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Comment by nielsbot

2 days ago

If the wealthy buy up existing limited housing supply and there are many tenants looking for housing, then they can continue to raise rents, no?

6 comments

nielsbot

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tptacek  2 days ago

The premise here is investors that just continually buy up all the supply, even as supply continues to increase, in the hopes that some day housing, the single largest asset class in the United States, will reach the limit of all possible supply? You don't feel like this is "spherical cow" calculating? The amount of investor-owned housing in most metro markets is a rounding error, and the amount of vacant investor-owned housing is smaller than that.

The logic you're using here depends on deliberate vacancy; as soon as you concede that investors let out properties, you force them to compete in the market for housing with all the other supply.

  • wredcoll  2 days ago

    I'm trying to track this argument through this thread but I feel like something has gotten lost here, is there someone arguing against increasing the housing supply? Like, did someone upthread say something like "no, I think we should not build more houses"?

    Or is the argument that merely building more houses isn't sufficient?

    (Also presumably you could build an infinite amount of houses, but the land itself is somewhat of a fixed supply...)

    • stale2002  2 days ago

      > is there someone arguing against increasing the housing supply?

      Yes. The central thesis of the blog post is that increasing the housing supply solves the housing price issues.

      And other people in this thread are going: "Uhh, well actually, have you considered that this is the fault of wealthy investors, and/or collusion or something"?

      Anything to distract from the extremely simply and obvious idea that building more housing causes prices to fall.

  • Avicebron  2 days ago

    Yeah except it almost always gravitates to a cartel, almost always, because that is how people work, even when piloting corporate machines.

    I'm speculating here, but I'm guessing you haven't been month to month rent in a while..

    EDIT: you seemed to have tried to redirect the question to this "always buy up more land as an appreciating asset", when both can be true. "Buying that land is an appreciating asset (we haven't made much more I'm aware)" and that "forming an asymmetrical power relationship with the renters improves owners life" are mutually beneficial activities

ch4s3  2 days ago

Housing returns have constantly lagged behind equities in the US. In the long run it’s almost always preferable to hold stocks as most of your investments in the US.