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No no silly people it's Black Stone! (not Black Rock -- how could you possibly get those confused!) who is stealing all your houses. We are just building houses

by ctoth 3y ago

No no silly people it's Black Stone! (not Black Rock -- how could you possibly get those confused!) who is stealing all your houses. We are just building houses which will only be rentable so you will rent your whole life and like it! Blackstone, of course says: It's not us[0]! [0]: https://www.blackstone.com/housing/our-track-record-in-housing/ https://www.blackstone.com/housing/our-track-record-in-housi...

belligeront 3y ago
Why is providing rental houses bad? Should people who don't want to or cannot afford to purchase a house not have access to single family houses?
- nullserver 3y ago
  Rented a house for Invitation Homes, which is owned by black rock. Showed up all the windows were open didn’t think much of it; signed the contract. Closed the windows, hour later call them up, complaining about the chemical smell. Took three months to get resolved. I was in an out of the hospital for months. Years for family to recover.
  - za3faran 3y ago
    Sorry to hear. What turned out to be the cause of the smell, and how was it resolved? I hope you and your family are better now.
    - nullserver 3y ago
      Leaking gas, which in a first for me didn’t smell like rotten eggs. They kept blaming the new carpet or paint or whatever else. and to add to the fun, carbine monoxide from 2 sources. Included alarm with house was faulty. Plus we were all acting like zombies. Bad smell made us keep windows open most of the time. Otherwise would have died. As it was gas company freaked out at how bad it was
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  "Providing rental houses" isn't bad. "Buying up all the houses currently for sale, so that your only option is renting, and that at a rate we control" is bad. ("All" is an exaggeration, of course. But they have enough capital that they can significantly reduce the available market in several metro areas. The claim is that they do exactly that.)
wmil 3y ago
I also get them confused with Blackwater.
- m3talridl3y 3y ago
  Wait so Black Rifle Coffee Co. isn't buying houses..?
  - kaiken1987 3y ago
    No its Black Beauty, the cartoon horse, that was buying houses of course.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Thanks for posting the Blackstone link, very helpful. While I think it's easy to demonize the investment companies (and there is plenty of evidence that in certain markets that non-resident investors drove up the price of housing considerably), basically everything I've read has said that, at it's root, the problem is just a huge undersupply of housing. My question is: what is the real root cause of that? I know people talk about NIMBYism and regulatory capture, and that is most definitely a factor, but NIMBYs wanting to restrict additional housing has existed for many decades - why is the problem so acute now? Plus, the housing shortage is present in lots and lots of different countries with widely varying housing policies and demographics. Is it all just a consequence of the Great Recession hangover of under-building new homes? My personal theory is that it's not so much a total broad-based underinvestment in housing, but it's that the economy has further concentrated wealth into fewer and fewer metropolises while many rural areas have hollowed out. E.g. you see depressed rural "ghost towns" in places like Japan and the US, and then you have famous examples of Italy selling old houses in villages for a euro. Thus, in many of these depressed locales, land is near free because nobody wants to live there, but prices in urban/suburban locales have gone through the roof because more people are congregating there. That's just my pet theory though, I haven't really tried to back it up with hard data. I'm curious if anyone else has more evidence of what's driving the global house price insanity.
- quest88 3y ago
  More people and less purchasing power.
- nostromo 3y ago
  > why is the problem so acute now? Money printing and bad economic policy. The government has printed trillions of dollars and injected it into the housing market, via guaranteed loans and loans directly purchased. All this money pushed up prices beyond what new supply could absorb (it takes time to build housing). We have a similar market failure with higher education: easy money makes for high prices.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by ctoth 3y ago

belligeront 3y ago

Why is providing rental houses bad? Should people who don't want to or cannot afford to purchase a house not have access to single family houses?

nullserver 3y ago
Rented a house for Invitation Homes, which is owned by black rock. Showed up all the windows were open didn’t think much of it; signed the contract. Closed the windows, hour later call them up, complaining about the chemical smell. Took three months to get resolved. I was in an out of the hospital for months. Years for family to recover.
- za3faran 3y ago
  Sorry to hear. What turned out to be the cause of the smell, and how was it resolved? I hope you and your family are better now.
  - nullserver 3y ago
    Leaking gas, which in a first for me didn’t smell like rotten eggs. They kept blaming the new carpet or paint or whatever else. and to add to the fun, carbine monoxide from 2 sources. Included alarm with house was faulty. Plus we were all acting like zombies. Bad smell made us keep windows open most of the time. Otherwise would have died. As it was gas company freaked out at how bad it was
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
"Providing rental houses" isn't bad. "Buying up all the houses currently for sale, so that your only option is renting, and that at a rate we control" is bad. ("All" is an exaggeration, of course. But they have enough capital that they can significantly reduce the available market in several metro areas. The claim is that they do exactly that.)

wmil 3y ago

I also get them confused with Blackwater.

m3talridl3y 3y ago
Wait so Black Rifle Coffee Co. isn't buying houses..?
- kaiken1987 3y ago
  No its Black Beauty, the cartoon horse, that was buying houses of course.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Thanks for posting the Blackstone link, very helpful. While I think it's easy to demonize the investment companies (and there is plenty of evidence that in certain markets that non-resident investors drove up the price of housing considerably), basically everything I've read has said that, at it's root, the problem is just a huge undersupply of housing. My question is: what is the real root cause of that? I know people talk about NIMBYism and regulatory capture, and that is most definitely a factor, but NIMBYs wanting to restrict additional housing has existed for many decades - why is the problem so acute now? Plus, the housing shortage is present in lots and lots of different countries with widely varying housing policies and demographics. Is it all just a consequence of the Great Recession hangover of under-building new homes? My personal theory is that it's not so much a total broad-based underinvestment in housing, but it's that the economy has further concentrated wealth into fewer and fewer metropolises while many rural areas have hollowed out. E.g. you see depressed rural "ghost towns" in places like Japan and the US, and then you have famous examples of Italy selling old houses in villages for a euro. Thus, in many of these depressed locales, land is near free because nobody wants to live there, but prices in urban/suburban locales have gone through the roof because more people are congregating there. That's just my pet theory though, I haven't really tried to back it up with hard data. I'm curious if anyone else has more evidence of what's driving the global house price insanity.

quest88 3y ago
More people and less purchasing power.
nostromo 3y ago
> why is the problem so acute now? Money printing and bad economic policy. The government has printed trillions of dollars and injected it into the housing market, via guaranteed loans and loans directly purchased. All this money pushed up prices beyond what new supply could absorb (it takes time to build housing). We have a similar market failure with higher education: easy money makes for high prices.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]