> The investors are reacting to the supply shortage in cities like NYC, not causing it.

Correct. This article has the receipts:

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22524829/wall-street-housin...

And the conclusion is worth sharing:

> The role of institutional investors is still being studied, but the popularity of the narrative strikes at something dangerous: People want a convenient boogeyman and when they get it, they often ignore the structural problems that are harder to combat. Housing undersupply is the result of decades of locals opposing new home building. It’s not something that can be blamed on Wall Street greed and the nefarious tinkering of a private equity firm. And that’s a much harder truth to stomach.

A huge part of the problem is the NIMBYs.

Yes, Wall Street is clearly not to blame. And Vox has no conflict of interest here to say this. It's not like they're 34% owned by Comcast, have had more than 6 large institutional investment firms invest in ownership, and more than a dozen well known angel investors as well. I am sure there is no undue influence to have this story written by someone who is sympathetic to Wall Street, Jerusalem Demsas, who is also anti-rent control, wrote an entire article and recorded a half hour podcast defending Zillow buying up entire neighborhoods, criticizes public housing as unsafe and that it could be fixed by privatizing it, and is extremely anti-zoning.

Also one of the largest investors, Accel, totally didn't own Trulia, which was totally not bought by Zillow. And Zillow totally isn't a major advertiser on Vox[0].

[0] https://www.vox.com/ad/16158882/zillow-zestimate-explained

As someone involved in a local pro-housing organization, what I see, day in, and day out, is my own neighbors trying to stop housing. Following that... maybe short term rentals. Somewhere way down the list are institutional investors.

Just off the top of my head, in a town of 100K, I can pretty easily think of 100's of homes that were not built because of NIMBYs.

Also, did you miss the bit where Zillow got their asses handed to them because they screwed up and lost a lot of money?

Surprising nobody, I will chime in and say the same thing. In particular, I've seen "we should be investing in new public housing" repeatedly deployed to oppose dense housing developments where I live; it's a deeply cynical thing to say, because not only does it demand that prospective residents be locked out of the area until we boil the ocean with some revolutionary new top-down housing policy, but the only reason the NIMBYs say it is because they know it won't happen --- if it did happen here, they'd be up in arms against it.

I believe the public housing we've implemented in the past has been a dehumanizing debacle, that housing was dramatically improved by the Section 8 program that largely privatized it (I live on a block with several Section 8 houses), don't have any problem with Zillow's iBuying program (they were trying to build a kind of market-maker for residential real estate, which is a real problem that impacts real homeowners and badly needs solving), believe rent control is counterproductive, and believe one of the biggest problems in all of housing is restrictive SFZ zoning rules.

Where's my check? Should I contact Accel? If I'm owed money pro-rata vs. Vox's readership, I should be able to buy a new car with the money.

You're right either everyone who has studied supply/demand/pricing and is informed about the topic is a shill.

Or they all don't believe it's the investors because they're right and that's what the data says.

It takes a special level of “connect the dots” Glenn Beck thinking to accuse Vox of being shilling for Wall Street.

It takes a special innocence to think massive multibillion dollar investors don't influence the media companies they own.

Just a small correction. Jerusalem Demsas has changed her opinion on rent control [1]. Her corporate overlords must be MAD!

[1] https://www.vox.com/22789296/housing-crisis-rent-relief-cont...

It's 100% the combination of low interest rates and restrictive housing policy.

But I don't think we should blame the central bank for the low interest rates anymore than we should blame a thermostat for running the heater all the time during an unprecedented cold spell. The central bank if anything was probably not keeping interest rates low enough for the last two decades considering how low the employment to prime age population ratio and inflation were. Interest rates are just especially low compared to historical standards because of the sovereign wealth funds, growing inequality, reduced population growth, and Asia becoming much richer with crazy savings rates.