5 ms·

Thank you for mentioning this! There's this weird, persistent meme that large corporations are buying up all the housing and nobody owns homes anymore, which is

Thank you for mentioning this! There's this weird, persistent meme that large corporations are buying up all the housing and nobody owns homes anymore, which is fundamentally not supported by the data. There are shifting trends in generational home ownership rates, but these are still just initial trends we're seeing. If you look at the data [0] owner occupied has gone down from the 2000s housing bubble, but in the grand scheme of things is not even particularly low. People also have this mistaken belief that investors like Black Rock are buying up huge swaths of property, when in reality most "investment" properties are bought by families and individuals, consider anyone who know who owns an AirBNB rental or other rental property, they would be considered "investors". Most Americans still live in a house, and own that house (or at least, some member of their household owns it). 0. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

floatingtorch 1y ago
Yes, it’s surprised me how this meme was everywhere in the comments while the data does not support it. I’d bet it’s splashy headlines in news outlets. Important to correct it so that policy is focused on what’s most effective.
- iwontberude 1y ago
  Blackrock sounds scary
  - BobaFloutist 1y ago
    People absolutely also conflate it with Blackstone and even Blackwater.
    - lesuorac 1y ago
      tbh conflating blackrock and blackstone is pretty fair. Their named similarly because it's the same people with just a slightly different business.
arp242 1y ago
I don't know about the United States, but in (parts of) Europe it is the case. "Nobody owns homes any more" is an exaggeration of course, but things are not alright in the housing market, in part because private corporations are buying up quite a large percentage of the housing stock to rent. I think in Ireland it's about half. Like I said, I don't know about the US. It's a big place and you're probably taking too much of a "grand scheme of things" view here. Aside from geographical diversity, total % of home ownership doesn't change that fast – lots of older people already own homes, their children often inherit those homes. Houses aren't like hotdog sales and numbers change slowly. What matters more is how much does an average 25 or 30 year old pay in housing costs? What hope does someone with a decent (but not exceptionally well-paid) job have of purchasing a house? A single % of home ownership across the entire population doesn't really capture that. Doubly so for such a large country as the US. I'm sure there are affordable homes out in the sticks, but also ... no jobs. That might work for the remote software dev, but not everyone is a software dev. In Ireland the total housing ownership has fallen, but not dramatically. However, the reality for people not already having a home is quite bleak. Buying a house now is significantly more expensive than it was a decade or two ago, as is renting. I could buy an apartment on my own ten years ago with a salary that really wasn't all that great. I'd have no hope today. My rent today is about three and a half times what it was 15 years ago. There is a generation of working 20 and 30-year old who are still living at home because they can't really afford to move out.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  > "Nobody owns homes any more" is an exaggeration of course, but things are not alright in the housing market, in part because private corporations are buying up quite a large percentage of the housing stock to rent. I think in Ireland it's about half. This is a _really_ popular meme, but it's not true. About 50% of new homes are bought by owner-occupiers, about 25% by local authorities and approved housing bodies (https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/local-authority-and-social-housing/approved-housing-bodies/ https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/local-authorit...), 10% pension funds and institutions (these are the 'private corporations' you refer to), and the remainder are small landlords, holiday homes etc etc. I think sometimes people see "50% of new homes are bought by owner occupiers" and read it to mean "and thus the other 50% are bought by evil corporations" (people also tend to forget about the 'new' bit; second-hand homes are much more likely to be bought by owner-occupiers, as REITs and pension funds largely don't want to touch them, and nor do approved housing bodies; local authorities do sometimes buy individual second-hand homes, usually from private landlords), but really the bulk of the remainder is social housing. The ridiculous rents are driven by the fact that we're just not building enough homes. Not that we're not building a lot; we have one of the highest per capital rates of homebuilding in the OECD, but there was a period of 7 or 8 years where we built almost nothing, and that's a really hard gap to bridge.
vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago
One important data point is that houses have become much more expensive compared to income in the last decades. When I lived in CA, my plumber neighbor told me he bought his house in the 70s for 80000 on a salary of 40000. Today he would probably pay 800000 for the same house but make maybe 100000 or a little more. It's definitely harder to buy a house these days.
- selectodude 1y ago
  $40,000 in 1975 is over a quarter million 2025 dollars.
  - Telemakhos 1y ago
    You can't buy on the west coast for a quarter million. A house big enough to start a family will likely start at a half million, and in some communities will come with hefty tax burdens.
    - red-iron-pine 1y ago
      in 2025 anything vaguely desirable in a coastal-ish city is starting at more like 600-700k. actual decent houses will be 1MM or more. the folks in those areas, if you owned a house for the last 20 years, are now richer than ever due to that property appreciating. but the younger generation is absolutely screwed
      - jen20 1y ago
        > if you owned a house for the last 20 years, are now richer than ever due to that property appreciating. Only if you sell it, and move somewhere with a much lower cost of housing.
        fragmede 1y ago
        If there is a spare bedroom in your HCOL location, renting that out lets you get some incoming cash flow without having to move away to a LCOL location.
conductr 1y ago
> There's this weird, persistent meme that large corporations are buying up all the housing and nobody owns homes anymore, which is fundamentally not supported by the data. They are and the trend is there. The housing market moves slowly and it takes time to chip away enough at the larger stat. Once the boomer's age out, even with wealth and asset transfer, let's revisit this and see how it looks. I'd bet 2/3 ownership looks more like 1/2 or less by then, which is a significant drop and it probably will only continue from there.
lanstin 1y ago
It's another example of mistaking the current trading trends for the overall asset reality. Like NFTs, TSLA, and house prices, a relatively small amount of daily trading money can move the "market cap" quite a lot. And those old folks that took their home equity and used it to buy property for an AirBNB are in fact an example of the rich/old folks screwing the young generation hard. (Other examples: vote to reduce taxes, to increase tuition, stop the free market from building more housing, do nothing on global warming, let the economy be swallowed by health care and financialized scams). As are the people that own and rent 3 houses, while their grandkids have to move far away. (Disclaimer: I live in San Jose, and my adult kids will never be able to live near me).

floatingtorch 1y ago

Yes, it’s surprised me how this meme was everywhere in the comments while the data does not support it. I’d bet it’s splashy headlines in news outlets. Important to correct it so that policy is focused on what’s most effective.

iwontberude 1y ago
Blackrock sounds scary
- BobaFloutist 1y ago
  People absolutely also conflate it with Blackstone and even Blackwater.
  - lesuorac 1y ago
    tbh conflating blackrock and blackstone is pretty fair. Their named similarly because it's the same people with just a slightly different business.

arp242 1y ago

I don't know about the United States, but in (parts of) Europe it is the case. "Nobody owns homes any more" is an exaggeration of course, but things are not alright in the housing market, in part because private corporations are buying up quite a large percentage of the housing stock to rent. I think in Ireland it's about half. Like I said, I don't know about the US. It's a big place and you're probably taking too much of a "grand scheme of things" view here. Aside from geographical diversity, total % of home ownership doesn't change that fast – lots of older people already own homes, their children often inherit those homes. Houses aren't like hotdog sales and numbers change slowly. What matters more is how much does an average 25 or 30 year old pay in housing costs? What hope does someone with a decent (but not exceptionally well-paid) job have of purchasing a house? A single % of home ownership across the entire population doesn't really capture that. Doubly so for such a large country as the US. I'm sure there are affordable homes out in the sticks, but also ... no jobs. That might work for the remote software dev, but not everyone is a software dev. In Ireland the total housing ownership has fallen, but not dramatically. However, the reality for people not already having a home is quite bleak. Buying a house now is significantly more expensive than it was a decade or two ago, as is renting. I could buy an apartment on my own ten years ago with a salary that really wasn't all that great. I'd have no hope today. My rent today is about three and a half times what it was 15 years ago. There is a generation of working 20 and 30-year old who are still living at home because they can't really afford to move out.

rsynnott 1y ago
> "Nobody owns homes any more" is an exaggeration of course, but things are not alright in the housing market, in part because private corporations are buying up quite a large percentage of the housing stock to rent. I think in Ireland it's about half. This is a _really_ popular meme, but it's not true. About 50% of new homes are bought by owner-occupiers, about 25% by local authorities and approved housing bodies (https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/local-authority-and-social-housing/approved-housing-bodies/ https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/local-authorit...), 10% pension funds and institutions (these are the 'private corporations' you refer to), and the remainder are small landlords, holiday homes etc etc. I think sometimes people see "50% of new homes are bought by owner occupiers" and read it to mean "and thus the other 50% are bought by evil corporations" (people also tend to forget about the 'new' bit; second-hand homes are much more likely to be bought by owner-occupiers, as REITs and pension funds largely don't want to touch them, and nor do approved housing bodies; local authorities do sometimes buy individual second-hand homes, usually from private landlords), but really the bulk of the remainder is social housing. The ridiculous rents are driven by the fact that we're just not building enough homes. Not that we're not building a lot; we have one of the highest per capital rates of homebuilding in the OECD, but there was a period of 7 or 8 years where we built almost nothing, and that's a really hard gap to bridge.

vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago

One important data point is that houses have become much more expensive compared to income in the last decades. When I lived in CA, my plumber neighbor told me he bought his house in the 70s for 80000 on a salary of 40000. Today he would probably pay 800000 for the same house but make maybe 100000 or a little more. It's definitely harder to buy a house these days.

selectodude 1y ago
$40,000 in 1975 is over a quarter million 2025 dollars.
- Telemakhos 1y ago
  You can't buy on the west coast for a quarter million. A house big enough to start a family will likely start at a half million, and in some communities will come with hefty tax burdens.
  - red-iron-pine 1y ago
    in 2025 anything vaguely desirable in a coastal-ish city is starting at more like 600-700k. actual decent houses will be 1MM or more. the folks in those areas, if you owned a house for the last 20 years, are now richer than ever due to that property appreciating. but the younger generation is absolutely screwed
    - jen20 1y ago
      > if you owned a house for the last 20 years, are now richer than ever due to that property appreciating. Only if you sell it, and move somewhere with a much lower cost of housing.
      - fragmede 1y ago
        If there is a spare bedroom in your HCOL location, renting that out lets you get some incoming cash flow without having to move away to a LCOL location.

conductr 1y ago

> There's this weird, persistent meme that large corporations are buying up all the housing and nobody owns homes anymore, which is fundamentally not supported by the data. They are and the trend is there. The housing market moves slowly and it takes time to chip away enough at the larger stat. Once the boomer's age out, even with wealth and asset transfer, let's revisit this and see how it looks. I'd bet 2/3 ownership looks more like 1/2 or less by then, which is a significant drop and it probably will only continue from there.

lanstin 1y ago

It's another example of mistaking the current trading trends for the overall asset reality. Like NFTs, TSLA, and house prices, a relatively small amount of daily trading money can move the "market cap" quite a lot. And those old folks that took their home equity and used it to buy property for an AirBNB are in fact an example of the rich/old folks screwing the young generation hard. (Other examples: vote to reduce taxes, to increase tuition, stop the free market from building more housing, do nothing on global warming, let the economy be swallowed by health care and financialized scams). As are the people that own and rent 3 houses, while their grandkids have to move far away. (Disclaimer: I live in San Jose, and my adult kids will never be able to live near me).