Dems introduce Bill to ban hedge funds from owning single family houses

I support and agree it likely will not pass

 

My initial reaction is while I understand the motivation to do this, it is an excessive regulatory overreach. On one end it may hurt people looking to buy new homes. On the other end it helps sellers of homes, in terms of providing a more liquid market plus also driving the transaction cost down. It also creates a more robust rental market.

I would be more understanding of a modest tax on these hedge funds, maybe 1% of home value, to be redirected to assist first time homebuyers.

 

I dont think I like it as a homeowner. Do I really want less housing demand? $$$.

 

I am saying hedge funds buying houses hurts first time homebuyers by driving up prices.

 

I’m fine with this. Unbridled capitalism clearly has its short comings and this is one of many. The chasm between the have and have nots is growing greater by the day. It’s not good for the long term prosperity of this country.

 

So are we only going to restrict hedge funds? Are other forms of corporate / mass ownership of single family homes going to be disallowed or penalized? What makes single family homes different than multi family type homes? What about duplexes - are they exempt? It just seems kind of arbitrary to me.

 

Thanks. Think of it from the opposite perspective, from the homeowner/seller. You are decreasing the price they can get from it. There are all kinds of different REITS with different kinds of properties. Why should single family homes be treated separately?

 

I oppose it. Let the market sort it out. If it's a problem, build more affordable housing.

 

Lovely. & why is it so difficult for the little guy to be a landlord? Excessive gov BS making it legally & financially precarious. So, now that they’ve screwed it up, they come in to fix it with yep more government BS & so it goes

 

unbridled? Not even close

 

It could use more controls.

 

Don't like it-but that doesn't mean it isn't problematic to have private equity own what some estimate as growing up to 40% of the single family housing in the US by 2030 (although that seems impossibly high to me). It does inflate prices (great if you're selling, tough if you're a buyer, especially a first time buyer), and it changes the competitive terms of sale significantly (Apollo hardly needs a sale or financing contingency like most buyers do). If you live in a community with an HOA the best workaround is to restrict rentals in whole or in part.

Coming out of the GFC the two largest owners of single family homes in the US were Blackstone and (I think) Lennar. They made a killing and realized they could also buy (and build) to rent in good markets as well as doing discounted buying when homebuilders got into trouble, and they've just continued to do so the past decade.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/21/how...le-family-homes-and-put-them-up-for-rent.html.

 

If these entities buy housing, and increase the prices, doesn’t that create an incentive to create more housing, and isn’t that what we want?

The problem is the roadblocks to additional housing which typically include NIMBYism and rigid zoning laws.

 

1. As more housing is built, the more housing in general becomes affordable. That’s true even if more high end housing is built. Then the intermediate end becomes more available to middle and lower end.

2. Many people just don’t have the finances and credit worthiness to afford a house, period. Building more houses mostly won’t solve that. That’s what rental housing is for.

 

If people bought these houses and there was an actual organic need for more housing because people were buying them I would see it as a good thing. Building more housing because demand is artificially inflated by owners who have no intention of actually living in the houses they own is not a good thing. Plus what’s to stop hedge funds from buying up the next round of newly built homes? Who is gonna get stuck holding the bag here? American citizens.

Capitalism is great until it’s not. Like when we destroyed our entire middle class by sending all our manufacturing to exploitable foreign countries so an extremely small sliver of the population could get insanely rich. How is that good for the prosperity of America?

It’s ok to admit capitalism has serious flaws and we are seeing way more of the drawbacks now than we did when you were a kid.

The American Dream no longer exists. How do we fix that?