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Comment by ashdksnndck | Hacker News Reader

I’m interested in the methodology they use to identify investor-owned homes. Are they comparing known resident addresses to the names on property tax records? How does it work when multiple members of the same family have different last names? It seems fairly common for members of different generations of family (including in-laws) to live in a house that one person owns. How are you distinguishing an investment from a family living arrangement?

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California has a homeowner-occupied tax exemption, and it is listed on the county assessor's website whether a given property is taking it (at least it is for a relative's property in CA I just checked). So I expect they're using that.

This might undercount (if owners don't file the form) or overcount (tax fraud or error), but there's financial incentives to get it right on both sides, so it's probably fairly accurate.

The article shows numbers for all 50 states, which makes me wonder if they are using a blanket methodology that works everywhere.

The link to the original source is paywalled.

Easy first step is anything not listed as owned by individual people. Investors will have some type of business ownership arrangement in 99%+ of cases and individuals will rarely have an LLC or similar setup for their purchases.

My house is owned by an LLC that I own. I live in the house and don't rent it. If you count this way you will overcount by quite a bit!

Why'd you set up an LLC for this?

There are a few reasons:

* Multi-ownership can be easier. I.e. you can "hide" who owns the house and it disconnects ownership from property records.

* People think it adds liability protections.

* It might make transferring the house at death easier to control(i.e. LLC rules apply, not state real estate rules)

In the case of owning the house you live in under an LLC, the chances of it protecting you from most liability is 0%. The only thing I can think og it maybe protecting you from is debt obligations, if the person trying to collect from you didn't bother to find out why you don't own your house on property records. This probably has a very low chance of working anymore, but low is > 0 I guess.

In order to have LLC liability protections you have to separate the LLC from your personal life, i.e. you have to treat the LLC as a real business, no mixing bank accounts, etc

In my case it is the way Historic Tax Credits are accounted for.

In most cases: privacy and ease of sale. You don't sell the house, you sell the LLC. The owner doesn't change.

On the scale of the housing market of a whole state people like yourself are probably a rounding error. There's a reason I said rarely in my original post.

Most real estate investors will own inventory via an LLC - often one LLC per property so liability is limited to the value of a single property.

Simply looking for properties owned by corporations will get you really close.

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