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Unfortunately, there is excess demand generated by non-human corporate entities. There is not a supply/demand problem among humans-who-need-a-place-to-live. Bu

by xbar 2y ago

Unfortunately, there is excess demand generated by non-human corporate entities. There is not a supply/demand problem among humans-who-need-a-place-to-live. But there is investor demand for an investment vehicle that has the tax and asset benefits that homes offer. The consequence is that the buying power in the market by humans-who-need-a-place-to-live is relatively weak when they compete against financial investment corporate entities.

roenxi 2y ago
If we have 100 houses and 99 people, it is just unlikely that anyone will have a problem finding somewhere to live. These non-human corporate entities don't have a real incentive to leave the houses empty. There is always a win-win deal to be had renting the house out. It is certainly possible to have situations where someone chooses to leave a house empty. If it is happening at scale then that suggests either tax or rental law is doing an unacceptable level of damage. Otherwise, why leave the house empty? It is giving up free money.
- NoGravitas 2y ago
  > These non-human corporate entities don't have a real incentive to leave the houses empty. They may have such an incentive. In an idealized market where everyone has perfect information, they wouldn't, but we don't live in such a market. In practice, it may be more profitable to leave a house empty to drive up rent on your other properties, and to save the maintenance costs that tenants would bring, especially if you can indirectly coordinate with other large property owners: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > In practice, it may be more profitable to leave a house empty to drive up rent on your other properties I'm not seeing it, rent is usually far in excess of maintenance costs. Run me through how this works. Say I have an empty house, maintenance costs for tenanting it are $5,000 and I have Dan the Desparate who will rent it for $10k/annum, and for the sake of argument his next best alternative is homelessness. What external circumstances exist here where I'm going to be better off not letting him use the house? Something like not being able to evict him on demand I can see being a factor, which is specific to the deal. But I don't see how what I do here could affect the rent any other properties I might have. I'm don't see how Dan being homeless can serve my interests here.
aoeusnth1 2y ago
There was a factual statement buried in there: that there is an equal amount of extra supply to match the demand growth from people who need to live somewhere. This is simply not true — population growth is outstripping meager supply growth in most cities in the US in most other western countries. If you disagree with this statement of fact, please provide citations.

by xbar 2y ago

roenxi 2y ago

If we have 100 houses and 99 people, it is just unlikely that anyone will have a problem finding somewhere to live. These non-human corporate entities don't have a real incentive to leave the houses empty. There is always a win-win deal to be had renting the house out. It is certainly possible to have situations where someone chooses to leave a house empty. If it is happening at scale then that suggests either tax or rental law is doing an unacceptable level of damage. Otherwise, why leave the house empty? It is giving up free money.

NoGravitas 2y ago
> These non-human corporate entities don't have a real incentive to leave the houses empty. They may have such an incentive. In an idealized market where everyone has perfect information, they wouldn't, but we don't live in such a market. In practice, it may be more profitable to leave a house empty to drive up rent on your other properties, and to save the maintenance costs that tenants would bring, especially if you can indirectly coordinate with other large property owners: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...
- roenxi 2y ago
  > In practice, it may be more profitable to leave a house empty to drive up rent on your other properties I'm not seeing it, rent is usually far in excess of maintenance costs. Run me through how this works. Say I have an empty house, maintenance costs for tenanting it are $5,000 and I have Dan the Desparate who will rent it for $10k/annum, and for the sake of argument his next best alternative is homelessness. What external circumstances exist here where I'm going to be better off not letting him use the house? Something like not being able to evict him on demand I can see being a factor, which is specific to the deal. But I don't see how what I do here could affect the rent any other properties I might have. I'm don't see how Dan being homeless can serve my interests here.

aoeusnth1 2y ago

There was a factual statement buried in there: that there is an equal amount of extra supply to match the demand growth from people who need to live somewhere. This is simply not true — population growth is outstripping meager supply growth in most cities in the US in most other western countries. If you disagree with this statement of fact, please provide citations.