This is it. They have finally distilled the platonic ideal, the essential essence of an article in the Atlantic. Shut em down
How much money have Blackrock executives or investors "donated" to the Atlantic?
BlackRock—the world’s largest asset manager—owns 8.3% of the New York Times Company, making it the Times’ second-biggest institutional investor.
The Atlantic, which like Vox jumped to defend the honor of institutional landlords, is majority owned by Emerson Collective—a venture capital firm whose founder and president is Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Powell Jobs, who possesses a fortune of over $16 billion, has invested large sums in real estate over the past five years.
From https://fair.org/home/media-narratives-shield-landlords-from-a-crisis-of-their-own-making/
Over 70% of single family rental homes are owned by "MoM aNd PoP" landscalpers, so this isn't totally wrong. A lot of the "BlackRock is ruining housing" stories comes from real estate investment interests that relate to these smaller investors, when you start looking into the backgrounds of the people giving quotes. Fuck Wall Street, naturally, but also some of this stuff going on in the media is basically a fight between the haute and petite bourgeoisie. Wall Street and the traditional landlord class have started coming into conflict over purchasing these SFH investment properties, and it's led to this war on the media.
30 percent of single family rental homes is what? 10 percent of total? Seems noticeable
Yeah it's not mom and pop that just bought my apartment complex and increased rent 120 dollars while also saying we gotta pay the water bill now (another effective rent increase)
That's why I specified single family homes. BlackRock and other large institutions have dominated multi-family properties for a long time. It only became a media story when they got into single family rentals. It became a story because the local petty capitalists were upset they had bigger competition, plus some higher end PMC who are getting priced out of single family homes.
Also something broke a while ago, smaller landlords started demanding the rent pay the mortgage and bills. Previously, they'd eat a bit and rent under mortgage because they get equity out of it and eventually in 40 years rent is just pure passive profit. Now we gotta pay their mortgages and a lil profit and they don't service or maintain.
I swear it's cause everyone got leveraged to the tits and they can't handle even a couple hundred bucks a month.
That's 30% of rentals being owned by non-"Mom and Pops", not 30% owned by BlackRock. Again, fuck BlackRock, but also, they are only a part of a much larger problem.
I mean blackrock is kinda encompassing placeholder, but you’re right that libs will pinnochio you over this. Tbh mom and pops could own what, 200 rentals, and be mom and pop slumlords?
Most classifications I have seen classify a "mom and pop" landlord as someone who owns 10 or less units in their name (meaning not an LLC).
This is really about aggregate effects. One of these mom and pop investors doesn't have much of an effect on the market. But a couple thousand of them in a mid-sized city each trying buy up a couple houses or condos to rent out or put on AirBnB artificially increases demand, and thus housing prices increaae. And that increased cost to purchase means that's rents are going to go up as a result. Liberals absolutely hate to acknowledge that and will get real fucking pissy when you point out that their little AirBnB side hustle is hurting other people, and they don't think anything should be done about it. I always use the analogy that just because Hitler did the Holocaust wouldn't make it OK for you to go out and murder a single person. They don't like that analogy for whatever reason lol.
Thanks for the clarification.
I only have 9 flats I rent out sounds a lot like they are enshrined in being landlords.
Besides Blackrock and Co drive the market up and others follow.
The problem isn't the total number of all homes black Rock currently owns, it's that in some areas of the country, up to 90% of home purchases in the last year are being bought by investment bankers.
Everything is going to shit, they've known about it because they did it, so they started to dump their money into real estate. They already have all the commercial, so residential is all that's left.
Investment banks don't buy houses, that's not what they do.
Investors bought 18.4% of the national market that was for sale in Q4'21. I had more recent numbers somewhere, but I think :reddit-logo: jannies deleted a comment I had saved with those numbers.
https://www.redfin.com/news/investor-home-purchases-q4-2021/
It's been climbing, but it's not near 90% (at least not yet). I'm pretty sure the only way you could get close to investors buying 90% of homes is if you include apartment buildings. They shouldn't be involved in that business either, but I think usually when people say "homes" in the US, they mean single family homes. Sometimes when they say investors, they mean anyone who buys the house for financial gain, but other times they use "investors" but only mean large investors.
Again, fuck Wall Street and BlackRock. My point is just that the two sides fighting here are the haute bourgeois PE firms and the petty bourgeois local business tyrants. The latter is Tucker Carlson's TV base, which is why he is comfortable running segments about how BlackRock is bad (and not out of any love for the working class).
90 % in some areas. Not everywhere.
I mean, yeah, I mostly agree with what you're saying. But zero is the only acceptable number for "houses bought purely for speculation by banks."
20 million unoccupied homes in this country. Housing should not be a fucking investment vehicle, bought for same day cash sight unseen, double asking price. That isn't reasonable behavior for someody that might actually be living in that house. It's wall street hedging with real estate.
It's not 90% anywhere. Atlanta is the highest at around 30%. There is a breakdown by city in that link.
You're being deliberately obtuse in your insistence on what areas could mean. A single neighborhood. A street. Jesus, dude.
When I see BlackRock commercials on CNN about "building for the future of americans" I want to punch a wall.
Local governments just independently enact the will of the landowners purely by coincidence, wow, ty
Extremely critical support to Blackrock for shrinking the fascist base
First we allow Blackrock to buy all the housing. Then we nationalize Blackrock.
If neighbors means existing homeowners then that is true in California. Prop 13 limits how much property tax can increase when the value of a property increases, so boomers who bought a home in 1990 have made it their life's mission to prioritize property value above all. Since their houses are worth over a million but they are paying taxes like it is worth 300k. That's why in Orange County there is no light rail system, it always gets blocked since people thought it would hurt home values
yah prop 13 generally sucks. i like low property taxes for personal, residential real estate.
but the fact that it's only 1% whether your home is 200k or 200 million is dumb af. it's like having a flat income tax for everyone. it's a tax on poorer home owners.
Is it? In Washington your property tax is pegged to current property value and ppl can literally be priced out of their home. Given how inflated property value has become.
Depends, a flat tax like that is okay if everyone only owns one home, but in practice it ends up being landlords owning multiple homes and getting a discount on taxes while pegging rent to housing prices.
So unless you limit the number of homes someone can own, it just ends up fucking the poor.
That’s the scam they’re always pushing with flat income tax (aka “fair” tax) rates where everyone would pay like 10 or 15% no matter what. It’s designed to hurt the “freeloaders” and let the rich off the hook because rate and magnitude both matter.
Tax structures today effectively push higher rates on middle incomes while filers at either end tend to pay no or low taxes which is why middle income (petite boug) tend to like the idea of this program. It elides that the rich have the most to gain from it since it further impoverishes the already poor.
Sales, excise and property taxes and even fines and fees have tended to be regressive since they do not consider the payer’s ability to pay.
But landlords are a current reality, wouldn't they just pass the cost onto their tenants? The commodification of housing is the issue, the fact that being a landlord is the only way to get ahead in this stupid country. I just don't understand the anger at prop 13 when the reality in places like Portland is old ppl losing their homes due to property tax.
The landlords are currently locked in at charging about 2x or more of the mortgage cost. In my situation, I paid off 1/4 of their mortgage in one year and now they're kicking me out so they can liquidate the property and sell it to another landlord.
The upside to the flat tax for landlords is that they just get more profit to buy more homes for free. I think a flat tax is fine, but it needs to be limited to primary residences and not all residential property.
I'm also on the opposite side of the country and have never really looked into prop 13 so take my opinion of it with a grain of salt. I'm just showing how it's could be a handout to people who own multiple homes as "investments" while also being a good thing for poor homeowners who suddenly find themselves in a home worth 10x what they paid for it.
I think the attempt to repeal prop 13 without first fixing the 'residents' v 'investment' problem. Is putting the cart before the horse. And would adversely affect low income home owners/ renters.
Agreed, repealing it is a bad idea, but as it stands it disproportionately helps landlords accumulate more property.
You had me until that last part. Wouldnt more infrastructure make the house more desirable? Am I just too trainpilled for normies to comprehend?
edit: public transportation-pilled traincel
Cobb County, in metro Atlanta, famously voted down being part of the regional public transit system because they naturally assumed that thieves would come rob their houses and carry their televisions back into the city on the train.
See the thing is it actually would! LA has built out their metro recently and naturally a house near a station increases in valiue. But the suburban brain can't understand that. Also it might bring minorities from Santa Ana
Also they're so carbrained they don't want anyone around who can't afford a car
Yep. You probably know this, but Walt Disney specifically put Disneyland in Anaheim because it was only commutable from L.A. by car.
More here: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520248113/popular-culture-in-the-age-of-white-flight
Also they’re so carbrained they don’t want anyone around who can’t afford a car
Whenever roadtripping, you know you've arrived in LA/OC because the highway expands from 2 lanes, into 4, then into 8 in each direction.
Infrastructure means poors (aka people who have real jobs), which is why the only options to get from Sausalito to San Francisco are the Golden Gate Bridge and ferries.
it is partly true. Zoning is hugely problematic but would be substantially less so if real estate was about utility instead of being an investment opportunity
The number one problem in housing is that it is financialized: the entire system is built on infinite growth in real estate value and borrowing against it, etc etc. Zoning is the micro scale effect of this, where homeowners become protective of their supposed infinite value cow (for lack of guaranteed housing and retirement, everyone must instead scramble to get theirs).
You can mildly push back on this through zoning, but you aren't going to stop the spiral, just slow it down.
Building more dwellings would obviously be a profitable enterprise but local elites prevent it for racist and classist reasons
Its more complicated than that. A lot of high density development comes at the expense of historical (typically lower rent) housing. Gentrification is all about evicting low income and elderly families for access to cheap real estate, then flipping it into higher priced "luxury" space.
Alternatively, you have the Pruitt Igo model, where the high density housing is packed with low income families and then defunded to the point it becomes a slum.
Dense housing is fundamentally good and necessary, but it isn't above being systematically corrupted and abused.
Pruitt Igo model
The recent TrueAnon episode on this blew my fucking mind
Houston doesn't have zoning and it is an utter disaster area. You can put a strip club right next to a school.
This bothers me way less than putting a refinery right next to a school tbh
Japan's zoning is extremely permissive, permitting almost any development with a maximum level of "disruption" (utilities, traffic, noise, blocking light) for that zone.
I think the problem is cars; if it takes roughly the same amount of time to drive to and find parking at a destination 300 feet vs 13 miles away, there's little incentive to buy a house (or an allyway between 2 houses) and put in a tiny convenient shop or restaurant without parking; making better use of the limited land available.
https://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001050453.pdf
It helps a little bit that most of Japan's housing is built so cheaply they become worthless in 20 years.
Truly incredible how many problems would be solved with a modern day Mao (mom and pop landlords get the wall too)
Just saw a tik tok blaming the government for “capitalizing on vapes when they saw cigarettes are no longer popular”
People just can’t say the word “capitalism?” :agony-shivering:
