[wmwragg]

I think there is another element, private equity (PE) has got involved in the housing market, and like anything that PE gets involved with it burns it to the ground and then exits with it's profit leaving behind a wasteland. PE equity will do anything to get their profit no matter who it hurts

[selectodude]

Private equity owns about 500,000 homes nationwide, so like less than a half of a percent.

Anyway they got into the housing market because the margins are so good because everybody refuses to allow new housing to be built. Congratulations, you played yourselves.

[Rury]

Does it matter if they only own a small fraction of the homes? There's some studies that show that in markets where institutional investors do buy, prices typically noticeably increase for houses afterwards, even if they only own a tiny fraction of the housing units.

There's plausible argument as to network effects (e.g. my neighbor is charging that much, so why can't I?), as well as changing unit types to rentals, limiting owner-occupied supply and hence driving up prices.

I mean, I imagine it can be kind of similar in the stock market, where that you don't actually need to buy all a company's shares in existence to bid up a stock's price... you only need to buy enough of the available float to raise prices (sometimes which can be <0.5% of shares in existence).

[smallmancontrov]

> you played yourselves

Owners played non-owners

[amazingamazing]

This would not matter if housing could be built.

[xphos]

Yeah I tend to agree with this point. PE is a boggie man for not building enough housing where it matters. In fact if we could build more houses PE could buy it at above market prices all day and builders could boom and eventually rents would drop because PE aren't going to hold empty units because its investiments.