Comment by john-h-k
2 days ago
> 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?
Because commercial real estate works on weird counter-intuitive things, and dropping rental rates adversely affects their entire portfolio more than leaving a building vacant does.
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