politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
The market is not "places to rent", it's "places to live." If the cost of buying a home falls, the cost of renting a home will fall as well to compete. If what you are saying is true, the cost of renting should have gone down as more private equity gets into the residential market. The opposite has happened.
You understand that when someone buys a home to live in, demand shrinks along with the supply, right?
If you look at the market as "places to live" then banning corporate home purchasing does nothing to supply or demand and thus does not change the price at all. There are still the same number of people who need housing.
Everything we're talking about is relative to what prices would be otherwise. Rent has increased because there was massive inflation, that doesn't prove or disprove the impact of corporate homeownership.
Taking (corporate) buyers out of the market is what reducing demand means. Not to mention the corporate buyers are the ones buying up real estate so they can profit off the difference between the rent they charge and the loans they pay off. They're very much unnecessary middlemen. I'm not saying smaller landlords don't do that too, but corporate involvement is one of the reasons investor buying power so heavily outweighs resident buying power.
Real estate values have been massively outpacing inflation for decades. Inflation is normal, and has always been a force in economics. Such a huge portion of the middle and working class being unable to own a house is not normal, and since we haven't had a population explosion or a collapse of the construction industry, a bubble is the best explanation.
The corporate buyers are just buying the houses to rent out. They are switching the home from owned to rented. The corporation isn't a living person who lives in the house they bought. They only impact demand in the amount they switch, which only matters if you're splitting up owned vs rented, because that's what they change. If you're combining all housing demand to be all people who need housing, the corporations have zero demand for housing, they don't impact overall demand at all.
There's always a profit motive at any level, prices are going to be a result of market forces, we don't give them extra because they're a corporation. If a corporation is acting monopolistically, that should obviously be banned, and it is.
There's a larger structural question on whether ALL landlording is "unnecessary middlemen" but that as a solution would be such a huge change and involve seizing property and such that I think that's outside the realm of the possible. If we're allowing some landlords, profit is just going to be part of rental payments as it already is.