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by blackrock 2271 days ago
Is anyone of the impression that houses should NOT be purchased by companies like Zillow, Redfin, and Berkshire Hathaway?

After 2008, if the government had allowed the housing market to actually be a market, then we wouldn’t have the housing crisis of today.

Instead, corporations with access to cheap money, spent billions to buy distressed houses on the cheap, and held it for a few years, until it became extra profitable for them to flip it at a very healthy profit.

The game is rigged, fellas.
2 comments
ianleeclark 2271 days ago
> After 2008, if the government had allowed the housing market to actually be a market, then we wouldn’t have the housing crisis of today.

How is this not a market? If the market were "more free", the same issue would have still arisen, namely:

> corporations with access to cheap money, spent billions to buy distressed houses on the cheap

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pjc50 2271 days ago
That is a market. What might improve matters for actual humans is a non-market solution of some kind of rationing. Max 1 per customer, locals preferred.
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mikem170 2271 days ago
> That is a market. What might improve matters for actual humans is a non-market solution of some kind of rationing. Max 1 per customer, locals preferred.

Would be a much better market if supply were not restricted by so many zoning laws. Something like Japan does would be much better. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

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hirako2000 2271 days ago
I think the market would be totally fine as is.

Except that the average person doesn't have the same access to financing as some minority of well connected entities to financing bodies. Access to cheap or even free lending. The fed prints more money than the economy actually creates.

It's a rigged market. That's why it doesn't work. Limiting properties would attenuate the problem, but it's just a bandade solution, and a few will again find loopholes to benefit.

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pjc50 2271 days ago
> the average person doesn't have the same access to financing as some minority of well connected entities to financing bodies

That's .. also a market. The institutions have substantially greater ability to pay back, and in the case of banks, capital requirements that reduce their credit risk. They don't have the same loss of income risks as a human. Nobody should expect a market to produce a fair outcome from an uneven initial distribution.

Is there any evidence that access to Fed capital is controlled by political connections on an institution by institution basis?

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