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Comment by tbrownaw

2 days ago

Sure it can be an investment even with no capital gains, there's still income from charging rent.

Which still contributes to unaffordability.

A house bought for the purpose of renting out is a house that could have gone to someone who wanted to buy it. It creates upward pressure on housing prices.

I mean, I get it. There are some people that truly do want to rent a house because they know the living situation is temporary.

But we have a generation that was able to buy houses during an economic boom where you could buy a house with an entry-level job, and once that house was paid off, they started buying up houses with their extra money to rent out, and it was so lucrative that prices have skyrocketed and now people in their 20s can't buy houses without a decently lucrative job.

Obviously, there are many factors at work here, but buying or building houses with the intent to rent them out is certainly a contributor.

I just think about the fact that I bought my house in 2015 for about $340K, and it's now worth about $600K, an 80% climb in just 10 years, and I think that's absurd, not to mention a bad thing for society overall.

  • If what this article describes really does come to pass, it may still help.

    Often, mom-and-pop landlords are happy to be making more than the mortgage rather than MBAs trying to extract every possible marginal cent. It's less of a faceless spreadsheet relationship.

    I guess time will tell if it's anything more than blowing smoke.