The buying up of precious housing as investments by non-residents should mostly be banned, starting with institutional and overseas investors.
AirBnb should also be banned. And the people who profited off that startup, who must've known they were creating illegal hotels and destroying rental markets, should be hit with devastating fines, maybe also imprisoned.
It’s the get-rich-quick types who decided to be professional Airbnb landlords. Short term leases make no sense at all to anyone actual invested in rental properties, without something like Airbnb to back it. A long term tenant who pays on time should be the dream of every landlord, but with all the Airbnbs, it’s not even considered.
I don’t know if this is the fault of the early investors, but I’m all for pulling the rug out from under the the people who own dozens of properties for the sole purpose of doing Airbnb. They are likely extremely leveraged, due to the low interest rates from years past, so they’d be screwed and be forced to sell fast.
I agree on the international investors as well. Priority should always go to people who will actual live in a place. All those multi-million dollar places in NYC that sit vacant are a horrible. What’s the point of housing if no one is there to live in it.
This would do next to nothing. The landlords buying up real estate are mom-and-pops with fewer than 10 properties. Which makes sense, because residential property is a pretty decent passive income that's only accessible to people with wealth but are not a good asset for large institutions.
Otherwise banks wouldn't sell foreclosed homes at a discount, they'd hold onto them if it was more profitable.
(1) https://www.housingwire.com/articles/no-wall-street-investor...
That might be true, but there are lots of companies that own more than 1000 homes. 1-3 should be the limit.
But it's pretty clear that the big time owners like institutional investors/REITs/etc own less than 2% of all units.
What's the issue with them buying houses as investments, as long as they're being rented out? If that's the case, their net effect on the housing supply is zero.
>maybe also imprisoned.
I find it extremely disturbing that people are effectively demanding for bill of attainders for jail sentences for what are basically zoning violations.
Because it prevents people from owning and now have to be permanent renters because of somebody's greedy rent seeking behavior.
Are you trying to buy 2M+ houses?
Our cost to close was under $100k with a 20% down payment, but still substantial. And yes, we were first time homebuyers. Obviously we did not buy anything approaching 2M.
With closing costs of $10k-15k, 100k doesn't even break a half million at 20% down. That's (sadly) not even table stakes in e.g. most parts of Boston.
Someone with good credit and currently renting would be nuts to "wait and save" for even 1 year because the total cost of PMI was like 6mo of our rent and accounting for paying it off over time with inflation it's probably even less than that in real dollars.
Maybe we got lucky with PMI but googling a bit it doesn't seem that out of line with the calculators.
There's no bill of attainder involved when you break a law that existed before you were even born.
There are whole highly developed countries (higher than US for example in terms of personal freedom, ie Switzerland) who simply don't have home ownership as something usual and folks focus on actual quality aspects of living. Populations are consistently among the happiest (and healthiest) in the world.
Correlation != causation but maybe not joining property rat race (which was always the case, just tools were few and apart for most) has some significant benefits. And if its just about safe investing then we moved topic completely elsewhere, back to good ol' universal greed.
Neither of them has any (significant) rent control, definitely abolute 0 for young and able, and people have rental agreements which run easily decade(s).
Ie in France its the opposite - owners are properly scared of long term rentals, since rentees can trivially just stop paying and it will take you 6+ month of courts to have an attempt on evicion. They can trash the place and no real recourse. Not empty threat neither, everybody knows such a case personally. Thus everybody -> airbnbs. Blame the system if you grok the situation, french one is one of the worst in the west.
The cost of houses in my area went up $100k less than 2 years after I bought my house. The cost of food where I doubled in less than 20 years. Rent went up $1000.
Sorry that people wanting "affordable housing" is an insult to you. I'm sure when the Neo-Maoists promise to massacre landlords, the masses of rentcells out there are surely going to take your sob story seriously and choose to live in good American style "practically slavery" and choose not to join them. Surely they think your comment comes across as empathetic and understanding, not callous and dismissive.
This realization has convinced me that it’s not a supply problem. I go on Zillow and there’s HUNDREDS of affordable condos and single family homes and 2 flats on offer. I can buy many of them cash. But they are in the ghetto. And ghettos are not some sort of act of god or timey-wimey opopsie-dasie. They are deliberate creations of a society.
Similarly, I look on Zillow at houses in second-tier cities an hour or two drive and everything is reasonable. My partner and I work in person five days a week, and yet millennials and Gen Zers working remotely except for once a month have no legitimate reason to be in high COLA markets except for their love of marg towers.
It’s not a supply problem. It’s an “I’m a racist white person and I’m okay with the carceral industrial complex” problem.
All the crime I see in these areas that frankly makes living in them a threat to my female partner’s survival is due to 60+ years of stupid welfare policy and 50+ years of the War on Drugs removing fathers from homes and incentivizing criminal culture.