this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
1465 points (99.3% liked)

News

22583 readers
4221 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago (2 children)

That's crazy that they say we need more housing when there are so many empty houses sitting on the market from corporate real estate investing and other house flippers. "Wall Street is not the problem, a lack of new housing is" really sounds like the guy with gasoline and matches in hand saying "it wasn't me" at the scene of an arson fire.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

A significant problem isn't just the lack of housing, it's the lack of affordable housing. Builders keep building single family homes in spread out suburbs which is problematic in its own way. But not everyone could afford those homes regardless of whether they are buying or renting.

Investors owning single family homes is a big problem, the bigger problem is exacerbated but not explicitly caused by that. Affordable housing simply isn't available in places where it's needed. That's why people say we need more homes.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Not just single family homes. They could be building starter single family homes, but those are cheap. They could be focusing on middle class family single family homes, but those aren't as profitable as the luxury housing. They focus on luxury housing both in single family suburbs, and when they build apartment buildings in the cities.

According to the home builders, if you aren't rich, they won't build you a home.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

The funny thing about empty yet "unaffordable" housing is that if the market actually works correctly it gets lowered in price until a buyer is found.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Good luck with that.. They'll just stick them in REITs

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You would think so. But the reality is that large companies would often rather let a property sit empty than devalue it by accepting a lower amount. And when they control enough of the market that there's no good competition, it breaks the whole "free market" thing.

You or I would be hurting (I presume) if we owned a property and weren't living in and weren't making any money off of it. These holding companies just see a line on a spreadsheet under the "assets" column.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I did say "if the market works correctly" for a reason.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

A lack of housing is very explicitly our problem. Houses that are empty are not unowned.

Until housing is no longer seen as an investment, which can only happen if we are allowed to build sufficient housing, housing will continue to go up in value, and thus more people will invest

Anyone who sees their home as their "nest egg" is part of the problem.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

So you build 500,000 new homes and blackstone or other companies buy 450,000, meaning you only actually generated 50,000 new homes. No, corporate interests are the vast majority of the problem with housing. Your neighbor renting out their house after buying a 2nd isn't the issue.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Assuming some large capital group buys all those homes, they're going to do it to try to make money off of it.

More supply means lower prices

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Constraining supply, either by not building, or by buying everything available, means higher prices, so they don't have to sell as many houses to make the same revenue.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 8 months ago

Gonna go ahead and throw out that people whose job it is to make said revenue saying that selling more makes them more revenue makes this not track

[–] prole 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Until housing is no longer seen as an investment, which can only happen if we are allowed to build sufficient housing

It can happen through legislation.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Yes, legislation that changes zoning policy and incentivizes building.

[–] prole 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That would be the neolib solution, yes

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago

So, the correct one.