[silisili]

So a sample size of 33% isn't indicative? You might be right here, I don't know for sure.

I think the main problem is that before 2020, nobody really cared who bought what.

Starting right at the beginning of 2020, inventory vanished, and is still vanished to this day. In most major markets, investors are snapping up everything which compounds the problem. Now people are pissed. And they're doing it in the hottest, most contested markets to boot.

I live in a pretty dumpy city, and blackrock has purchased more than 20% of everything on the market in the last 2 years. Homes have almost doubled in values.

Do you understand why people are pissed at that? Pointing out they own 1% nationally does nothing to help us.

[mikeyouse]

I fully appreciate why people are pissed about the housing situation - I bought my first house last year and the process was a tire fire, we ended up offering on maybe 3 or 4 other places before this one? And it wasn't even in a "top tier" city.

I'm sure there's a ton of investor interest (which in my opinion, is "downstream" of the problem, e.g. the millions-of-homes shortage is making it an attractive investment which is bringing the investor money). But again, Blackrock is a very small player in this - I can guarantee you that wealthy boomers with one or two rental properties are a much larger ownership class of investment properties than any faceless PE firm.

Blackrock owns a few tens of thousands of homes in specific cities (https://lease.invitationhomes.com/search?_ga=2.31151100.2135...), and sure, they're causing more competition and higher prices there -- but it's a nationwide problem not so easily reduced to "private equity caused".