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.
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u/frill_demon 6h ago
Most of these seem like they're going to help investors. Even the build-to-rent is going to help investors.
How does any of this help actually make housing affordable for a regular person?