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What happens when private equity buys homes in your neighborhood

(www.npr.org)
61 points pseudolus | 4 comments | 09 Sep 25 17:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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jameslk ◴[09 Sep 25 18:34 UTC] No.45186475[source]▶
> But the bigger problem for housing affordability, he adds, is that "we just haven't built enough [homes] to keep up with the population growth and household formation."

The circular incentive here is left unsaid. If a house is an investment, you and every other homeowner has an incentive to keep supply low and demand high. This ultimately drives votes, lobbying, and policies that prevent houses being built. Otherwise you end up with falling rents and stagnating property prices, like in Austin.

https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/cooling-rent-growth-d...

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crooked-v ◴[09 Sep 25 18:42 UTC] No.45186616[source]▶
Housing is only 'an investment' of the kind people expect to get fast returns on because of the shortage of housing. Everyone who benefits from that is effectively extracting wealth from the people who are stuck outside of the housing market because of those shortages.
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altruios ◴[09 Sep 25 19:10 UTC] No.45187164[source]▶
'Abolish rent' is a good read.

One thing we can do to drive down property prices without driving people out of their homes is to tax the ever-loving-bejebus out of second (or more) Single family homes, for individuals and corporations. Make it progressively worse the more SFM's corporations hold.

An example would be to tax a second home and onward at (land tax)^(10nn) where n is the number of total homes you have. The point is to make it financially absurd to own a second home, let alone 20.

This is only one particular point on a multi-prong approach.

Removing the ability of Private equity to eat up all the local contractors to make a little mini-monopoly is also something that 100% needs to be done.

The fastest way to remove 'your home is an investment to be reaped later' mentality is to limit the total sale price based on the last sale price (IE: only increasing the price of actually investment into the property, and legally allowing any sale price far below the estimated property value) which mostly removes all of the incentive of buying a house 'for investment'. That's extreme and would have downstream consequences, we still want to (financially) incentive people to improve their living conditions.

It's also extremely hard to build a home! Regulations and zoning laws aside, America lost a fair bit of knowledge after we practically stopped building homes after the 2008 collapse. There's no silver bullet solutions. No company is going to solve the immensely complicated task of building a home in a warehouse to reduce production costs via automation: that's a pipe dream sold to venture capitalists.

Any real solution would have consequences that would hurt some folks. Still: doing nothing hurts everyone (except for an extremely small subset of already wealthy individuals and corps) far more.

Homes should be for 'living in': not to 'make a living from'.

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1. bluGill ◴[09 Sep 25 19:27 UTC] No.45187446[source]▶
That is a bad idea. It assumes the buying a house is something everybody must do. For some buying is a good idea, for some it is not. You have forced people who should rent to buy anyway, or pay massive rent to cover that taxes the investor who owns their house must charge.

> Removing the ability of Private equity to eat up all the local contractors to make a little mini-monopoly is also something that 100% needs to be done.

There is no need because private equity has not done that, and there is not current reason to think they will. If they ever to get a monopoly then we need to do something about it, but right now there is no sign they are. Plenty of little builders exist who are competitive with the large builders in both price and quality. There are also enough large builders to be competitive even without the small builders.

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2. altruios ◴[09 Sep 25 20:56 UTC] No.45188958[source]▶
Not everyone needs a home, no, that is not the assumption.

It does make the assumption that it's bad to buy twenty houses and live in only one while also opposing more housing contraction.

'Abolish rent' is still a good read.

As far as private equity... look closer: it is happening.

https://fieldrocket.us/private-equity-companies-are-buying-t...

https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/10/24/private-equity-...

There is EVERY reason to think that they would do this, besides the data showing that they are. The MO is to find an area, buy up all the local tiny contractors, and set prices higher and higher until those contractors finally fail, then sell off any and all assets for a profit.

I am also making the assumption that you haven't tried or researched building a home in the last few years, based on your comment.

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3. bluGill ◴[09 Sep 25 21:22 UTC] No.45189383[source]▶
> There is EVERY reason to think that they would do this, besides the data showing that they are. The MO is to find an area, buy up all the local tiny contractors, and set prices higher and higher until those contractors finally fail, then sell off any and all assets for a profit.

That is a goal that makes sense. However that goal has been around for a long time and nobody has been successful, and it is unlikely this current round will be. They can't buy up enough small players to make it work.

Anybody can write a book that sounds good. I've read enough to not trust them. I need more authority than just someone wrote a book that ignores any factor that isn't convenient to their opinion. Note that I have not read that book, and yet I'm 100% confident that they did that - it is a pattern repeated far too often.

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4. altruios ◴[09 Sep 25 22:58 UTC] No.45190596{3}[source]▶
> They can't buy up enough small players to make it work.

We just don't have the data to track that. KKR, Blackstone, and Bain Capital, all buy up small time contractors, as well as real estate. They absolutely have the money to bully their way using that strategy. We don't know for sure if that's what they are doing or not... but as you agree: That goal makes sense.

> Anybody can write a book that sounds good.

Not everyone can write a book both sound and logical, agreed. That is to say, a well researched book is rare indeed.

It is biased, yes: it is very anti-landlord. It views a landlord as inherently extractive, and makes the case for that viewpoint.

To say that the book is not worth reading is also incorrect. It has some fantastic insights unrelated to its anti-landlord bias and it is an interesting read.

And yes: you shouldn't just trust what you read. Ever.

Regardless of it's flaws, I still recommend it as a read.