Comment by bombcar
2 days ago
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.
I should have mentioned a bit more - residential real estate (e.g., your house) is valued on comps for the purposes of a mortgage backed by that property alone - commercial real estate is valued by the local rent multiplier and mortgages are against bundles of it, or the entire company.
So (simplified) an "empty building, but it rents at $2k a month" is valued at 200k say; if you drop the rent to $1500 and now are getting rent paid, the building is valued at $150k.
They're not stupid, they're watching the vacancies and cash flow also, but it's over a bunch of properties, not just one. A single-family landlord who owns one property will start to feel the pain quite quickly of an empty building (and even they should plan for 20% vacancy, one year out of five).
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