Comment by ksec
1 day ago
This is largely a good move. There are plenty of whales, once those 5% disappeared, price should slowly come down. ( The Hong Kong Housing market is the one worth studying ) Next would be increase supply, and may be if needed, additional tax for individuals owning more than one home or when they buy 2nd home. Largely making housing as an asset not attractive for certain group of investment.
Housing continues to be the biggest problem in modern world and yet it is a problem not resolved.
> There are plenty of whales, once those 5% disappeared, price should slowly come down
But by how much? ~3-4% of housing has to be sold, some amount of it will still be bought for renting (as many people still want to rent). Surely this can’t have a very big effect on house price
It could be substantial just by increasing the number of occupied dwelling units - if institutional investors are willing to let housing sit empty for 6 months or a year (because it doesn't hit them where it hurts) and the average vacancy rate in a city is hovering around 10%, dropping that down to 5% will really shake up prices.
If mega institutions are financial extractors who will take all money available, and the units can be rented to make more money, why aren’t they doing it?
Why would the institution turn away free money but individuals owning the houses wouldn’t?
2 replies →
Given how inexorably tied the US economy is to SFH prices, a drop may do more harm than good.
Many families have the majority of their wealth tied up in their home, and another significant portion of it (knowingly or not) in the SFH MBS market via their retirement investments. If prices fall quickly enough to impact the MBS market, a large number of households could suddenly see big dips their two biggest sources of wealth.
A gradual drop may be fine, but the financialization of housing at the national is a big mess. Sadly it makes the market dynamics of giving people places to live way more complex than it should be.
You don't even need a drop; you just need prices to stay stable for a decade or so, and inflation will "drop" the real cost of new ownership.