are retail investment firms really responsible for the price of housing? i think it's reprehensible a single firm will have tens of thousands of homes on their balance sheet, intended to generate rental income. these are houses that will not be available for purchase, in which one is expected to pay rents indefinitely to remain there.however, all a share of the total supply they make up about 1% of so of national housing supply; some municipalities see as much as 5%-10% of the property being firm-owned from what I have read but it's truly less than one-percent of national housing supply. Supply in this case is I believe all housing. there's just no market where controlling 1% gives you an outsized market share; 1% is 1% and of course the problem of housing supply is a supply-side problem.but we should still hate them and prohibit firms buying up thousands of properties, right?counting points on a star is a shit use of our time btw.
even though housing is a supply-side problem, do the constraints placed on builders by governments, which are often blamed for the lack of building, constitute a failure of public policy? how much influence do people who already own have in the market?i feel like that failure to meet housing demand with supply and the incessant rise in prices out of step with wages is a sign that something is wrong. obviously the market is distorted.
>>525815475There are many different reasons that all pile on top of eachother.
>>525816445Sneed's Feed & Seed (formerly Chuck's)
>>525816864Since the problem is so complicated I think it's rational to stop firms from buying up every last house that is for sale. When will they say enough is enough? When a 3-bedroom in the middle of the country is a million bucks?
>>525815475>propaganda post>uses percentages instead of real numbers>doesn’t mention where data is from>doesn’t mention in what locations these firms are buying Stfu boomer
>>525815475>>525816864Indeed. Retail investment/hedge funds/etc are part of it, as land speculation generally is part of it. But people will conveniently forget that most consumer buyers are also land speculating in a small way, planning on their house being more of an asset when they retire than it was when they bought it. Anyone speculating on land, and that's basically anyone that owns even one condo when you look at the reality like this, will resist the creation of additional housing. And that's not even just out of cynical self-interest in land speculation, owner-occupiers will also just vote against any change in their neighborhood. Before you're in you want a ladder up, but after you've got yours you tend to pull it up.Supply side is also a problem, everyone will complain about regs but outside of California every reg that builders have to follow was put up against a practice with a body count. Regs don't just come out of nowhere, so cutting them is like the anti Marie Kondo, you want to get rid of some regs but each individual reg you look at you don't want to throw out.And then there's the general economic problems, money-printing driving asset prices out of control while wages stay stagnant. Underrated issue is that jobs are also concentrating more and more as the rural parts of America get hollower, which leads to increased competition for the limited available housing in the cities where all the opportunities are.Like everything else, as soon as you try to solve one problem, you're immediately presented with three other problems that have to be solved before you can solve that one, and each of those problems reveals three further problems.
>>525818237i'm responding off the top of my head to this:https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/01/the-saddest-part-of-this-recent-economic-lunacy/he links to an AEI study on the topichttps://www.aei.org/research-products/report/institutional-investors-in-the-u-s-housing-market-myths-and-realities/i perused this for about 15 minutes before i made the threadi don't have an NR sub so i can't participate in their comments section, big sad
>>525818795well clearly the number one priority is to make it easier to build; if the regs are preventing that then some of them need to go. something as dangerous as building a free-standing structure is never going to be risk-free, and not all regs are equal. there is no doubt plenty of fat to trim there, but if we want to radically increase supply we need to radically reform whatever is preventing it from materializing. also the tariffs need to get eighty-sixed obviously, driving up the cost of inputs will not stimulate building for obvious reasons.and in the meantime some sort of cap on how many residences a firm can own; with how fucked the market is antitrust is practically required now, since supply isn't being allowed to step up.
>>525819614The problem with cutting regs is; which ones? Generally politicians talk about regulations like regulations are peanut butter; some people like their toast with a lot, some with a little, and that's a personal preference! But regulations aren't uniform, every regulation is regulating a different thing, and usually it's regulating something that got someone hurt at some point. It's easy to say in general that we should have fewer, but then when you're confronted with the individual one you want to throw out, you get a little sweaty. Like I'm sure it'd make housing building easier if you enforced fewer fire regulations, but if you're a politician, you do that and then someone dies in a fire because of your de-reg, what does that do for your career? And if you're a homebuyer and say your wife dies in a fire, do you feel it was worth it for $10k off the home price?It'd be hard to do practically.
>>525820463the Trump admin has been quietly cutting red tape for a year.https://reason.com/2026/01/07/federal-red-tape-plunges-under-trump/it can be done, it's not impossible. you could either start with the most ridiculous like how much easement a mailbox or something needs (let's just mandate a mailbox that's easily accessible for the postman, simple), or you start with the ones that have the highest dollar or time cost in terms of their impact on building. the second one is harder but more fruitful, the first path should be easy.btw in that article this line stood out>With the affordability of housing a major concern, the National Association of Home Builders warns that "regulations account for nearly 25% of the cost of a single-family home."that is far too high a cost of reg compliance, it's like a tax on building. i think 10% would be incredible onerous; 25% is anti-human.
