak 5y agoI suppose when your investment horizon if 40+ years (and interest rates are low), you can afford you have a longer ROI ?
- mantas 5y agoSort of like investing crazy money into startups. Big bets hoping to get a once-in-thousand-years cashcow.
- Scoundreller 5y agoMake enough bets and it works out.
- krona 5y agoIt's the least risky asset on the time horizon that they're operating on.
- RGamma 5y agoNot that risk really matters much because Blackrock is too big to fail anyway.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoReaching for yield. People will need housing, and assets are inflating because there’s more capital chasing fewer returns. Lock up housing assets, you’re locking in returns.
- nickthemagicman 5y agoThey have so much money there's nothing really left to spend it on.
- 5y ago
- Faaak 5y agoI'm sometimes afraid of these "mega-corps" that have the effect of really changing things. Sometimes in a bad way. Sadly, once you've got money, you can earn much more. What the limit to t->infinity ? One single corp dominating the world ?
- cblconfederate 5y agoIsn't that the problem in game economies as well? Making virtual money begets making more virtual money leading to exponential growths. Some games solve it by making items more expensive for hoarders. In real life we pretend that growth inequality does not exist.
- 52-6F-62 5y agoI like the thought experiment of taking that to its absurd logical conclusion. I'm sure there are some fun ones. Eg, Once a single corporation is in control of everything, and everything that comes in is profit and everything that goes out is a loss then the only missive left is to cut all losses, no? How do we do that? Burn the planet? Can't lose if there's nothing to lose.
- nathanaldensr 5y agoReminds me of the paperclip problem[1]. [1] https://voxeu.org/article/ai-and-paperclip-problem https://voxeu.org/article/ai-and-paperclip-problem
- Scoundreller 5y agoWelcome to Costco, I love you.
- mrverify 5y agoIts worse than that. As a tenant, you cannot have people who are not on the lease stay long term without them going through a background check. This means that you may end up increasing the homelessness of relatives with temporary financial issues and also isolating potential mates with financial issues from living with their significant others until married, forcing the better financially equipped mate to take a hit to their credit/rent risk and lose the ability to rent in a better area. Also, you are severely limited in the things you can do at leased residences. Garden? Maybe not if its in the lease.
- fb13 5y agoIt needs to be significantly easier to buy a first house than a second house. Getting a first mortgage is "easy" until you factor in the "mortgage insurance" scam. Rent seeking should not be such an appealing option to make money. The result is a bunch of scummy landlords, essentially utilizing the poors to "keep down" the other poors through rent exploitation. Basically the "upper middle" class is the gatekeeper preventing lower classes from having social mobility by maximizing rent exploitation. It's a great system because it prevents the real upper classes from having to get their hands dirty.
- alert0 5y agoRent control makes landlords very hesitant to add new people to a lease. Otherwise the unit can just be passed from friend to friend and never get back to market.
- fb13 5y ago> Otherwise the unit can just be passed from friend to friend and never get back to market. I'm not sure how this is unfair. Considering the way capital gains are taxed after the sale it seems like the grandfathered-in rent controls are just a lever at the opposite end of the spectrum. But of course, we don't want to give any levers to the poors so it has to go.
- digitaltrees 5y ago
- adflux 5y agoThis is what happens when you keep printing money and keep mortgage rates incredibly low. All that money's gotta go somewhere. Hey, at least the CPI isn't going up right? Its only the most expensive thing in most people's lives that has doubled in cost in about 10 years. Same thing for stock prices, and slowly other commodity prices are catching up as well. Non-homeowners are being shafted by this fed/ecb policy. Every year the gap between poor and rich grows larger as a result.
- rektide 5y agoupvoting but also this just feels like yet another contributing factor to the accumulation of wealth that was happening anyways.
- xapata 5y ago> Its only the most expensive thing in most people's lives that has doubled in cost in about 10 years. Most people pay for housing by monthly payments, making the nominal value of the house irrelevant if the monthly payment stays the same. Further, you should consider the home owner's "basket of goods" to include the hypothetical rent they'd be paying for an equivalent house. Their mortgage payments and home ownership are then more like taking a loan to buy a fixed-income asset that gets renegotiated annually. A home owner who lives in their home is both a landlord and a tenant. I'm not a home-owner, and I don't feel shafted. My stock market holdings have kept pace or done better than if I'd purchased a house.
- adflux 5y agoNon homeowners are paying way more whilst getting less in return. I really dont understand the logic of being OK with paying double for a house, just because the buyer can sell it for the same amount (or higher) afterwards. I could purchase a 150m2 house with my salary a decade ago. Now I could find a 75m2 house that would be too expensive for me. I dont care about being able to sell the house for more money afterwards, it doesn't matter, because I have to live somewhere anyways. So any profits gained will (probably) be factored into the purchase price of the next house I'm buying.
- timmg 5y agoThe problem (I think) is that the Fed has dumped too much money into the system. There are no assets left to buy at reasonable prices. So now investors are buying homes. This is the downside to the current "bailout". I think the last "bailout" was a bit more lean. People were hurt, but in different ways than they are today.
- digitaltrees 5y agoREITs have been doing this for a long time. It accelerated after 2008 because of the housing collapse which was triggered by Banks creating to much money rather than the Fed.
- bravo22 5y agoFannie and Freddie bought up a lot of subprime mortgages.
- digitaltrees 5y agoRed herring. Most origination of subprime started with private market actors. GSEs were a fraction of the market; very late to the game and never held anywhere near what investment banks did.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jeffbee 5y agoIf you want to fuck with landlords all you have to do is repeal your local zoning codes. Institutional money is pouring in because American cities have erected ridiculous barriers to entry in the housing market, making appreciation of home prices state policy. Repeal those barriers and make landlords poor again.
- alert0 5y agoThat actually messes with single family home owners more. I would love to provide more housing and make more money.
- jeffbee 5y agoI don't care. Landlords aren't "providing housing" they are just money conduits. It is demonstrably the labor of their tenants which provides the housing, and the pendulum needs to swing back in the tenants' favor for a while.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- alert0 5y agoI think they are. They are purchasing an asset that others may not be able to afford and making it available. Additionally, they're funding construction of more housing wherever possible. Are tenants just money conduits for the corporations they work for?
- s17n 5y agoThis could be an interesting topic but a rant about cabals and the Great Reset is probably not the right starting point.
- briefcomment 5y agoCall it what you want, but the obvious fallout of this is that valuable assets will be owned by very few people, and rented out. A tenet of the Great Reset is that "you will own nothing and be happy".
- ilamont 5y agoI'm concerned not only about the Blackrocks, but also smaller investors fueled by cheap cash and wealth fantasies based on flipping and FIRE/4HWW. The depressed, small city in northern New York featured in this article (https://www.uticaod.com/in-depth/news/2021/04/07/vaccinations-beating-covid-but-not-ogdensburg-new-york/4819881001/ https://www.uticaod.com/in-depth/news/2021/04/07/vaccination...) has people buying houses sight unseen from other states, which might be a good thing if they intend to live there, create businesses, build up the city's tax base, and invest in the community. However, I am very skeptical any of that will happen based on the many reasons cited in the article. I can't see how this ends well.
- habibur 5y agoSidestepping all the emotional comments. It's open market. Adopt to it. 1. Build more homes. 2. Sell to Blackrock or whatever at 2x or 3x your cost. 3. Profit!
- pixl97 5y agoHave you tried 1 in most places? No lot availability. No materials to build the house. No workers available to build the house. Etc.
- habibur 5y agoThen the problem is NOT "Blackrock buying homes". It's elsewhere.
- briefcomment 5y agoThe problem is that Blackrock is taking advantage of "free money" to get in on this arbitrage while it can, while normal people don't have anywhere close to the same opportunities to take advantage of "free money". Naturally, Banks eat up all land and houses, and then "you will own nothing and be happy", as per WEF.
- HideousKojima 5y agoAdd in zoning and NIMBYs and getting anything built is a nightmare.
- Splendor 5y agoAnd zoning laws designed to keep houses expensive.
- adflux 5y agoI really wish we'd get some innovation in the housing market. 3D printing of houses or something could be epic. "Just" disrupt the current construction companies... It's clear they can't keep up with the demand right now.
- mirker 5y agoLocation matters too. I don’t think the problem is making a log cabin in the woods.
- adflux 5y agoSure, we can't print more ground to build on. But it's another cause of increasing real estate prices here in the Netherlands. Probably need to zone some of that agricultural land (60% of land usage in the netherlands) into housing, if we want to give young homeowners a chance at owning property.
- valeness 5y agoI think the disruption will come from the civil planning side of the equation. When we can figure out how to build a city on the edge of Arizona that people actually want to live in then we can begin to leverage more efficient and automated building techniques like 3d printing houses and stuff. It takes more than houses; also entertainment, food, infrastructure, jobs, etc. Otherwise, you're 100% right, location is king and nobody wants to move away from a fun/profitable/valuable city to live in an abandoned mining town in Oklahoma just so they can own a home. As dystopian as it might sound, I wonder if there is some way to "crowdfund" or "preorder" a new township location. Everyone signs up, pledges like 1,000 USD or something with a lease extending at least 3+ years. And developers can use that money to build an entirely new township in a location with cheaper land. This might help alleviate the problems that come along during a cold start with requiring critical mass adoption before a location is desireable to live in. (Not suggesting this exact course because having an entire town owned by a single developer sounds like a capitalist hellscape; just thinking out loud, I don't know what the actual solution would be) I believe something similar is already happening with something like the Culdesac project. (I have no affiliation with this project, just so happen to live near it and have heard about it a few times) : https://culdesac.com/ https://culdesac.com/
- nathan11 5y agoProbably worth pointing out this twitter account is promoting the idea that the 2020 election was stolen. To me that casts suspicion on their other assertions.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gfodor 5y agoI follow this account and others like it because it allows one to be exposed to things like the idea that COVID leaked from a lab a year ago. Skepticism is warranted in all cases, of course, but I think it's extremely healthy to keep in tune with a variety of subcommunities who are in and of themselves skeptics of many mainstream narratives.
- adkadskhj 5y agoI don't understand how you can manage, honestly. The absolute swarm of conspiracies around COVID and the election overwhelmed me and i wasn't even trying to stay informed on them. Furthermore, even if i was trying to stay informed on them it seems like a full time job trying to discern the "maybe not entirely moronic" conspiracies to the completely batshit ones. Most are batshit, it seems. Sounds exhausting.
- gfodor 5y agoI find that the times it is exhausting is when I've been overly attached to my own beliefs such that there's an emotional response to being exposed to claims in conflict to them. The best way to overcome this inhibitor to open mindedness in my opinion is to just ensure you have a broad exposure such that it becomes normal and unimpactful to read many things you strongly disagree with regularly.
- lolc 5y agoWhile I agree that it's healthy to keep a broad set of sources, I find that once a source has shown to be untrustworthy on some topic, I discount them on other topics too. There is a difference between having a certain worldview and twisting facts to your narrative. Unfortunately, a good chunk of the Republican party in the U.S. is happily ignoring facts around the last presidential election. There is little use in exposing yourself to their faux complaints. Much like it was not useful to read up on the "Russian connection" that was invented to attack Trump. So when people fall prey to these ideas, I discount their opinion. I stop reading them. No reason to willingly absorb noise.
- cosmojg 5y agoIf only so many people didn't treat land and houses like investments, there wouldn't be such a disastrous hoarding problem. Henry George's Land Value Tax [1][2] seems like an obvious economic fix that would require a large fraction of the population to change how they think about land and natural resources, but most of them are invested in such a way (i.e. owning multiple houses on multiple parcels of land, often without renting anything out) that it is in their economic self-interest to block any such proposals. Although, I suppose this situation isn't unique. The world has long been doomed by coordination problems. [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
- snikeris 5y agoI already pay a Land Value Tax to my town.
- Retric 5y agoLand value taxes ignore the value of buildings constructed on the land. It’s very different from current property taxes because it incentivizes density.
- Smaug123 5y agoThe usual advocacy point is to reduce most of the other taxes and send the LVT way up. "We should have a land value tax" is usually meant to mean "most tax should be on land".
- tengbretson 5y agoWouldn't this accelerate the displacement of less wealthy home owners in neighborhoods that are being gentrified?
- shiftpgdn 5y agoMany counties in Texas have solved this by setting a 10% maximum year over year increase in property/land tax for people LIVING in their homes. There are also locks and exemptions carved out for those over 65 and disabled veterans.
- logicslave 5y agoReminder: All the wealth inequality was created by government money printing. They claim they are printing money to help the poor, but are really making them worse off
- sp527 5y agoThis is just phase one. The real money will get made when they start artificially constraining housing stock. In my area (central NJ), the big player is Berkshire.
- JMTQp8lwXL 5y agoThe problem is the government mandated houses be piggy banks for middle class people, all but allowing large institutional investors to take advantage of the rule system put in place to protect and increase prices: low interest rates, local control of land use (to kill new supply), etc. It was a side effect to allow others to benefit from the scheme.
- phpsuks 5y agoIts fine to blame gov for somethings but for low supply? Really? NIMBYs are the only ones restricting supply in the Bay Area. They are the voters too and millenials don't vote as much on such non-trivial issues. As for CA prop 13, also voted by people. Don't like it? VOTE AGAINST IT. Else, stop complaining. The system is working exactly as voted by the people who vote. If this is such a big issue then why are people consistently voting for them?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- est31 5y agohttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1402434266970140676.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1402434266970140676.html
- crazygringo 5y agoAre they trying to flip these or trying to rent them? I'm curious why Blackrock thinks these homes are worth this much if the rest of the market currently doesn't.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gpsx 5y agoMortgage rates have been falling for the past 40 years. Now they might start rising (emphasis on might). If they do, could that reverse the continuous rise of housing prices? That is how the bond market works, which has also seen rate drops and prices rises for the past few decades now.
- cnc102 5y agoNothing to see here, the central committee has told us there is no inflation. Better discuss really important issues like pronouns and the patriarchy.
- RGamma 5y agoOver are the days where supply and demand controlled allocation of resources to get the goods to every man, woman and child. Big demand, lack of workers? Price and pay rise to meet the challenge. This part of market economy always made sense to me. Like a muscle growing stronger in response to increased exertion. Now the wealthy have decided that this is way too boring because what good does it do them if people actually attain wealth for themselves? There'll be no motivation to run faster in their hamster wheels to create more wealth to be siphoned off. Works as intended.
- MrBuddyCasino 5y agorelated: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1402434266970140676.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1402434266970140676.html
- xapata 5y ago> Home equity is the main financial element that middle class families use to build wealth, and black rock, a federal reserve funded financial institution is buying up all the houses to make sure that young families can’t build wealth. Faulty logic. First, though historically people have used home equity to build wealth, that hasn't been the best method of building wealth. Most of those people would have been better off continuing to rent and investing in the stock market instead. Second, building wealth through alternatives to home ownership may be better for a large portion of the population that finds the very fact of their residence decreases the value of a home relative to other homes.
- wffurr 5y ago>> Most of those people would have been better off continuing to rent and investing in the stock market instead. It's hard or impossible for individuals to get 5 to 1 leverage at low interest rates for investing in stocks.
- xapata 5y agoBut the only reason you'd want 5-to-1 leverage on a house would be to have a hope of keeping up with stocks. Also, it'd be 4:1, right, if you're doing 20% down? Home values are believed to be less risky. Accordingly, they appreciate more slowly. To make them a good investment, you take leverage until they approximate the risk/return ratio you desire. Remember, there are huge buyers like BlackRock out there that make the market efficient. If home prices drop to the extent that investing in a house is better than the stock market, then the investors swoop in and the prices go up until the two asset types are equivalent (including the fact that one generally borrows to buy a house).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- yabones 5y agoThings went off the rails at the end... > Well, the banks are controlled by and in bed with the same cabal buying everything up. You think this will be corrected by market forces when it is a financial and political pincher movement pushed by the same cabal that stole the 2020 election & hid COVID Truth? You are fucked. https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402449561864577024 https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402449561864577024 IMO, weakens the entire 'thread' and makes it much less trustworthy, even though I do believe this about institutional real estate investors. 'Feudalism' might be a bit extreme, but this will definitely impact the middle class in a very real way.
- duxup 5y agoYeah what the heck happened there. "same cabal" Everything is a grand singular conspiracy to someone these days. Happens on HN too, every few bad news type post has some accusation that whatever outcome was because of a conspiracy.
- p_j_w 5y agoThe crazy thing is that no grand conspiracy is required, this is just a function (and an entirely predictable one) of the ever increasing levels of wealth inequality that we see. No political "pincher" movement required, it's just people with money finding ways to use that money to make more money. As an aside, this isn't a username I expected to ever see again.
- duxup 5y agoAgreed. Most of this is just obvious motivations to do a thing. Recent HN article about the SCOTUS and CFAA ruling was full of folks who felt that CFAA must have been some corporatism-ish conspiracy to pass (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) a law back in 1986 and then criminalize basic policy rules as a serious crime. And yet apparently they just chose not to do that at any sort of scale... Rather, the most logical explanation is that some folks made some bad choices when it came to applying that law, because it was convenient for them. As far as my username, duxup loves you.
- 5y ago
- otterley 5y agoLink to actual article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-the-buyer-might-be-a-pension-fund-11617544801 https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-... (Also, the article is now over two months old.)
- dang 5y agoWe've changed the URL to that now. Thanks! Submitted URL was https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676 https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676
- tptacek 5y agoAs has been pointed out repeatedly, this has the net effect transferring homes from owners to renters, which does not directly impact access or affordability; the housing stock remains available.
- stagger87 5y agoDo you think people should be able to buy affordable homes? Isn't affordability affected when you are competing with companies with deep pockets? When those companies need ROI do you think they will prioritize housing affordability over profitability?
- tptacek 5y agoI'm not sure how much I care about whether people own or rent. The politics of the place I live are controlled by owners and are renter-hostile; I don't think increasing the rental stock is a bad thing, and am inclined to believe --- without making any value judgement about REITs and Blackrock ---- that it's probably a net positive. The compulsion to own homes and tie people's finances to the real estate market is a US idiosyncrasy. It's not, for instance, how they do it in much of Europe.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stagger87 5y agoIncreasing the rental stock in an area of low rental units is one thing, but is not what the article is discussing. I'm not sure the relevance of the European housing market.
- tptacek 5y agoI don't understand the moral valence of an imbalance (in any sense) between owner-occupied and rented housing. Could you help me see where you're coming from here? I bring up Europe just to observe that it's not a settled norm, even in rich western societies, that homeownership is somehow better or prosocial.
- whitc09 5y agothis is actually good. once people no longer own homes they are going to stop voting for people who artificially prop up home prices by restricting supply through zoning and land use rules. Long term positive for our political system.
- nathanaldensr 5y agoWho controls--in the end, this means with violence, if necessary--the land you live on? Do you want it to be you, or someone who doesn't care one whit for you or your family?
- davidw 5y agoHere's why investors buy up houses: they know your neighbors will do the dirty work of artificially constraining the housing supply, which makes it a good investment. Here's one who comes right out and explains this: > Meanwhile, local opposition to building is so commonplace and the approval process so cumbersome, time consuming, and expensive, even when a proposed project complies entirely with requirements, approvals are not forthcoming, at least in an expeditious manner and needed supply is simply not provided. Recently I heard of a new acronym to add to my vocabulary: CAVE, Citizens Against Virtually Everything, to be added to NIMBYISM and BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone). https://www.clearcapllc.com/2021/04/27/q1-2021-clear-capital-newsletter/ https://www.clearcapllc.com/2021/04/27/q1-2021-clear-capital... Support groups like https://yimbyaction.org/ https://yimbyaction.org/ if you want to 'stick it to the investors'. If there's a credible threat to build plenty of housing, they'll move on.
- spoonjim 5y agoAfter I spent my entire net worth plus a good chunk of my future net worth on this house you can be damn right I’m going to vote to protect its value.
- symlinkk 5y ago“Screw you, I got mine!” The capitalistic attitude in a nutshell.
- AQuantized 5y agoMore like "I got screwed and I'd rather other people get screwed than get screwed further." Obviously not selfless, but I don't think the housing market is their fault.
- symlinkk 5y agoYeah why fix anything ever? If it was bad for me it should be bad for them too right?
- kerng 5y agoThe US is printing money which will lead to like a 10% inflation rate probably. Even now food is noticable more expensive. So, over the course of a few years these are good investments. For the same reason people (and Blackrock is interested or has already) bought Bitcoin.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoThe middle class continues to get raped and fleeced by corporations while our governments do nothing. This is how America dies.
- kazen44 5y agoi wonder how long until social unrest truely takes hold, especially among young adults. standards of living have been going down in the past decade, while the government seems to think young people have nothing to moan about. not to mention the massive bill called climate change which is due sooner or later.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoI don't think there will be, at least not for several decades. Things are "bad" for many people in the country, but not third-world-country bad. People will be too focused on just meeting their basic needs. In what little free time they have, they will distract themselves with their phones that will tell/comfort them that the "other side" is responsible for the general malaise (instead of the collective rich elites).
- bityard 5y agoA.k.a. The Carvana model. This is what Carvana and other "no-haggle, no-test-drive" startups are doing with the whole used car market in many areas. They aggresively buy up all the used cars in an area (or at least as many as they can) from dealerships and private sellers in order to make themselves the only entity with used cars for sale. Which they happen to be selling at 20% above true market value. But hey, you can buy the car from an app on your phone without the burden of haggling with a salesman or even a test-drive!
- kami8845 5y agoIn which areas does Carvana own all the cars for sale?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago> Which they happen to be selling at 20% above true market value. If carvana is not providing that value, then there should exist plenty of sellers that want a piece of that 20%, such as car dealerships and individuals themselves. This is a market with plenty of buyers and sellers, and low transaction costs. I see no reason why Carvana would be able to corner it.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoMiddlemen leeching off of middlemen. Allow car manufacturers to sell directly to consumers and the problem will sort itself out.
- 1123581321 5y agoI shop for used vehicles fairly regularly and don’t see evidence of this. Prices are high right now but not because any one entity has a lot of inventory. Keep in mind that a healthy market for used cars encourages more owners to sell and get something new. Local and regional markets can only become tight to an extent because cars and buyers move around the country when it makes financial sense.
- rbg246 5y agoWow crazed conspiracy stuff topping hacker news.
- world_peace42 5y agoHow can anyone read and conclude that the US is anything other than dying and on life support? Our government is ran by corporations, and it is not going to change. Not to say that we have some cyberpunk future ahead of us - that looks a bit too optimistic at this point. As much as I personally despise communism, it's hard not to admit that the Chinese have a much superior government (not that they're even communist at this point) to our own. Larry Fink and most of his associates should be getting the "Jack Ma treatment".
- rmah 5y agoHow can anyone read and conclude that the US is anything other than dying and on life support? Perhaps by looking outside the window? By walking around your town/city? By driving to nearby locations? By talking to people and asking them about their lives rather than their opinion of the lives of other people they've never met? By trusting what you see more than than drivel spouted by tin-foil hat loons?
- calebm 5y agoReal estate is a good hedge against fiat currency.
- fastball 5y agoOne of my "out there" political ideas is that because land is a zero-sum game, corporate entities should not be allowed to own it. Only real people (or specific entities which are a collection of real people) who are permanent residents of the country in question should be allowed to own land. And from there, there should be an upper limit on how much any one individual is allowed to own.
- ransom1538 5y agoYes. This just happened to me. I put my home up for market %15 over market - was offered cash that same day by an investor. I didn't use an Agent to list (this is my 3rd home sell) and set my own buyer agent compensation on the MLS. Anyhow, they seem like pros.
- batmanbury 5y agoAnd how did you list directly on the MLS without an agent?
- thinkingkong 5y agoLots of houses are bought in blocks as well. In denser parts of cities or in areas near major throughfares, land assemblies are fairly common. These take all the properties and bundle them into a new property worth way more.
- ddtaylor 5y agoI thought HN had a policy of doing direct links to articles? https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-the-buyer-might-be-a-pension-fund-11617544801 https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-...
- devmunchies 5y agothe twitter thread has several links
- fukmbas 5y agoBubble will pop soon
- helen___keller 5y agoAnd here I thought the paranoia surrounding urban real estate prices over the past decade was bad (Remember the countless pieces about foreign investment dollars, induced demand causing gentrification, empty condo buildings, et cetera?) Now urban money has started spilling out of major urban centers during covid, and demand for space has had a major uptick no less, so the rest of the country is experiencing a fraction of the insane price growth that major cities have seen for two straight decades. Yeah, it sucks. No, your "evil investment money" thesis is still wrong, or at best misleading. It's essentially supply and demand (added with some inflation and supply shocks), you can either hope demand goes down or your city can plan to add more supply. Those have only ever been the two options.
- etempleton 5y agoIn my neighborhood the bank owns a house and has owned it since it was foreclosed upon about three years ago. The house is completely falling apart. It is unlivable. The house is tarpped. Apparently also filled with mold. The yard has rotting wood and weeds that are taller than my head. And no one will do anything about it. The city will fine the bank $100 for each infraction and that is it. The bank could care less. I am not sure of the bank’s end goal, but I suspect they are waiting for it to be a total loss, get insurance money, and then sell the property as land, which is worth now about what they paid for it anyway. Meanwhile the local housing market is extremely supply constrained with houses going for over listing price and yet, the bank is not listing it because they think they can get more if they let it fall apart.
- KingMachiavelli 5y agoVery strange. Typically banks try to sell foreclosures ASAP to the extent that most go the 'short sale' route where they just force a sale. Given it has been only 3 years and it's already inhabitable; something probably went very wrong preventing it from being sold. It's possible the previous tenants just destroyed it... it's really surprising how bad some people treat their home.
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoHow often do people trash a previously un-trashed residence on the way out when being evicted or foreclosed? I suspect it’s much more common behavior than anyone wants to admit.
- etempleton 5y agoWhen I was looking at homes a year ago we looked at a few foreclosures and they were usually pretty rough. Not always because someone was destructive on the way out, but because there was something else wrong in that person’s life and the house became a reflection of that.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Typically banks try to sell foreclosures ASAP to the extent that most go the 'short sale' route where they just force a sale. Short sale (which is generally not forced, but is usually win-win for the borrower and bank, so often ultimately approved after the bank convinces themselves that denying it won't let them extract more from the borrower) is typically favored for many reasons including the fact that (while there may technically be liability) borrowers who are foreclosed upon have very little incentive not to damage thr property to the extent that it enables them to extract even miniscule additional value, so things like stripping resellable (even at small fractions of the value they provide in the house) materials like pipes, wiring, and notionally-permanently-installed fixtures is extremely common.
- deegles 5y agoSo can we expect to see stories about Blackrock lawyers showing up at HOA meetings?
- cpach 5y agoOne can read the linked article here: https://archive.ph/aBK10 https://archive.ph/aBK10
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- twox2 5y agoIf the "remote work" future is here, then this will just push people out further to the middle of nowhere instead of suburbans towns.
- abfan1127 5y agopaying 20-50% over asking price is an interesting move. To make money on that over-pricing you have to price rent accordingly. The only way to keep rents up is to limit inventory. If you can't stop the building of new houses, what's their out? Sounds like a good time to exit Blackrock as your money manager?
- milkytron 5y ago> If you can't stop the building of new houses, what's their out? Many areas have significantly slowed (or prevented) the building of new houses. Blackrock probably doesn't expect this to change. Supply is constrained and doesn't seem to be getting better. In their eyes, being in the market with a limited supply, high demand, and no major changes to supply production seems to be worth the premium.
- janmo 5y agoI really wish there will be a Subprime 2.0 and this time without bailouts.
- gentleman11 5y agoTwitter is an awful blogging format when your message takes more than one tweet. It makes you blend in as well, making it easier for fake news to spread - you aren’t that different from a billion other accounts all saying striking things. At least with a blog, you have a more recognizable identity and the ability to write more than a few words at a time
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoWe know. This sentiment is expressed literally every time a Twitter thread is posted to HN. Use threadreaderapp unroll and move on.
- dang 5y ago"Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27449544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27449544.
- paulpauper 5y agoYup, post-covid is just like pre-coivd. Private equaity, investors buying up homes, and home prices keep going up. Nothing changed except higher prices and less supply. It goes to show how the media, who since 2012 have been calling housing a bubble and imploring people to sell, have been wrong. I remember someone sold their home in 2012 in the Bay Area for what at the time was a lot ($1.2 million). I bet he regrets it now.
- no-dr-onboard 5y agoA bit late to the convo, but we literally just signed over the contract of our house in Austin. 5 days on the market, 4 offers, 1 family, 1 family trust, 2 investment firms. All offers 20-50k over asking, 0 conditions.
- igetspam 5y agoI hope that holds. I have a buddy/tenant that is waiting for an IPO this month. When it finally drops, he'll know what he can afford and then he'll start house shopping. I likely won't be able to have my house on the market until August. Congratulations!
- no-dr-onboard 5y agoDefinitely hope it works out for him. Thank you for the well wishes btw.
- mc32 5y agoIf they’re paying 20-50% above asking, does that mean they’re expecting inflation to subsidize their borrowing to buy these houses?
- bostonsre 5y agoAnyone want to start some kind of kickstarter like company where funds are pooled for different projects that have a target plot of land with a layout for a future city? Investors could get to submit bids for sub plots for future houses and the project could start when some predefined minimum is met. All of this NIMBY/artificially constrained housing supply stuff functions as tons of glass ceilings for those trying to rise up and follow the american dream.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y agoTwitter is a bad blogging platform.
- 908087 5y agoSurely we could have found a better source for this information without giving free engagement to an unhinged QAnon cultist?
- maerF0x0 5y agoBuying up houses is a play/bet on inflation. If you expect inflation on the currency, and can buy a more stable asset on leverage then the inflation eats your loan. Taken to the extreme you basically get the asset for free.
- abrowne 5y agoAt least in Minneapolis, everyone who's buying a remotely desirable family house is paying a lot above the asking price, although what I've seem is more like 10–15%.
- deathtraphomes 5y agoMy personal experience. With mega rental companies. I moved into one of Invitation homes a few years ago. Looked nice when we drove up, didn’t think about why all the windows were open when we signed paperwork. Their negligence nearly killed my family, and left us with life long injuries. The gas line was leaking natural gas, improper installation? the furnace and stove were emoting lethal levels of carbon monoxide. Detector was defective. A portion of the AC fell into the kids room. One wall got so hot it burned my wife. Only reason we didn’t die is smell was so bad we nearly always had all windows open. At every stage they lied and did what they could to cover up problems.
- ArkanExplorer 5y agoThis is also a reason not to use gas anything inside houses - heat using heat pumps, cook using induction surfaces or electric appliances.
- esarbe 5y agoThe superoverrich are currently drowning in money. They don't know what to do with their money anymore. That's how you end up with the ridiculous stock marked and the bitcoin surges. If just a fraction of that money were put to good use, society would benefit immensely. We could pay to improve public schools for example, or offer a public healthcare option.
- 11thEarlOfMar 5y ago66,781,000 Detached Single Family Homes in the US [0] $272,400 median home selling price in the US, 2020 [1] That's just over $18 Trillion for the entire US Detached Single Family Home market. I'd be interested to know how much Blackrock has budgeted for this fund (and how much of the spend is leveraged, and up to what number. And who else is doing the same type of fund and to what magnitude). Note that per Statista, the median home price is anticipated to increase from $272,400 to $324,000 between Q4 2020 and Q2 2022. That's a 20% increase in real estate over an 18 month period. Given that we're seeing this story now, Blackrock likely executed these purchases many months ago. Their fund is likely leveraged, making the potential profits huge. It looks like a very high-stakes play by Blackrock, which I know to be a hedge fund, so perhaps part and parcel of their business. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/377896/owner-occupied-homes-by-units-in-structure/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/377896/owner-occupied-ho... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272776/median-price-of-existing-homes-in-the-united-states-from-2011/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272776/median-price-of-e...
- juloo 5y agoMedian != mean. Multiplying it literally means "The value of this particular house I know nothing about times 66 millions".
- 11thEarlOfMar 5y agoWell, that is true. Looks like the average is $368,400: https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_existing_singlefamily_home_average_sales_price https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_existing_singlefamily_home...
- harambae 5y ago>It looks like a very high-stakes play by Blackrock In what sense? That housing could collapse in price after they made a large investment in it (and since housing is a huge market, Blackrock could have leveraged up to a higher amount than typical)? Market cap of Apple is over $2 Trillion, they could have leveraged pretty far into this too.
- rootusrootus 5y agoIf they are paying over asking price, this just means sellers don't fully understand the market. No investor is going to persistently overpay.
- manishsharan 5y agoA 100% capital gains tax on residential properties unless the seller claims that property as their sole residence for last 5 + years. That should fix it.
- game_the0ry 5y agoIs it somehow crazy or unpalatable to say that there should be a law against institutional investors and corporations from owning residential real estate that was built for owner-occupiers? Bc there should be a law and it should have been passed by congress yesterday.
- nathanaldensr 5y agoWhile this may sound great in theory, private property in the United States does not work this way. The federal government's role is not to dictate such things; states may, but even state laws may run afoul of the Constitution. Private property is a fact of life and law in the United States and only amendments to the Constitution can change that.
- desktopninja 5y agoSigh. They know land is the real wealth. And since current buying generation does not know this, it's ripe to snap up. In addition it is very hard for the current generation to even own. This is were I detest free market economy because it creates such an unfair situation. And this leads me to think things like houses should be capped. Everyone should be able to have a piece of land and a home. Corporations can lease land from cities but should never own. The idea here is simple, corporations cannot be treated the same as an individual human.
- dang 5y agoWe've changed the URL from https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676 https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676 to the article it points to, in keeping with the HN guidelines: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- browningstreet 5y agoI went on Zillow and looked at the house I'm renting (not in a major market) and it went up $28K in expected value in the last 30 days. Can't see buying in this market at all. Fully expect my rent to be raised after my 1 year lease is up. Who's improving what?
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoAt least you have somewhere to live. Our rental is being sold. There are no rentals in this county and few in the next. All of our jobs are here.
- browningstreet 5y agoSorry to hear that :-(
- Exuma 5y agoSame......... I'm essentially being forced to buy as renting isn't an option and we can't move.
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.is/aBK10 https://archive.is/aBK10
- aazaa 5y ago> The country’s most prolific home builder [DR Horton] booked roughly twice what it typically makes selling houses to the middle class—an encouraging debut in the business of selling entire neighborhoods to investors. https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-the-buyer-might-be-a-pension-fund-11617544801 https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-... I see no future for this model. The reason is simple. Individual buyers avoid high-rental areas because they know the renters will depress home values. This sets up a reinforcing cycle. The neighborhood fills up with renters with no incentive to invest in the costly maintenance required to keep properties attractive. Landlords have little incentive to invest in long-term improvements, either. Tragedy of the commons. Step by step, the neighborhood slides into the abyss. So let the Blackrock's of the world buy up entire neighborhoods and turn them into rentals. As soon as the inevitable mean reversion happens in house prices, these home rental businesses will be toast.
- dnautics 5y agoCorollary: if you're buying a house, your competing bid might be a pension fund.
- ransom1538 5y agoThis just happened to me. Put my home on the market by myself without an agent - priced it 15% over market - got a corporate cash offer that day 5% more than THAT listing. Cash, no banks and little closing fees. Without agents this is an insane savings and price. We do have a pool and those are fought over.
- pandeiro 5y agoAside from the distraction of the author's nuttery, the issue is probably the most salient one for the American middle class over the next century. Either very strong measures are imposed to limit / de-incentivize real estate speculation and hoarding, or the vast, vast majority of the population is entirely excluded from any kind of property ownership. And while simplistic 'conspiracy' thinking definitely is of a much lower value than rigorous analysis, there is IMO merit to at least acknowledging that the politically powerful class might overlap substantially with the rentier (property ownership) class and thus resist any such reform taking place. It shouldn't be out of bounds to speculate on the motives of powerful actors, even if it is obviously not the same as making evidence-based claims.
- dang 5y agoThis comment refers to the original URL, https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676 https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676, which we've since replaced with the article it points to (in keeping with the site guidelines).
- CRConrad 5y agoBut a Twitter URL actually shows a thread, not just a single tweet. And this thread had a lot more links than just that single WSJ article. On the whole, I think the substitution was for the worse, not better. (And if the guidelines actually demand it, they need to be changed.)
- phpsuks 5y agoI don't want to be that guy but I feel like Americans and majority of the democratic World have forgotten that the laws they keep criticizing are the ones THEY voted for. Protesting is fine but I never see voters take responsibility for their own bad choices. They are heavily influenced by so-called influencers and vote according to them instead of their own thinking. CA Prop 13 is something people of CA voted for. It is obviously working for majority of the people in CA. So whats the whining about? People of SF elected Boudin and are not signing enough recall petitions, surely its working for most people. Democracy doesn't guarantee utopia, their will be some people mad about the system. But they have to accept they are in minority. There is no conspiracy, voters need to take responsibility for their own wrong choices first.
- nimos 5y agoThanks to the Fed for low interest rates and constant QE. Can't wait for tomorrow's inflation numbers - just kidding they'll juice the numbers like they always do with hedonic adjustments so they can pretend the standard of living for the middle class isn't in decline.
- vmception 5y agoAbout time the real estate market got more efficient I was always turned off by how slow and illiquid that market was
- sergiotapia 5y ago@dang: Why did you change the URL from the original twitter thread? https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676 https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676
- CRConrad 5y agoProbably because https://mobile.twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402449561864577024 https://mobile.twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402449561864... and, a little earlier, https://mobile.twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402448040997396481 https://mobile.twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402448040997... show it's a thread by a raving conspiracy theorist. (Or, at best, someone very successfully impersonating one.) EDIT: But yeah, crackpot or not, that's a lot more sources than just the one. So yes, a weird switch.
- screye 5y agoAt a philosophical level, I am opposed to the idea of funds being able to hold onto property like a pure monetary asset. Past the primary residence, individual landlords have some plausible deniability for having a 2nd/3rd home. Maybe they want to return to the house one day. Maybe it is a vacation home. A lot of folks on HN are libertarian and believe in the power of the free market. When supply can be kept artificially scarce, the market stops being free. The Bay Area is a master class in this. Among developed countries, the US is uniquely incompetent at urban development. They've created unsustainable suburbs and made every attempt possible to destroy cities. What's worse, is that generations of this pattern have led to rosy eyed images of suburbs among the younger generation and a skewed perspective of what cities look like. I live in an international group home, and Americans are unique in their desire to stay in suburbs. The Europeans, South Asians and East Asians would all much prefer to stay near the 'happening parts', and even their choices of suburbs are far denser than 99% of US cities. Lastly, allowing foreign investors to snatch an essential and scarce resource from the hands of your own citizens is incompetence bordering on malice worth the dismissal of everyone involved. Trump did a lot of things wrong, but the US could learn some protectionism. (I am not even American) ________________________________ I am usually more reserved in my opinion when engaging with people whose intellect I respect. But, this is an exception. [rant] I truly believe that the NIMBY & fans of American urban planning are as objectively in the wrong as one can be on a topic with as much emotional subjectivity as housing. It is a strong accusation, but people who still vehemently oppose densification of America are brainwashed , blinded by greed or both. [\rant]
- nathanaldensr 5y agoI am neither brainwashed, nor blinded by greed, nor am I "objectively wrong." The vast array of opinions in this comment thread alone prove this topic is anything but objective. If I may borrow and turn another popular thought-terminating phrase: No, the science is not settled on this topic. I built a house a couple of years ago for two times annual income. I was responsible. I work in tech, yes, but I didn't buy my house to flip it. I bought it because I have a wife and two kids and I want my kids to live in a nice neighborhood and, overall, have a good growing-up experience. I found that here. I'm not a NIMBY; I haven't attended a single city council or planning board meeting since moving here. I take good care of my property, working the soil with my own two hands, even. I love where I live and my neighbors do, too. We get along (imagine that). Many years ago I lived in New York City, young and single, in a tiny apartment in a crappy, dirty apartment building. I wouldn't trade what I have now for that life no matter how good you say it will be. I've lived both sides--growing up in a small dairy town, moving to Manhattan, then moving on and seeking a better life in small town America. There is no need to be so hateful and bitter. There are many, many people who are not in it for greed. You just don't hear them getting loud on Hacker News because they are too busy raising families and working jobs like most of us. Try and have some empathy.
- symlinkk 5y agoAffordable, widely accessible: - TVs, video game systems, smartphones - Fast food, snacks - Clothing, fashion accessories Unaffordable, hard to find: - Houses - Healthy food - Cars - Ammo Bread and circuses.
- PicassoCTs 5y agoThe sweet irony, that in the end privatized pensions created a sort of socialism via capitalistic means, more thoroughly central integrating every economic branch then lenin could ever have dreamed for. Poisoning innovation and competition, by simply owning whole industry sectors, and demanding "rock-steady" profits without disruption. Investing in ever larger centralization schemes aka disruptions were external organizations protected enterprise-profits. (Taxis) Eating even the black-market, by dragging "dead-money" from tax-havens and criminal enterprises into investment bubbles like the housing market.
- runawaybottle 5y agoThe article fails to mention that Blackrock has been buying up homes since the 2008 crash. This was a very very long play given that they started this when housing was destroyed 13 years ago.
- rdtwo 5y agoAnyone know how to contact them directly and sell without an agent. Boy that would be easy
- WYepQ4dNnG 5y agoI know this is an unpopular opinion, but houses should not be used as investments. Every person on the planet has the need and the right to live somewhere. Unfortunately the way it works today, allow a small fraction of the population to buy more and more houses at the expense of the majority of people who are constantly out bidden and forced to rent, thus fueling this circle. Landlord get richer, buys more houses and so on. The only way to stop this is taxes! Should not be convenient to buy houses for the sole purpose of renting them amount, especially for foreigners, see Denmark.
- igetspam 5y agoI'm about 99% sure I'll get downvoted for this but how do I sell my house a pension fund? I have a house with a renter in it and I would gladly sell it to anyone who would buy it without having to displace the renter. Right now, I'm stuck holding it for a little while longer because the renter and I have an agreement.
- milkytron 5y agoYou could put it on the market and have contingencies that satisfy your agreement. As for selling to a pension fund specifically, I think that would be more work than it might be worth, and you'd probably be better off making it open to all types of buyers.
- igetspam 5y agoPrivate buyers are usually looking for homes to live in and the one institutional buyer I've spoken to gives any existing renters the boot as soon as they take the title. The linked story sold an entire block of rentals as one lot. Maybe I'll get lucky and someone at a fund will see this thread and be interested in the idea.
- ChuckMcM 5y agoI chuckled at the headline because financial planners have always said that owning real estate for renting out was a more reliable source of retirement income than anything else. However, it is annoying at how some places where there is strong demand, there are few new projects going up. I personally have been amazed at how much new housing has been (and is currently being) developed in the "south bay" (which are the communities Mtn View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose. Ever since mixed commercial/residential started getting approved we've had over a dozen large re-developments of lots that were purely commercial/industrial into mixed residential / commercial. The entire AMD and former Spansion campuses have been re-done this way and produced both hundreds of new homes and several new commercial leasing opportunities. Sunnyvale's revised downtown went from 100% commercial to 50 / 50 commercial and residential. So that is pretty amazing to me.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoShouldn't we do something to curb institutions making "investments" that do nothing productive except pump the bubble? Dont these institutions have am obligation to act responsibly?
- cletus 5y agoHere's what we need: if the beneficial owner of a property is not a resident of that state the property tax rate should be punitively high. This includes any corporations or LLCs that own property. It's important that we have property as an investment vehicle... to a point. After all, that's where the pool of rental properties comes from. But this kind of national carpet bombing of housing supply by hedge funds is the last thing we need. As another example of what I consider a disgusting practice: hedge funds have bought up the trailer parks and then jacking up the rent. These houses are technically "mobile" but actually have limited mobility. Each move also damages the property. These should be owned collectively by the residents of the trailer park. But hedge funds know they essentially have a captive market to prey on. Much like when Goldman Sachs created an investment vehicle for wheat and then drove up the global cost to profit at the expense of actually killing people who couldn't afford to eat, I put this in the same category as disgusting and morally reprehensible. And while it's up to politicians to fix it, you can still hate the players.
- bradgranath 5y agoWhat's with the link to the weird Twitter rant about The Great Reset?
- ibdf 5y agoSo… if I have fundrise investments and one of the investments is the house I sold them… then technically I still own part of my house?
- mycentstoo 5y agoPass higher property taxes, further lower deductions based upon wealth of buyer, and build build build.
- twirlock 5y agoDefinitely doubling the capital gains tax for these kinds of institutions will help the working class achieve homeownership.
- ritikgeeks 5y agoThe implementation of a land value tax is the most significant barrier to widespread adoption. There is no objectively fair way to separate the value of the land from the value of the improvements, thus someone has to decide what the land is worth. Alternatively, without an objective mechanism to oppose them, many of the same strategies can be used to distort/contest appraisals,.https://apkwind.com/showbox-apk/ https://apkwind.com/showbox-apk/ "dark stores," and deed restrictions that preclude other uses https://apkwind.com https://apkwind.com, https://apkwind.com/spotify-premium-apk/ https://apkwind.com/spotify-premium-apk/, https://apkwind.com/blackmart-alpha-apk/ https://apkwind.com/blackmart-alpha-apk/
- motohagiography 5y agoWhen you add the no-interest rate environment that creates price bubbles and mortgagtes where people never build significant equity, this destroys the ability of families to build wealth, it turns young people into urbanized share cropping serfs. I guess young people can look forward to owning nothing and being happy about it? The only people who can compete to own property in an environment like this are the extremely wealthy, or those of very independent means. This marks the end of opportunity for generations of working people.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y agoSadly, archive.is is blocked in some countries For a smaller, simpler, Javascript-free, ad-free page curl https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-the-buyer-might-be-a-pension-fund-11617544801 \ |grep -Eo "(<p.*<\/p>)|(<h[12].*</h[12]>)|(<a href=.[^{].*</a>)" \ |tr -cd '[ -~]' > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm
- C-x_C-f 5y agoLooks like you need to set the user agent for this to work (I went with "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_13_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (K HTML, like Gecko) Chrome/61.0.3163.100 Safari/537.36" and it worked)
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y agocurl is for examples on HN. In practice, I never use curl and I never send a user-agent header. If use -H"User-Agent" (no space after the H) it should work fine. Example below. I cannot even think of a single website that requires a user-agent header in order to retrieve a page, but if you send one it will likely be used for something. Fingerprinting, changing the "UI" and blocking are a few uses that come to mind. curl -H"User-Agent" https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-the-buyer-might-be-a-pension-fund-11617544801 \ |grep -Eo "(<p.*<\/p>)|(<h[12].*</h[12]>)|(<a href=.[^{].*</a>)" \ |tr -cd '[ -~]' > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm
- cwkoss 5y agoWe should increase (double?) property taxes on single-family residences owned by corporations. These shifts in the housing market are destroying the middle class as an increasing number of Americans will never own any equity in their residences over their lifetimes.
- abriosi 5y agoI live in Portugal and we currently live a dreadful scenario. In developed countries a house shouldn't take 40 years to pay
- Ccecil 5y agoThis explains a lot actually. Spring-Fall 2020 my town (Coeur d'Alene, ID) had a bunch of real estate investors going door to door offering to buy houses. My parents had to shoo them away a couple times...same people. Through this year we have this incredible shortage of houses (not to mention a surge of newcoming residents). The part I find interesting though is that the average house price in my area went up 25-50%...which pretty much lines up with what it seems these companies were paying. It isn't the only issue here though...a significant number of people who move here are purchasing a second home as well in order to have a "vacation rental" which is further driving the housing crisis. Average rate of pay in my area is $20/hr but in order to purchase the average house you are required to make 3x that amount to be eligible. (Minimum wage here is $7.25/hr) Landlords see the rising prices and say "I'm losing money by not raising rents" and now a 1bd apartment is going for $1k/month (so you need to make $25-30k/year to be eligible). The "solution" they have is to build more apartments to house people...but those apartments are controlled heavily by large corporate interests who own multiple buildings and are controlling the prices. I have talked personally with more than one of the investment realtors who came through (candidly) and one of them specifically said she "buys houses but does not sell them..." and she used that as justification to the argument that realtors raise the cost of houses by "flipping them". It is a mess. Coeur d'Alene,ID was listed as the hottest real estate market in the US. Ketchum and Boise are having similar issues. Why Idaho you might ask? Well...we have non disclosure laws which make it so you are not required to disclose the last selling price. We also have a 2017 law preventing any type of limitation on vacation rentals. The list goes on and on. Not sure where everyone is going to live...or who is going to do the work...but the locals are being phased out. Homelessness/Rough living are becoming more common and Ketchum was even discussing tent cities. [1] I have nothing but hope for the world. Someday people may realize that profiting from housing is profiting from another person's pain and poverty. It sucks that a 40% increase on property values are not enough for the investors...they need to raise rents too. [1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-superrich-bought-up-ketchum-idaho-and-now-regular-folks-may-have-to-live-in-tent-housing https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-superrich-bought-up-ketchu... (google brings a few more results that may be more recent)
- nathanaldensr 5y agoThe lack of empathy is certainly sad, but seems to be a constant of the human condition. Not all of us are like that, of course, but many are, and those that are unempathetic tend to want to rule over those of us that are.
- seaourfreed 5y agoInflation is happening. Investors are buying houses before the inflation hits the home housing market. Some people think inflation won't happening. These investors are betting incredible inflation, because this may be the first time where large scale investors are buying houses individually (except 2008 mortgage crisis).
- TedShiller 5y agoPeople who think that building more housing will lower rents don't understand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand It will not bring rents down. Rents in the Bay Area, for example, will NEVER be "reasonable". Building more housing will only turn the Bay Area into LA, or NYC. Try living in any place with high density, it's still expensive.
- eldfgl 5y agoLol they should just buy bitcoin, digital real estate is more durable
- labawi 5y agoThis is troubling, as houses can usually be either an investment or affordable. Pension funds are assuming huge risks, which cements the political will to keep housing unaffordable with sky-high ever-growing prices.