I see a lot of expensive houses being built in my area. A LOT. And the weird thing is that they’re being bought pretty quickly. Are these people just making more money than me? If so, what are they doing for a living? Or are they just living house poor? How exactly are they affording these places?
They are not being bought by regular people like you - they are being bought by investment companies, hedge funds, and filthy rich investors... all for the the sole purpose of turning them into rentals.
By turning them into rentals, they keep supply low which increases prices... which also lets them charge exorbitant rental rates as well. They are gaming both sides of the system to ensure that us peasants can be milked dry over a fundamental human need.
wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
All this talk of foreign investors. But the reality is they represent a small proportion of single family homes[1]. It’s easy to blame foreigners, but the real problem is domestic. It’s corporations. Corporations are being all the housing. And they don’t mind sitting on their invest, even vacant, for years.
So yeah, y’all keep the bigotery going and blame foreing investors, you’re playing right into capitalism’s hand.
RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I feel like this article didn’t do a great job of answering the question. They didn’t really determine whether big corporations are buying homes, they determined that investors are buying homes. The actual text:
Those two statements are not equivalent. “Investor” could be a single individual buying a home with the intent of offering it as a vacation rental when not in use. It could be somebody who bought a duplex and rents the other unit out until their parents retire. It could be a house flipper who does 1 house at a time – each time registering an “investor purchase”.
Even “corporation” doesn’t really mean anything; a “corporation” could be an LLC with one employee, the owner.
And even when big corporations buy single-family homes, it’s not clear to me that this has a lasting economic impact. It sounds like a lot of these investment companies are renting the the homes or flipping them. Ultimately, demand is still demand. Somebody has to be there to buy or rent the home for these investments to make sense, so the any price increase resulting from this investment activity is some kind of external, artificial pressure. It’s a real representation of economic value, it is a price that occupants are able to pay.
NielsBohron@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I have a very specific viewpoint on this issue, as I live in a vacation destination. Various investors are buying up every property that comes up for sale in my community (large corporations, small companies, wealthy individuals looking for vacation homes, etc.)
Every single property that gets bought, gets registered or otherwise improved to the point that there’s no chance in hell anyone living and working in the community full-time can afford to buy, unless they bought their first property before 2016. Since then, home ownership among my colleagues has become a pipe dream (and without giving away too many personal details, let me just say my colleagues and I are well-educated professionals making way above the median income for jobs in the area).
As I type this out, I’m listening to a million-dollar house being built in the lot behind me (which will almost certainly sit vacant >80% of the time), a shit rental being turned over next door (which charges $3k/mo for a 3/1.5), and two short-term vacation rentals partying across the street (which usually charge $300-$400/night).
Regardless of who it is, investors buying up housing is a huge problem for people that are trying to own their own home, especially first-time buyers.
maporita@unilem.org 10 months ago
Buying as an investment, whether by foreigners, corporations or whatever, is a symptom not a cause of the housing shortage. The cause of the housing shortage is that we’re not building enough houses. That’s it. Supply and demand, same as it’s always been. The solution is to reduce demand or increase supply.
NielsBohron@lemmy.world 10 months ago
That doesn’t mean “is a symptom, not a cause.” If it’s actually supply and demand, then the investors buying the housing is part of the problem, but just a symptom. The investors are decreasing supply and increasing demand, so it’s really two sides of the same coin.
Personally, I think that just building more houses isn’t the answer, because the corporations can just keep buying them up. This will artificially decrease supply and increase demand, which keeps them making a profit. And as long as corporations can make a profit with this model, they will (and people will continue to suffer).
VelociCatTurd@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yes let me buy a house on someone else’s land I’m sure they won’t mind. And if there’s not enough land left in America, we just need to increase the supply of land.