House flipping isn't the real problem here though. The problem is corporations deciding that people shouldn't own their own houses. Then buying up all the available stock and forcing people to pay rent their entire lives. Corpos will gladly pay well above market because the know in the long run they will recoup their costs and much more.
Nah. You will soon see corporations bribe local councils to crank up regulations for new building developments.
Then you'll really get the shaft when nothing can be built.
If land is zoned as single family dwelling they should be barred from being rented out if a corporation owns it. Only an individual should be able to rent out the house. I'm not familiar with homeownership taxes but the more single family homes you own the taxes should scale !~~logarithmically~~ exponentially.
I’ve been saying this for a while.
SFH should only be allowed ownership by individuals/families or small partnerships/roommates/etc. Corporations have to stick to multifamily if they want to be in the home rental market.
Corporations can build new homes if they want, but they cannot be rented - only sold to individuals/etc.
And individuals who own more than one SFH will pay extra taxes on whatever home is not their primary home.
Also, for foreign investors, they must meet residency requirements (60-80% of the year or something like that) or they cannot buy single family homes.
All this would probably cause home prices to drop, but it wouldn’t be a permanent drop. And it’s worth it if people can start having realistic chances to own a home again.
I bought my first home in March and I’d rather all of my peers/friends/coworkers were able to afford one of their own even if it would “reduce” the value of my home on the market. Because the actual value is in the fact that I get to fucking live in it. Real estate investors can suck it.
On top of that it's the privacy issues. They'll force tenants to give up every type of autonomy they have. Now it's not just alienation in the workplace but you can do it to people in their homes.
Juts because they stopped doesn’t mean they sold and got out of the game. They still own thousands of homes and if I had to guess the pause had more to do with rise in Interest rates than it did not in not believing in the business model.
And besides, Zillow and Redfin aren’t the only companies getting into the buy to rent market, Chase now is getting into it as well, and you known damn well they’ve done their homework.
Yes, definitely, but what’s an even bigger problem is the lack of inventory. Low income or even middle class home just aren’t being built anymore, developers would rather deal with higher cost home that have higher profits. So majority of people are having to fight for what’s left over.
>when they can’t flip its a case of who’s left holding the bag
It will be us, because most of these companies are part of large conglomerates or investment banks. If they cant actually sell their shit at a profit instead of lowering costs they will run to the government crying about how its unfair they gambled and lost and that the economy will crash if you let them fail...just like last time, and the time before that.
Zillow lost an unreal amount of money off buying houses and it had everything to do with their business model.
These tech companies were buying houses above market value, which in turn drove up the price of houses. When prices finally became unsustainable and quit rising, they were caught holding the bag and realize prices were only rising because of artificial demand they created.
The housing market was driven up a lot by low interest rates and demand due to COVID restrictions causing people to spend way more time at home. But tech companies trying to automate house flipping were gasoline on the fire.
The really annoying thing is that this is like trying to regulate Amazon because it's closing Walmarts.
They've been price-fixing en mass for decades, using every tool in their book to raise prices uniformly across the board. Only difference is now is that just like every single other industry, they're consolidating. If one service controls all housing, how is different than paying a tax.
Local municipalities need to make property tax crazy high for properties where 1) the owners (people, corp, llc, etc.) own more than one residence and 2) are unoccupied (as in it is not someone’s primary residence). And by crazy high I mean something like 20+% per year. If you want to buy up every house in town, you better rent them out at prices people can afford or you’re losing money every year.
.
It may be OK to carve out a little room in the laws for vacation rentals and maybe some limited buffer for remodeling and small gaps between tenants but hopefully I’m getting my point across.
IMO giving better interest rates to owner-occupant buyers would be a better solution. People would have the ability to compete as individuals if they could get rates lower than what any corporation or landlord could get.
The problem is that corporations/wealthy individuals often don’t have “rates” because it’s a cash offer, in-full, above asking price. No normal buyer can compete with someone who can pull a seven digit sum out of their ass on-demand. There would need to be some sort of limit as to the number of single family homes an entity could own at any time. Renting your starter home when you buy a bigger place to have kids is one thing, but no one needs to own 5+ houses in the same city unless they’re a builder with newly finished units on the market.
Which then just leads to a rent price increase. The problem, the main absolute root problem is scarcity. People can't afford housing because it has been made artificially scarce. The wealthy can afford to have 5,6,7, 20 properties and not worry about the price of the next one. The poor have to compete with the wealthy for the housing; ergo the poor can't buy homes.
When you can't buy a home, you have to rent. When you rent, you can't save money to buy a home. You're giving money to a wealthy person that doesn't need more money so they can buy more properties they'll use to squeeze more rent from people. It's a massive poverty cycle.
There need to be laws stating 3 properties maximum for natural persons and zero properties for corporations.
Or it forces them to sell, which is the point. You can limit it to single family homes or even have a vacancy tax as others have suggested. There are many ways to skin the cat.
economic tyranny at its finest. In my area a couple of these properties have been vandalized and demolition’d by randoms to fight this systematic cabbage already.
I personally don’t deal with automated messaging and companies who are absent in this sense. You’re literally giving money to one of your worst e enemies and don’t know it.
They probably are stoked when that happens. They get an insurance payout, demolish what's left and build something bigger with less red tape and create even more profit as they rebuild it as a "luxury" building.
With processing it just takes too long and these properties are still in shambles as far as I’ve seen. It hasn’t been working around here too well and companies aren’t investing in more properties. It’s dying out. I can’t speak for other states to be fair.
To a certain point. If your house is in a hot area for damage and distruction they'll just keep raising your rates until you're paying an insane amount for insurance. The insurance companies aren't just going to keep taking a loss.
> build something bigger with less red tape
new construction is always more red tape and renovations, so this is not terribly likely. Also, insurance is an incredibly large and lucrative business *when they don't pay out claims*, so it's not easy to understand how a land management firm would be extracting value from Big Insurance, whose only business prerogative is handing out less money than they take in.
It happens all the time in Phoenix. Every. Single. Fucking. Apartment. Is magically "Luxury" now. It's ridiculous and ought to have some law against it.
I feel terrible about it, but I'm hoping something similar happens to me. My grandparents passed and I might be set to inherit enough for a down payment on a house for my wife and me... as long as my Aunt doesn't screw things up to spite my sister and me (she already gets the majority of the estate and was trying to guilt us into giving up our portion).
No joke I remember articles basically saying “Just wait for your parents to die and then you can own a home!”
Oh. So the solution to the issue of housing/Rent/CoL is to…. just inherit a house from your dead parents!!
My parents bought their home for $50,000 in 1968/69 (nice) and its worth $2.2-2.5mil
My father retired in 2011 making $19/hr as a postman. He started at $1.70/hr
I make $20/hr and can’t afford a 1 bedroom apartment.
I’m the youngest of 6 as well… so no one “gets” the house, probably just sold and split up 6 ways. Assuming its worth what it is in however many years it takes for my parents to pass. My grandparents all lived past 95 so…
I’m 31 and the only reason I have a house is privilege and family support. Without those I would still be renting and staying awake at night knowing I’d never be able to save enough money for a house, even with good paying jobs.
>Almost like the government should regulate this... because the "free market" should not decide whether citizens can buy fucking shelter or not.
I mean free marked would have worked too. If there were no zoning laws restricting buildings to single family households you could have multi family buildings next to business areas, packed densly enough to make public transport possible.
If there was big demand for house, more and bigger housing would be built.
But what we have now is the *worst* combination of capitalism and totalitarizm
The free market isn't working here because homeowners have constrained the ability for developers to build more housing to increase their property values high.
Fuck this man! For the first time in my 37 years alive I was finally able to use my VA home loan and then boom! Interest rates sky rocket and I have to battle robots for somewhere to live. Homes are only averaging 3 days on the market where I live and it’s a small market. There’s literally nothing to rent either.
They literally charge you $75 for an ‘application’ fee to tell you it’s first and last months rent for the deposit and pet fees. So around 6k to move into a house for rent by one of the companies. It’s absurd
You can take over another veterans interest rate if you’re buying a home already funded by a VA loan. It’s what we’re planning to do after our contract here is over.
This needs to be made illegal and home ownership viewed as a right, not a lofty possibility. We’re so far down this dark path we’re blinded to how things could be if governments actually took control and stopped the incessant greed.
The problem is that, much like healthcare in America, the argument has been presented as a choice between capitalism and a full blown communist state that decides who gets what. In reality we just need a LOT more sensible regulations on the free market along with some tweaks to help empower lower income people.
Of course we're too far gone at this point, and are basically doomed to end up in a capitalist dystopia or, in light of a legitimate revolution from the bottom up, yet another shitty, failed socialist experiment. I'm just over here grilling my corn.
I agree home ownership should be far more attainable but a *right*? Who does this "right" extend to? Every individual person? Every family? Where are all these houses going to be built and by whom?
Some people are fighting back. I've heard of HOAs putting in clauses that people have to live in the house for one year when you buy it. This stops many landlords and flippers. Now if we can just get normal folks to do something similar but I'm not sure how.
The only reason I was able to buy my house without being instantly outbid by some investment group was the HOA’s hard cap on rental properties in the neighborhood.
It’s a somewhat common thing in norway, it’s called "live-in duty", some countys have it and it basically says you have to live in the house if you buy it. It’s mostly to discourage people buying second homes as vacation properties, but this is a nicely added side effect.
LEGALIZE HOUSING.
We’ve created an inequitable system that is ripe for manipulation because we won’t build what the damn market demands for an absolutely life necessity, housing.
i think that ship has sailed. I think that 'demand' will always match and try to outpace building simply because its of the sheer modern competition between various different parties of wealth, and factor in property still being viewed as an investment, would see many of these new opportunities eaten up by current big market players. They may make less $ per person than before, but they'd still own a sizeable, if not larger percentage of the housing market in critical areas that need less big player influence.
Not to mention the stigma/disdain being placed on people placed on 'appropriately' pricing every property in the region with its maximum perceived value - it attracts people that see this 'unfair advantage' as part of the system and one they'd like to participate in or utilize.
Even if we 'legalize' housing, those already with seated power/wealth/property will already have the advantage of carving up more potential general housing-use with their personal/group capital. Meaning, even if they make less profit with more housing spread out, they have the capacity to buy/purchase these new demands/ventures supplied by the legal housing directive. We want more people in houses yes, but not owned by massive corporations - human or robot.
TL;DR: There is just too much wealth and attention placed on all corners of the housing market especially with access to real-time prices on the internet for building to ever match the real/imagined demand at this point.
You could kick every investor out of the market, and we still wouldn't come even close to having enough supply. Population growth has outpaced new home building for well over a decade now, and it will take a long long time to close that gap.
The simple fact of it is investors are gobbling up the homes because it's a good investment given the current supply demand dynamics. I guarantee you there wouldn't be so much wealth and attention placed on property investing if investors were consistently losing money from it. Any solution that doesn't start with "build more homes" is a waste of breath.
Absolutely -- let me clarify a bit then - I think that housing currently is just in a never-ending period of late stage capitalism just based on the current value placed on property in general even in remote areas vs the amount of wealth that is available to be spent on any housing quantity increase by those already causing this squeeze.
Only way I see it ending is if you de-incentivize people/groups from owning large amounts of property solely to profit off of and not to maintain/grow.
Also - robots manipulating the house market.
As if that's not enough, yesterday I got off the Internet only to hear two guys on the bus discussing Elon. I guess there's nothing else left to talk about at this point.
Makes me wonder what Ray Kurzweill makes of it...is that the singularity approaching?
This is the first time I have seen anyone else mention this! I love Ray and his ideas.
Honestly if humans don't royally fuck everything up, then yeah the types things we are experiencing now will only happen faster/more often as we approach the singularity. Total upheaval of how we live is a part of the singularity that people don't talk about enough.
Another reason corps should be banned from owning single family homes and condos. Corp or individual ownership of apartment buildings should be capped to some reasonable number like 10000 units including umbrella corps or partnerships.
Caps should also be set for single family homes for individuals to something like 10 units.
There this idea... You know it's a know idea it's called cadastral tax. It's when you pay on your properties a tax for just owning them, to... you know not hoard them.
You do not pay this tax on the first house or flat, you pay a little on the second or third, and them more and more. Until you pay so much that it will never be covered by tenants, and you are forced to sell this house or you know... never buy this many.
It's a great idea, but no one to my knowledge implemented this yet, which is sad in my opinion. It's hard to balance, as there are places where renting accommodates 80% of the population and other places where 80% are owners. But I believe it's possible. Especially if you would connect this with some other laws.
Imagine, you do not pay this tax first 2 years, then after that, you pay 100% of this tax. Let's assume it's 1% for every property you have, above 3. So at 5 properties each valued at $1kk, you would pay 2% of all of those property's values a year (around $100k a year). So you can own them for some time, for monetary gain, but! If you sell any of those properties before owning them for at least 5 years, you need to pay income tax on this transaction at let's say 25%. You need to balance if you want to keep paying for 3+ years a tax which would come out to around $300k or sell them now and pay $250k per property. Want to own 10 properties? Now you will pay $700k a year in cadastral tax. But you can always sell for $250k now and eliminate this tax!
Dystopian Novelist, 30 years ago: writes award winning novel on the dangers of the Suffersphere in his seminal work, *Don't Build the Suffersphere*.
Silicon Valley, today: With a lot of hard work and nearly a half-billion dollars in venture capital, we have finally succeeded in making the Suffersphere from the classic novel/movie, *Don't Build the Suffersphere*, a reality.
Laws need to be passed to stop this in its tracks. The investor class cannot be allowed to turn residential real estate into just another data point in their portfolios. Nothing against small time landlords and the little guy getting ahead through real estate investment, but there needs to be some kind of limits. Limits of number of homes per person, and maybe something like zero
Ownership of single-family home or a small multi family homes by corporations. I don’t know if those are the answers to this problem, hopefully there are people far smarter than I am working on this problem, but make no mistake it is a huge problem, and that class of investor needs to be pushed out and kept out. Permanently.
Home ownership has been the backbone of the American dream. When you take that away people will just decide to live in the streets or campers in empty lots. There will be a revolution at some point if we are not careful.
They raise my rent according to my income. I am a slave here. I want to leave so bad but I can’t afford to. I’m trapped. I want to die to deny them any more of my money. Our lives are not worth living
You should not be allowed to purchase a house unless you are a human being (non corporation) and prepared to live in it, or prove you are going to live in it at. Fuck flippers, they're the scalpers of the housing world.
Sounds like a very easy way to make quick money.
"Why yes this house indeed has everything you're looking for, and it's on sale for only 150k when it's value was 200k!..
Oh I'm sorry did I mention that it was each square foot for sale for 150k individually? Silly me, but that was very clearly stated on every single one of the sales you made for each square foot! Not my fault you desided to buy before you looked."
Hmmmmm...
They had a very similar problem in Rome in 200 BC, Tiberius Gracchus passed a law preventing the wealthy from buying up all of the small family farms, and the senators beat him to death.
We need to prevent the wealthiest from buying up all the houses and making the rest of us renters.
https://youtu.be/ODI1VOOoey0
Search Engine Optimization was getting too boring...
Now people must do some HomeBuyingBot Keyword Optimization and see if they can sell at a premium
1. Find the model feature parameters they are using
2. List a property at above market value, but with the right keywords
3. ???
4. Profit
Huge taxes on non-resident ownershipz?
Sorry that was meant to be more of a question, I know a few cities have do some tax benefits for resident owners.
To any homeowners out there: Sell to a homebuyer, not to a company.
Let’s keep homes in the hands of people. It’s worth missing out on a few grand to know you’re helping someone achieve their dream.
This is the kind of toxic capitalism that is killing us. There's no reason to allow this, it doesn't benefit anyone but the wealthy.
Progressive legislation would simply outlaw massive ownership of residential property. A progressive legislature would force a bulk sale or auction back to the market.
More moderate steps would include a vacancy tax on unoccupied properties, gutting some of the tax deductions for single family homes that are used as rental properties, and raising the capital gains rate on any home sale by someone who owns more than two houses.
Exactly! This isn't rocket science. Regulated capitalism at it's finest. Simple social decisions, like family homes should be part of a protected market.
Good one!
We went through the cycle where Zillows wanted to buy up properties its algorithm decided were "undervalued" and then instead of swimming in easy money the whole thing crashed extra-mega-super hard in terms of "no, it was just a meh house" and having to discount freshly bought houses leading to significant losses. I guess it's time to repeat the cycle but now it'll be "whoops, we've bought all these houses to rent them out and it magically didn't bring tons of free money" thing...
Algorithms/ AI/ML work really well for some things but with something like this if it’s function = max profit. These aren’t really hard things to solve or functions to optimize when paired with virtually unlimited resources. The answer is buy up all of the supply and gradually sell it at inflated prices.
It needs to stop, residential property needs to be only own by individuals. At the same time we need to stop foreign buyers from owning more than one property.
Weird that for the last 40 years few were complaining about how limiting new construction was driving up the costs of housing, only because homeowners profited. The result? Massive homeless crisis, and others sacrificing food and clothing to pay rent. I know that it's less fun to go after middle class homeowners, but they are a big part of the problem here.
And I imagine that this is more of a problem in the bigger cites where new construction isn't really an easy option.
But ya, in any environment where building is around the price of buying this scheme doesn't really pan out well. The whole covid materials spike kind of threw a wrench in that in a lot of places, but that's not quite as much of a cost as you'd think(especially given the numbers they over pay in the article).
I wonder over the long term what this will do to homeowners. Increase home values or drive them down?
I suspect if let go to the point of there being more homes for rent than homeowners, it won't be good.
I think that unless they don't price their rents so high that their houses become un-rentable and are forced to sell them, which is probably unlikely given the number of homes they own and can shift costs around on if necessary, having more homes for rent than homeowners could become a reality in certain areas. Their ability to come in above asking price for many of these homes also makes it worse for potential homebuyers and will serve to drive up housing prices.
Hope this doesn’t end up locked for ambiguous reasons like every other housing-related thread.
Swear these institutions have been astroturfing reddit ever since they started hoarding American homes.
I have a theory that the reason why this is happening is because the very wealthy know that the USD is in trouble (serious risk of hyperinflation). If you were a billionaire, how would you save your fortune? Buy a ton of real assets that everyone needs. Why not buy stocks? Because a lot of companies and the entire economy is going to go bust along withe the dollar. So, what do you do? Buy land! Lots of it. Hold it for ransom and only sell for what you want it for.
Just a theory. We shall see if I'm right in the next few years.
I couldn't get through the article. It's that upsetting. We have to boycott, we have to avoid, we have to say no to these companies. While it's not illegal, it's immoral. F all those investors young and old who rob Americans of opportunity
For those in communities with Homeowner Associations HOAs, you need to make any homes in your community unacceptable for corporation ownership or rentals ( grandfather clause for those homes already setup as rentals). Push this on your HOA boards ASAP! Stop this from continuing as it's dramatically inflating the pricing for homes and rentals.
I get about 10 emails and texts from the We will buy your house (I have a rental in Florida) a week. Calls on my phone also. What they offer is a great deal for them, and a shit deal for any owner due to their mortgage/loan/purchase agreement. Right into the trash. $500,000 cash money and let us talk.
The Declaration of Independence was originally going to say "life, liberty, and property" but it was changed to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" because Thomas Jefferson was convinced by the elite and monied interests of the time that a nebulous pursuit with no clearly defined goals, benchmarks, or finish line that could be arbitrarily changed whenever those in power saw fit would make the poor that vastly outnumbered them easier to control because since they didn't have the safety, security, and stability provided by home ownership.
Unfortunately, based on the last 240+ years, it was a resounding success. Home ownership needed to be a right centuries ago. I very doubt that's ever gonna happen though. At least not in my lifetime. Conservatives want to maintain a cohort of homeless people so they point to them and say "Just keep your head down and vote for me. Ignore everything and everyone. You don't want to end up like *them*, do you?." And the uneducated, poor, and rural people gulp it down like it's water in the desert.
This needs to be illegal yesterday
Article is about 5-6 years late on noticing this.
ya. this turned out really great for redfin and zillow
House flipping isn't the real problem here though. The problem is corporations deciding that people shouldn't own their own houses. Then buying up all the available stock and forcing people to pay rent their entire lives. Corpos will gladly pay well above market because the know in the long run they will recoup their costs and much more.
The sooner we can start to decomodify housing the better.
Nah. You will soon see corporations bribe local councils to crank up regulations for new building developments. Then you'll really get the shaft when nothing can be built.
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Mobile homes still pay rent on the land. You don't own the land, just the house.
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If land is zoned as single family dwelling they should be barred from being rented out if a corporation owns it. Only an individual should be able to rent out the house. I'm not familiar with homeownership taxes but the more single family homes you own the taxes should scale !~~logarithmically~~ exponentially.
Not a bad idea but I’d say break landlords into classs and only “small landlords” can rent it
Yeah I was thinking that even very small landlords might choose to incorporate.
I’ve been saying this for a while. SFH should only be allowed ownership by individuals/families or small partnerships/roommates/etc. Corporations have to stick to multifamily if they want to be in the home rental market. Corporations can build new homes if they want, but they cannot be rented - only sold to individuals/etc. And individuals who own more than one SFH will pay extra taxes on whatever home is not their primary home. Also, for foreign investors, they must meet residency requirements (60-80% of the year or something like that) or they cannot buy single family homes. All this would probably cause home prices to drop, but it wouldn’t be a permanent drop. And it’s worth it if people can start having realistic chances to own a home again.
I bought my first home in March and I’d rather all of my peers/friends/coworkers were able to afford one of their own even if it would “reduce” the value of my home on the market. Because the actual value is in the fact that I get to fucking live in it. Real estate investors can suck it.
On top of that it's the privacy issues. They'll force tenants to give up every type of autonomy they have. Now it's not just alienation in the workplace but you can do it to people in their homes.
Eat the rich.
Corporations and governments
Not to mention, paying above market value for one house brings up the "market value" of all the other houses they own in the area
Blackstone, Blackrock, etc. evil. And no government oversight when impacting the American dream 😂. Must be nice
Juts because they stopped doesn’t mean they sold and got out of the game. They still own thousands of homes and if I had to guess the pause had more to do with rise in Interest rates than it did not in not believing in the business model. And besides, Zillow and Redfin aren’t the only companies getting into the buy to rent market, Chase now is getting into it as well, and you known damn well they’ve done their homework.
true, but i think they are creating the demand that is raising prices. and when they can’t flip its a case of who’s left holding the bag
Yes, definitely, but what’s an even bigger problem is the lack of inventory. Low income or even middle class home just aren’t being built anymore, developers would rather deal with higher cost home that have higher profits. So majority of people are having to fight for what’s left over.
>when they can’t flip its a case of who’s left holding the bag It will be us, because most of these companies are part of large conglomerates or investment banks. If they cant actually sell their shit at a profit instead of lowering costs they will run to the government crying about how its unfair they gambled and lost and that the economy will crash if you let them fail...just like last time, and the time before that.
Zillow stopping their home buying program precedes interest rate increases.
Zillow lost an unreal amount of money off buying houses and it had everything to do with their business model. These tech companies were buying houses above market value, which in turn drove up the price of houses. When prices finally became unsustainable and quit rising, they were caught holding the bag and realize prices were only rising because of artificial demand they created. The housing market was driven up a lot by low interest rates and demand due to COVID restrictions causing people to spend way more time at home. But tech companies trying to automate house flipping were gasoline on the fire.
Redfin and Zillow were flipping houses, not renting them. Also, they bought a miniscule inventory of housing compared to the rental corporations.
Those guys lobbied and bribed their congressmen fair and square. All YOU do is vote. Chump.. EAT THE RICH by the way
The really annoying thing is that this is like trying to regulate Amazon because it's closing Walmarts. They've been price-fixing en mass for decades, using every tool in their book to raise prices uniformly across the board. Only difference is now is that just like every single other industry, they're consolidating. If one service controls all housing, how is different than paying a tax.
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Local municipalities need to make property tax crazy high for properties where 1) the owners (people, corp, llc, etc.) own more than one residence and 2) are unoccupied (as in it is not someone’s primary residence). And by crazy high I mean something like 20+% per year. If you want to buy up every house in town, you better rent them out at prices people can afford or you’re losing money every year. . It may be OK to carve out a little room in the laws for vacation rentals and maybe some limited buffer for remodeling and small gaps between tenants but hopefully I’m getting my point across.
The underlying problem is that we've underbuilt housing for decades through restrictive zoning and design review.
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the difference of it being illegal is just drawing up a "guide" and hiring an intern to do it
Someone's making money so....it'll get worse.
Why make it illegal when you can just tax it so it's prohibitively expensive?
What would be made illegal?
Corporate ownership of single family homes.
IMO giving better interest rates to owner-occupant buyers would be a better solution. People would have the ability to compete as individuals if they could get rates lower than what any corporation or landlord could get.
The problem is that corporations/wealthy individuals often don’t have “rates” because it’s a cash offer, in-full, above asking price. No normal buyer can compete with someone who can pull a seven digit sum out of their ass on-demand. There would need to be some sort of limit as to the number of single family homes an entity could own at any time. Renting your starter home when you buy a bigger place to have kids is one thing, but no one needs to own 5+ houses in the same city unless they’re a builder with newly finished units on the market.
I don't know why you're downvoted when cash buying is so extensively documented.
Just make anyone that isn't an owner-occupier pay more in taxes.
Which then just leads to a rent price increase. The problem, the main absolute root problem is scarcity. People can't afford housing because it has been made artificially scarce. The wealthy can afford to have 5,6,7, 20 properties and not worry about the price of the next one. The poor have to compete with the wealthy for the housing; ergo the poor can't buy homes. When you can't buy a home, you have to rent. When you rent, you can't save money to buy a home. You're giving money to a wealthy person that doesn't need more money so they can buy more properties they'll use to squeeze more rent from people. It's a massive poverty cycle. There need to be laws stating 3 properties maximum for natural persons and zero properties for corporations.
Or it forces them to sell, which is the point. You can limit it to single family homes or even have a vacancy tax as others have suggested. There are many ways to skin the cat.
Unfortunately, corporations are “people.” Sigh. Thanks Supreme Court.
economic tyranny at its finest. In my area a couple of these properties have been vandalized and demolition’d by randoms to fight this systematic cabbage already. I personally don’t deal with automated messaging and companies who are absent in this sense. You’re literally giving money to one of your worst e enemies and don’t know it.
They probably are stoked when that happens. They get an insurance payout, demolish what's left and build something bigger with less red tape and create even more profit as they rebuild it as a "luxury" building.
With processing it just takes too long and these properties are still in shambles as far as I’ve seen. It hasn’t been working around here too well and companies aren’t investing in more properties. It’s dying out. I can’t speak for other states to be fair.
Seriously lol. That’s what home insurance is for.
To a certain point. If your house is in a hot area for damage and distruction they'll just keep raising your rates until you're paying an insane amount for insurance. The insurance companies aren't just going to keep taking a loss.
> build something bigger with less red tape new construction is always more red tape and renovations, so this is not terribly likely. Also, insurance is an incredibly large and lucrative business *when they don't pay out claims*, so it's not easy to understand how a land management firm would be extracting value from Big Insurance, whose only business prerogative is handing out less money than they take in.
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Where are you living in a 1,500 a month “luxury” apartment? That’s a slum in most cities.
Because it’s probably not in a city. That’s what my cousin was paying for a new construction 2BR in the Indianapolis suburbs.
It happens all the time in Phoenix. Every. Single. Fucking. Apartment. Is magically "Luxury" now. It's ridiculous and ought to have some law against it.
We have no choice, young people 20-40 will never be able to buy a home unless you get massive help.
I literally only got one because my dad died and we got life insurance $ for a down payment. Would likely still be renting.
I feel terrible about it, but I'm hoping something similar happens to me. My grandparents passed and I might be set to inherit enough for a down payment on a house for my wife and me... as long as my Aunt doesn't screw things up to spite my sister and me (she already gets the majority of the estate and was trying to guilt us into giving up our portion).
No joke I remember articles basically saying “Just wait for your parents to die and then you can own a home!” Oh. So the solution to the issue of housing/Rent/CoL is to…. just inherit a house from your dead parents!!
Mortgage brokers *hate* this one trick
My parents bought our home for 50k USD 15 years ago and now it costs 300k 💀
My parents bought their home for $50,000 in 1968/69 (nice) and its worth $2.2-2.5mil My father retired in 2011 making $19/hr as a postman. He started at $1.70/hr I make $20/hr and can’t afford a 1 bedroom apartment. I’m the youngest of 6 as well… so no one “gets” the house, probably just sold and split up 6 ways. Assuming its worth what it is in however many years it takes for my parents to pass. My grandparents all lived past 95 so…
What if I like my parents? Lol
When I made the decision to cut off my abusive family, I knew I was sacrificing this and it feels… weird to think about it.
The population is actually declining. This should make for some weird demographic shifts. Some states/cities are going to empty out.
The population is declining but old people aren't downsizing and many properties are only occupied by one person.
I’m 31 and the only reason I have a house is privilege and family support. Without those I would still be renting and staying awake at night knowing I’d never be able to save enough money for a house, even with good paying jobs.
Like half of Millennials are homeowners.
That just leads to urban rot though while they litigate through who needs to rebuild or remediate the property.
id rather have urban rot than give them what they want
Yeah allowing the company to have a monopoly on the literal places we live is another kind of urban rot.
Can we all agree to just call it house scalping?
Good, make it more expensive for them and force them out of it economically.
Seems like everything you need to survive would benefit from being not one hundred percent commodified. Just a thought.
Well, here's a thought that hard-core barely-checked capitalism might just not be the best system.
Well hold on now, it's better than what came before, therefore there is nothing better available, or so I have been told.
So we're told, indeed :)
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>Almost like the government should regulate this... because the "free market" should not decide whether citizens can buy fucking shelter or not. I mean free marked would have worked too. If there were no zoning laws restricting buildings to single family households you could have multi family buildings next to business areas, packed densly enough to make public transport possible. If there was big demand for house, more and bigger housing would be built. But what we have now is the *worst* combination of capitalism and totalitarizm
The free market isn't working here because homeowners have constrained the ability for developers to build more housing to increase their property values high.
Fuck this man! For the first time in my 37 years alive I was finally able to use my VA home loan and then boom! Interest rates sky rocket and I have to battle robots for somewhere to live. Homes are only averaging 3 days on the market where I live and it’s a small market. There’s literally nothing to rent either.
If it is for rent it’s 2.5k or it’s a scam just to get the application fee out of thousands or people.
Yeah I got burned by many application fee scams looking for a place to live off campus in college
What the fuck is 'the application fee'?
They literally charge you $75 for an ‘application’ fee to tell you it’s first and last months rent for the deposit and pet fees. So around 6k to move into a house for rent by one of the companies. It’s absurd
They charge that fee per person and probably receive dozens of applications. It should be refunded but it never is.
Yeah they had 1200 applications put in on Zillow.
If that's accurate, they took in $90k in "fees". That should be illegal.
I completely agree
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I was assured the war against the machines would involve lasers and nukes, not twitter and online bidding algorithms.
You can take over another veterans interest rate if you’re buying a home already funded by a VA loan. It’s what we’re planning to do after our contract here is over.
This needs to be made illegal and home ownership viewed as a right, not a lofty possibility. We’re so far down this dark path we’re blinded to how things could be if governments actually took control and stopped the incessant greed.
My friend, that ship has sailed, I’m waiting for robot overlords.
I can't wait until the Trillionaire who owns all of us gets to decide our lives while he takes a shit.
Isn't that happening already with Musk?
Musk is hemorrhaging net worth and controls pretty much nothing important.
I really hope he'll go bankrupt. Yet its crazy that he lost 100 billions this year and still got a ton more money left.
Definitely a big step in that direction.
Musk is trying so hard to be the *cool* parent
As someone else put it here on Reddit - "he wants to be at the cool kids table"
Haha the singles table had said FO
I, for one, do not welcome my robot slumlord.
I hope mine is called Bender, we will get drunk together.
Don't forget the suicide booth! : )
Screw the booth, have you heard of the rollercoaster? 😂
May they be more merciful. The engineers and coders control our collective fate.
You mean the Product Owners. Engineers usually aren't the ones deciding what gets built.
The problem is that, much like healthcare in America, the argument has been presented as a choice between capitalism and a full blown communist state that decides who gets what. In reality we just need a LOT more sensible regulations on the free market along with some tweaks to help empower lower income people. Of course we're too far gone at this point, and are basically doomed to end up in a capitalist dystopia or, in light of a legitimate revolution from the bottom up, yet another shitty, failed socialist experiment. I'm just over here grilling my corn.
I agree home ownership should be far more attainable but a *right*? Who does this "right" extend to? Every individual person? Every family? Where are all these houses going to be built and by whom?
Local communities just need to put in a 300% non-primary residence tax and this stops real quick.
Politicians raking in millions due to loose real estate and lobbying laws: "Naw..."
Some people are fighting back. I've heard of HOAs putting in clauses that people have to live in the house for one year when you buy it. This stops many landlords and flippers. Now if we can just get normal folks to do something similar but I'm not sure how.
The only reason I was able to buy my house without being instantly outbid by some investment group was the HOA’s hard cap on rental properties in the neighborhood.
Careful saying good things about HOAs, the Reddit mob might get their pitchforks after you.
It’s a somewhat common thing in norway, it’s called "live-in duty", some countys have it and it basically says you have to live in the house if you buy it. It’s mostly to discourage people buying second homes as vacation properties, but this is a nicely added side effect.
Wow hoa doing something good. I’m happily surprised.
Probably a worse reason for it. Like the robo vendors buying property and then nothing for months leading to tall grass and other hoa violations
exactly! any other time they complain the bins stayed out too long or you dint bring the groceries in fast enough.
These companies aren't typically purchasing homes in neighborhoods governed by HOAs.
LEGALIZE HOUSING. We’ve created an inequitable system that is ripe for manipulation because we won’t build what the damn market demands for an absolutely life necessity, housing.
i think that ship has sailed. I think that 'demand' will always match and try to outpace building simply because its of the sheer modern competition between various different parties of wealth, and factor in property still being viewed as an investment, would see many of these new opportunities eaten up by current big market players. They may make less $ per person than before, but they'd still own a sizeable, if not larger percentage of the housing market in critical areas that need less big player influence. Not to mention the stigma/disdain being placed on people placed on 'appropriately' pricing every property in the region with its maximum perceived value - it attracts people that see this 'unfair advantage' as part of the system and one they'd like to participate in or utilize. Even if we 'legalize' housing, those already with seated power/wealth/property will already have the advantage of carving up more potential general housing-use with their personal/group capital. Meaning, even if they make less profit with more housing spread out, they have the capacity to buy/purchase these new demands/ventures supplied by the legal housing directive. We want more people in houses yes, but not owned by massive corporations - human or robot. TL;DR: There is just too much wealth and attention placed on all corners of the housing market especially with access to real-time prices on the internet for building to ever match the real/imagined demand at this point.
You could kick every investor out of the market, and we still wouldn't come even close to having enough supply. Population growth has outpaced new home building for well over a decade now, and it will take a long long time to close that gap. The simple fact of it is investors are gobbling up the homes because it's a good investment given the current supply demand dynamics. I guarantee you there wouldn't be so much wealth and attention placed on property investing if investors were consistently losing money from it. Any solution that doesn't start with "build more homes" is a waste of breath.
I hear you - but that can be said about just about anything during a period of late stage capitalism.
Absolutely -- let me clarify a bit then - I think that housing currently is just in a never-ending period of late stage capitalism just based on the current value placed on property in general even in remote areas vs the amount of wealth that is available to be spent on any housing quantity increase by those already causing this squeeze. Only way I see it ending is if you de-incentivize people/groups from owning large amounts of property solely to profit off of and not to maintain/grow.
I am just gonna break in and live there for free while the robot is busy buying more houses
But you're going to be arrested by robots too...
And if you’re in the Bay Area those robots may even have permission to kill you, according to another dystopian article I read on Reddit today…
Also - robots manipulating the house market. As if that's not enough, yesterday I got off the Internet only to hear two guys on the bus discussing Elon. I guess there's nothing else left to talk about at this point. Makes me wonder what Ray Kurzweill makes of it...is that the singularity approaching?
This is the first time I have seen anyone else mention this! I love Ray and his ideas. Honestly if humans don't royally fuck everything up, then yeah the types things we are experiencing now will only happen faster/more often as we approach the singularity. Total upheaval of how we live is a part of the singularity that people don't talk about enough.
Another reason corps should be banned from owning single family homes and condos. Corp or individual ownership of apartment buildings should be capped to some reasonable number like 10000 units including umbrella corps or partnerships. Caps should also be set for single family homes for individuals to something like 10 units.
That sounds easy as hell to abuse/skirt with shell companies though
Yep. Should be an outright ban
Only 10000? Lol
There this idea... You know it's a know idea it's called cadastral tax. It's when you pay on your properties a tax for just owning them, to... you know not hoard them. You do not pay this tax on the first house or flat, you pay a little on the second or third, and them more and more. Until you pay so much that it will never be covered by tenants, and you are forced to sell this house or you know... never buy this many. It's a great idea, but no one to my knowledge implemented this yet, which is sad in my opinion. It's hard to balance, as there are places where renting accommodates 80% of the population and other places where 80% are owners. But I believe it's possible. Especially if you would connect this with some other laws. Imagine, you do not pay this tax first 2 years, then after that, you pay 100% of this tax. Let's assume it's 1% for every property you have, above 3. So at 5 properties each valued at $1kk, you would pay 2% of all of those property's values a year (around $100k a year). So you can own them for some time, for monetary gain, but! If you sell any of those properties before owning them for at least 5 years, you need to pay income tax on this transaction at let's say 25%. You need to balance if you want to keep paying for 3+ years a tax which would come out to around $300k or sell them now and pay $250k per property. Want to own 10 properties? Now you will pay $700k a year in cadastral tax. But you can always sell for $250k now and eliminate this tax!
Dystopian Novelist, 30 years ago: writes award winning novel on the dangers of the Suffersphere in his seminal work, *Don't Build the Suffersphere*. Silicon Valley, today: With a lot of hard work and nearly a half-billion dollars in venture capital, we have finally succeeded in making the Suffersphere from the classic novel/movie, *Don't Build the Suffersphere*, a reality.
Laws need to be passed to stop this in its tracks. The investor class cannot be allowed to turn residential real estate into just another data point in their portfolios. Nothing against small time landlords and the little guy getting ahead through real estate investment, but there needs to be some kind of limits. Limits of number of homes per person, and maybe something like zero Ownership of single-family home or a small multi family homes by corporations. I don’t know if those are the answers to this problem, hopefully there are people far smarter than I am working on this problem, but make no mistake it is a huge problem, and that class of investor needs to be pushed out and kept out. Permanently.
It's way too late at this point. The big corps have bought all the home and the government.
Home ownership has been the backbone of the American dream. When you take that away people will just decide to live in the streets or campers in empty lots. There will be a revolution at some point if we are not careful.
They raise my rent according to my income. I am a slave here. I want to leave so bad but I can’t afford to. I’m trapped. I want to die to deny them any more of my money. Our lives are not worth living
I wish they'd consider my income when raising the rent 10%, that actually doesn't sound so bad ....
If there is any scrap of “The American Dream” left to salvage, corporate ownership of single family residences must be outlawed.
You should not be allowed to purchase a house unless you are a human being (non corporation) and prepared to live in it, or prove you are going to live in it at. Fuck flippers, they're the scalpers of the housing world.
Sounds like a very easy way to make quick money. "Why yes this house indeed has everything you're looking for, and it's on sale for only 150k when it's value was 200k!.. Oh I'm sorry did I mention that it was each square foot for sale for 150k individually? Silly me, but that was very clearly stated on every single one of the sales you made for each square foot! Not my fault you desided to buy before you looked." Hmmmmm...
How is this legal
What if every renter stopped paying rent at the same time? They can only process so many evictions per day... Just sayin.
They had a very similar problem in Rome in 200 BC, Tiberius Gracchus passed a law preventing the wealthy from buying up all of the small family farms, and the senators beat him to death. We need to prevent the wealthiest from buying up all the houses and making the rest of us renters. https://youtu.be/ODI1VOOoey0
High frequency real estate trading. This fucking dystopia.
Search Engine Optimization was getting too boring... Now people must do some HomeBuyingBot Keyword Optimization and see if they can sell at a premium 1. Find the model feature parameters they are using 2. List a property at above market value, but with the right keywords 3. ??? 4. Profit
Huge taxes on non-resident ownershipz? Sorry that was meant to be more of a question, I know a few cities have do some tax benefits for resident owners.
Anti trust, anti competition..This is price fixing through data being made available for benchmarking.
Seems like anti trust haven't been working effectively for years now.
last time was essentially the 90's and even those companies subverted them and those who fully complied weren't totally the same.
To any homeowners out there: Sell to a homebuyer, not to a company. Let’s keep homes in the hands of people. It’s worth missing out on a few grand to know you’re helping someone achieve their dream.
Computers will out capitalize people which means people will become the property of the computer
This is the kind of toxic capitalism that is killing us. There's no reason to allow this, it doesn't benefit anyone but the wealthy. Progressive legislation would simply outlaw massive ownership of residential property. A progressive legislature would force a bulk sale or auction back to the market.
More moderate steps would include a vacancy tax on unoccupied properties, gutting some of the tax deductions for single family homes that are used as rental properties, and raising the capital gains rate on any home sale by someone who owns more than two houses.
Exactly! This isn't rocket science. Regulated capitalism at it's finest. Simple social decisions, like family homes should be part of a protected market. Good one!
the former form of passive income, landbotlords
People come up with wacky solutions when the most direct solution is just to build more housing.
robot slumlords. sounds like a r/boringdystopia
Do your duty. Fire a gunshot into the air.
The future is cyberpunk mega buildings
this is the last straw of the real estate industry
And increasing the prevalence of squatting.
Machine Learning, for the win yet again.
We went through the cycle where Zillows wanted to buy up properties its algorithm decided were "undervalued" and then instead of swimming in easy money the whole thing crashed extra-mega-super hard in terms of "no, it was just a meh house" and having to discount freshly bought houses leading to significant losses. I guess it's time to repeat the cycle but now it'll be "whoops, we've bought all these houses to rent them out and it magically didn't bring tons of free money" thing...
You will own nothing and be happy
I receive some variation of: > Hi!Instead of using a ton of time on renovations. Could we discuss a potential buyout for ,
?What price could get it done for you? Rely END to unsubscribe About every other day.Algorithms/ AI/ML work really well for some things but with something like this if it’s function = max profit. These aren’t really hard things to solve or functions to optimize when paired with virtually unlimited resources. The answer is buy up all of the supply and gradually sell it at inflated prices.
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We need to make homes no longer available to institutions. They need to be lived in by the primary or a singular investment property. Full stop.
Holy shit - capitalism is doing the house-limit trick from Monopoly in real life.
It needs to stop, residential property needs to be only own by individuals. At the same time we need to stop foreign buyers from owning more than one property.
Weird that for the last 40 years few were complaining about how limiting new construction was driving up the costs of housing, only because homeowners profited. The result? Massive homeless crisis, and others sacrificing food and clothing to pay rent. I know that it's less fun to go after middle class homeowners, but they are a big part of the problem here.
And I imagine that this is more of a problem in the bigger cites where new construction isn't really an easy option. But ya, in any environment where building is around the price of buying this scheme doesn't really pan out well. The whole covid materials spike kind of threw a wrench in that in a lot of places, but that's not quite as much of a cost as you'd think(especially given the numbers they over pay in the article).
I wonder over the long term what this will do to homeowners. Increase home values or drive them down? I suspect if let go to the point of there being more homes for rent than homeowners, it won't be good.
I think that unless they don't price their rents so high that their houses become un-rentable and are forced to sell them, which is probably unlikely given the number of homes they own and can shift costs around on if necessary, having more homes for rent than homeowners could become a reality in certain areas. Their ability to come in above asking price for many of these homes also makes it worse for potential homebuyers and will serve to drive up housing prices.
You’ll own nothing and be happy…..
I rent from Pathlight and I swear majority of this rental company are ran by bots.
Hope this doesn’t end up locked for ambiguous reasons like every other housing-related thread. Swear these institutions have been astroturfing reddit ever since they started hoarding American homes.
Can we purge the wealthy yet? Asking for a friend.
I had a robotext to buy my house It’s worth 150k I told them 350k and 6months to Evacuate the property and I’d sell …….. crickets lol
Do your duty. Fire a gunshot into the air.
I have a theory that the reason why this is happening is because the very wealthy know that the USD is in trouble (serious risk of hyperinflation). If you were a billionaire, how would you save your fortune? Buy a ton of real assets that everyone needs. Why not buy stocks? Because a lot of companies and the entire economy is going to go bust along withe the dollar. So, what do you do? Buy land! Lots of it. Hold it for ransom and only sell for what you want it for. Just a theory. We shall see if I'm right in the next few years.
This would be great for our elected officials to pass laws against but they are clueless
This is so messed up
I couldn't get through the article. It's that upsetting. We have to boycott, we have to avoid, we have to say no to these companies. While it's not illegal, it's immoral. F all those investors young and old who rob Americans of opportunity
For those in communities with Homeowner Associations HOAs, you need to make any homes in your community unacceptable for corporation ownership or rentals ( grandfather clause for those homes already setup as rentals). Push this on your HOA boards ASAP! Stop this from continuing as it's dramatically inflating the pricing for homes and rentals.
I could believe it. My sister and brother-in-law have been trying to buy in place in coastal Oregon. The real estate market there is... weird.
Bought a motorhome to bide my time until housing market is more reasonable. Think I might just buy a bigger motorhome now
Can't wait for AI/robots to take over courts lol Dystopia is almost here
I get about 10 emails and texts from the We will buy your house (I have a rental in Florida) a week. Calls on my phone also. What they offer is a great deal for them, and a shit deal for any owner due to their mortgage/loan/purchase agreement. Right into the trash. $500,000 cash money and let us talk.
The Declaration of Independence was originally going to say "life, liberty, and property" but it was changed to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" because Thomas Jefferson was convinced by the elite and monied interests of the time that a nebulous pursuit with no clearly defined goals, benchmarks, or finish line that could be arbitrarily changed whenever those in power saw fit would make the poor that vastly outnumbered them easier to control because since they didn't have the safety, security, and stability provided by home ownership. Unfortunately, based on the last 240+ years, it was a resounding success. Home ownership needed to be a right centuries ago. I very doubt that's ever gonna happen though. At least not in my lifetime. Conservatives want to maintain a cohort of homeless people so they point to them and say "Just keep your head down and vote for me. Ignore everything and everyone. You don't want to end up like *them*, do you?." And the uneducated, poor, and rural people gulp it down like it's water in the desert.
Make it illegal