Re:The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore
by vsareto on Sunday July 30, 2023 @01:33PM
(#36933705)
Those investors could move to starting or investing in companies that produce housing and material for them, but get out of owning houses themselves. This keeps them close to the market they want to invest in.
A common sentiment is that wages haven't kept up relative to costs of living, so we have problems now that need to be solved because we are already 'behind'. If that's true, it will further mean that families in the future will have less equity due to delays in purchasing a home relative to previous generations who could more easily afford necessities and luxuries.
So ideally we should give a break to home buyers now to help compensate for that at the expense of larger investors and organizations who can frankly afford the loss (collectively). The alternative is to keep investors happy and rich with profits at the expense of the population's needs and financial trajectory.
Chinese home buyers IIRC have a cultural aversion to having strangers living in any home they might want to live in themselves in the future. But with the except of the Chinese investors (which IMO cannot be numerous enough to distort the huge US housing market) investors either rent out or sell the housing they own, so I don't understand in what sense you think investors are "eschewing the actual utility of the asset": someone still gets to live in the house, even if it is not the owner of the house.
>All of this means that some portion of the house's price is only based on speculation (other parts being land, construction quality, location, amenities, etc.).
I concede that that can be an accurate statement (though it is not how I would put it) on a temporary basis, but I point out that when an investment causes current housing prices to increase, there will invariably be a time in the future when the same investment causes housing prices to be lower than they otherwise would be by approximately the same amount. And the I ask you, Why do you care more about situation of families now than about their situation in the future?