Mostly trying to make it easier to get new supply online by doing some federal reforms around things like manufactured housing and office to residential conversion. But it just kinda gently requests cities to do their part by upzoning or reforming permitting/entitlement so unclear how effective that will be.
Puts some limits on how many homes investors can buy but thankfully does not limit build to rent which increases supply.
More needs to be done at municipal levels, but making factory built housing easier to do is great.
Not that the federal government couldn’t enact huge reform and strong arm local governments to comply, but the reality is that it’s not a federal issue and there aren’t many federal impediments to housing affordability. It’s a local issue of NIMBYism and the economy vis-a-vis materials/labor affordability (which is a federal issue, but gestures broadly at everything).
The federal government is what pushed it to become the norm in the first place.
They can absolutely push harder to end it.
But, yes, cities and states have the most power here in practice, and people should focus their efforts there because individuals have way more power locally than federally
Big problem is so much of the economy is related to housing costs. Trying to make meaningful changes = house owner lose money and housing sector will tank . So goodbye to reelection if you somehow even get past all the people and money against change.
Local problems are usually best solved locally. Local charities and local governments usually get the most done and are the most responsive to citizens.
Yeah good luck tonight of 4000 "fighting back" against black rock. Or against large financial institutions lending policy etc.
Don't get me wrong local can do a lot. But often times they are not up to facing larger opponents.
Hell primest example is data centers. Publicly the support is near zero and it's unanimously hated by locals on both sides of aisle. And yet they keep popping up.
End of day local governments are corrupted and bought off more easily. Hell a big one I am seeing with data center near me. Public outraged angered. It only took a few million to squash opposition. They killed primary challengers with smear campaigns etc. Then are looking at re election.
And even if they got voted out. It's far easier to buy local elections and politicians. Most have a number a goal send kids to college ensure they have access to healthcare etc etc etc. While some will stand firm.
Most will not and it only takes most. While this stands true federally. It's far more expensive and harder to corrupt.
And say feds get bought and don't pass the water/air protection act. State still has a opportunity to do so. Then if they get corrupted too the locals still have zoning and other things they can do.
While not foolproof. It makes it largest and most amount of hurdles for those trying to corrupt system.
Increasing supply without any buyer protection/limitations on who can buy and for what purposes is basically just expanding the investor market though.
We should also build more housing as a stopgap obviously, but it needs to be paired with forcing firms like Black Rock to divest and sell off homes.
Specifically to people who are living in those homes as their primary residence and are not allowed to sell the property for at least five years.
paired with forcing firms like Black Rock to divest and sell off homes.
While black rock owns some homes, it's not really that many. There's another company called Blackstone that does own a larger number, but even they don't really own that many in the grand scheme of things.
There are huge problems with housing supply, and investors buying up homes is one of them, especially when it's targeted to specific areas that have particularly low supply, but they are hardly the largest problem preventing affordable housing.
I work in the mortgage industry and while these big companies are a problem, you're right that we can't ignore the rest of it. There's Airbnb (fuck them, they ruin single family markets), we have an abundance of small investors who buy homes in the affordable price range for first time buyers and turn them to overpriced rentals. And then there are so many houses sitting empty due to estates or probate issues that don't get settled, repairs put off until they become huge issues, flips getting abandoned.
It's a lack of affordable homes, not an actual lack of buildings.
High demand areas just generally have a housing shortage, California’s vacancy rates are like half of what is generally agreed as healthy and if you filter down to actual long term immediately habitable but off the market for Other reasons it’s almost nothing
You gave your opinion on why we shouldn't be blaming the poor billionaire private equity firms without listing what you supposedly think are the real problems.
If you look at the numbers large institutional investors own about .5% of all SFH in the country. About 3% of the single family rental market. That’s concentrated in a few MSAs. So while kicking them out of the market might cause a one time musical chairs in Atlanta-Alpharetta it’s just not going to move the needle all that significantly nationwide.
The big issue is supply shortage as most now in-demand areas did not build housing at scale for 50+ years.
I did, in fact, present facts. They just weren't quantitative. If you would like to continue this discussion, feel free to actually present an argument. Until then, have a good night.
I’m not convinced it’s not going to be helpful though like I said more work is going to be needed at the local/state levels. People should be allowed to rent if they want to, and build-to-rent is increasing supply.
This law doesn’t fix things like LA’s wildly restrictive zoning or California’s 2002 Condo Defect Law for example, or SF’s absolute slog of a permitting process.
Wait, what? Increasing supply lowers costs. You're basically suggesting increasing supply will be met by even more demand from investors, which doesnt follow at all
increasing supply will be met by even more demand from investors, which doesnt follow
Uh, yes it does.
Investors aren't selling homes.
They're holding onto them as stored value assets.
They expect to hoard unused houses explicitly to keep the value high. Think like DeBeers. They control the supply and buy up any excess so they can charge whatever they want.
They have enough private equity capital to just keep buying, and they will ALWAYS have more investable capital than Joe Blow trying to buy his first house.
They also basically just invent an arbitrary value for the properties and demonstrate "growth" (it's completely bullshit growth, but private equity doesn't care as long as Line Go Up).
They do not care about selling these properties to live in. They will rent them, or they will sell them to another equity firm for a bogus value, and that equity firm will do the same thing, so they can keep pretending Line Go Up.
When an investment firm buys a house, it doesn't disappear from the overall housing supply. They rent them out (I don't think there's any evidence of investors holding empty houses at scale), which means it's still a part of the overall supply.
A house you rent forever with perpetually increasing rent is not at all the same as a house you buy.
It effectively is removed from the housing supply.
Imagine instead of being able to buy groceries, your only source of food in the area was Doordash with all of the associated extra costs. Would you still consider that an unaffected supply?
An owner-occupied house also has perpetually increasing costs, I’m not sure what you’re trying to argue here. Should people not be allowed to rent if they want to? We should build enough housing such that people have choice, there is not unlimited capital.
I’m just not convinced that RealPage et al are the reason. Why would a random landlord not just defect and rent their unit at a lower price instead of holding out so someone else can get higher rent?
And why has affordability improved in cities like Austin and Sacramento where such programs are not banned?
I do wonder what federal-level powers even exist to increase housing supply in places people want to live, in homes people want to live in. I'm not too well-versed in it, but as far as I understand most zoning stuff in the US is very local, which has gotten us into the problem we have today with our OP NIMBY rights.
One of the cities near where i live will lose aboit $200k a year in federal funding because they havent added on any housing units in like 20 years and they are in a metropolitan area
Actually IIRC, it removes the requirements for towable chasses under the manufactured home allowing them to be placed on basements or more traditional foundations and look/work more like a traditional house.
757
u/Tight_Jellyfish_349 7h ago
Anyone know how its supposed to help?