Investors snapping up middle class housing - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15182763
Corporate investors are snapping up “houses with the greatest potential to be wealth-building for the middle class,” noted Elena Botella of Slate.com. In a Houston suburb, a property investment fund bought a whole neighborhood of 124 houses. Invitation Homes was snapping up 90 percent of the houses in some Atlanta ZIP codes. The process is pushing new arrivals into renting, locking them out of all the advantages of home ownership. (as noted in the July 2 edition of The Week.)

I’m not sure what can be done to discourage this. Perhaps eliminating tax deductions for these kinds of investments or imposing strict rent controls on single-family housing.
#15182787
Robert Urbanek wrote:Corporate investors are snapping up “houses with the greatest potential to be wealth-building for the middle class,” noted Elena Botella of Slate.com. In a Houston suburb, a property investment fund bought a whole neighborhood of 124 houses. Invitation Homes was snapping up 90 percent of the houses in some Atlanta ZIP codes. The process is pushing new arrivals into renting, locking them out of all the advantages of home ownership. (as noted in the July 2 edition of The Week.)

I’m not sure what can be done to discourage this. Perhaps eliminating tax deductions for these kinds of investments or imposing strict rent controls on single-family housing.


You need to look 1 step further to understand why it is happening. You analysed the issue but didn't figure out the cause.

Ask yourself a question, where is the money coming? How come investors have the money to do that investment all of the sudden?

The answer here is not so straightforward as you might think but one of the super large causes is the flight of money from corrupt countries with no rule of law to the two main liquid currencies in the world who are protected by the rule of law. Basically this process has happened for 30 years now but the general trend is that money in stable time flees places like Russia or China or Iran in to US and Europe.

Take Russia for example, around 50% of all Russian wealth is stored in Europe and US. The balance for pre-2014 figures were something around 0.9 trillion in Europe and 0.2 trillion in US. While the remaining 1 trillion was in Russia itself. Not all of that money is corrupt but you get the point. As soon as it arrives in Europe or US then it turns either in to bank assets or some form of investment basically which later on turns in to bought appartments, cars, houses. The problem with the current time is that we are in Covid pandemic that basically means instability in all underdeveloped countries small or large. China tried to crackdown on this severely but with limited success. Instead of direct transactions people and companies started using cryptocurrency to do the same thing then China crackdown on that. There is no specific numbers that I can provide for China.

This goes beyond just autocracies and corrupt countries, also underdeveloped countries like India, Brazil, Argentina also fall under this trend. The pandemic made the flow several fold worse. Money is seeking safe havens for now until the pandemic is over. This is one of the reasons why Europe and US are such big investors on the world stage that we store majority of the world "money" either in the form of bank accouts, bonds, shares, property and so on.
#15182788
Robert Urbanek wrote:Corporate investors are snapping up “houses with the greatest potential to be wealth-building for the middle class,” noted Elena Botella of Slate.com. In a Houston suburb, a property investment fund bought a whole neighborhood of 124 houses. Invitation Homes was snapping up 90 percent of the houses in some Atlanta ZIP codes. The process is pushing new arrivals into renting, locking them out of all the advantages of home ownership. (as noted in the July 2 edition of The Week.)

I’m not sure what can be done to discourage this. Perhaps eliminating tax deductions for these kinds of investments or imposing strict rent controls on single-family housing.


You know what must be done, xué sheng. The question is, do you have the courage to do it?

Image
#15182858
JohnRawls wrote:You need to look 1 step further to understand why it is happening. You analysed the issue but didn't figure out the cause.

Ask yourself a question, where is the money coming? How come investors have the money to do that investment all of the sudden?

The answer here is not so straightforward as you might think but one of the super large causes is the flight of money from corrupt countries with no rule of law to the two main liquid currencies in the world who are protected by the rule of law. Basically this process has happened for 30 years now but the general trend is that money in stable time flees places like Russia or China or Iran in to US and Europe.

Take Russia for example, around 50% of all Russian wealth is stored in Europe and US. The balance for pre-2014 figures were something around 0.9 trillion in Europe and 0.2 trillion in US. While the remaining 1 trillion was in Russia itself. Not all of that money is corrupt but you get the point. As soon as it arrives in Europe or US then it turns either in to bank assets or some form of investment basically which later on turns in to bought appartments, cars, houses. The problem with the current time is that we are in Covid pandemic that basically means instability in all underdeveloped countries small or large. China tried to crackdown on this severely but with limited success. Instead of direct transactions people and companies started using cryptocurrency to do the same thing then China crackdown on that. There is no specific numbers that I can provide for China.

This goes beyond just autocracies and corrupt countries, also underdeveloped countries like India, Brazil, Argentina also fall under this trend. The pandemic made the flow several fold worse. Money is seeking safe havens for now until the pandemic is over. This is one of the reasons why Europe and US are such big investors on the world stage that we store majority of the world "money" either in the form of bank accouts, bonds, shares, property and so on.

This reads like something you just made up out of whole cloth, as a vehicle to blame Russia and China.

The rise of neo-feudalism is all it is.

The impetus is probably the drying up of alternative financial investments (real estate in the US for a long time has been transfigured into primarily a financial investment (as opposed to a use-value--as a place to live--or at least this could certainly be argued)).

The constraint on this in the past was that real estate was regarded as on average inferior to alternatives (like stocks, etc.) in terms of average gains.

This would seem to signal a change, probably particular to certain markets at this time (i.e. Houston and Atlanta).

The impetus for the fund managers is merely the 'profit motive', but the consequences for the users of housing is obviously something else.

A relative transition to banks as rentiers, and workers as dependent on their bank-landlords (with horrible consequences for the renters, surely).
#15182859
Although it's well known that foreign money gets stored away in US/EU properties (Miami has a TOOOOON of Russian owned condos, many.... empty). I'm more inclined to believe what @Crantag has put forth as the single biggest factor. This has been in play for decades. At some point in the past (70s-80s?) our culture has shifted away from viewing homes as a place to live towards viewing them as an investment. This collective attitude change has massive implications which we are seeing more plainly today.
#15182860
@Crantag @Rancid

And the rural and urban gentrification of America continues. Crantag kinda nails it when he talks about feudalism. It's sort of like rich people buying up all the property and renting to everybody else. We are like surfs or peasants and the rich people are like the Duke of Boston or the Duke of Rural Nebraska renting out land and property to peasants and getting money from them.

The peasants and surfs don't make enough to own their own land and property so they are confined to toil away for the benefit of the nobility and the Dukes and forever paying rent to them. It's like medieval England during the Dark Ages in history. I guess some of these rich landowners and investors would call this "progress" much like slave owners during slavery times in America called the chattel slavery "progress."
#15182865
Politics_Observer wrote:@Crantag @Rancid

And the rural and urban gentrification of America continues. Crantag kinda nails it when he talks about feudalism. It's sort of like rich people buying up all the property and renting to everybody else. We are like surfs or peasants and the rich people are like the Duke of Boston or the Duke of Rural Nebraska renting out land and property to peasants and getting money from them.

The peasants and surfs don't make enough to own their own land and property so they are confined to toil away for the benefit of the nobility and the Dukes and forever paying rent to them. It's like medieval England during the Dark Ages in history. I guess some of these rich landowners and investors would call this "progress" much like slave owners during slavery times in America called the chattel slavery "progress."

Well put.

Housing (shelter) is a basic need.

In my neck of the woods, in Southern Oregon, homelessness is terrible, and getting worse and worse.

The fire last year destroyed over 2500 housing units.

Unoccupancy of rental units is less than 2%. And prices are too high for people to pay on the standard of wages which are offered here, in many cases.

An anecdote, one of my best childhood friends; he's a really straight and narrow dude. Barely even drinks and shit. He's run a carpentry practice for probably by now going on 15 years.

He recently got married again and had a second child.

The mother of his first child died of a fentanyl overdose about 2 years ago. (But he is not a drug user. I know him like a brother. I even dated his ex's cousin back in the day, and one day I came by to hang out where they were hanging out, and they were high on cocaine, and I gave her (my then girlfriend) a piece of my mind over it. I mighta been too harsh, but we were never druggies, me and most of my local boys).

My homeboy, his landlord has decided to sell the house, and force him to move out. He's lived there for at least 10 years.

The trouble is, he can't find anywhere to rent, that is at all affordable.

He makes okay money with his carpentry, and his wife also works.

I think he will figure it out. I have faith in him. But, this is the shit that isn't reflected in balance sheets.

He has a family, works hard, makes decent money, but is struggling to find a place to live.

This is not right.

Any time I drive to the supermarket, I drive past rows of homeless people.

I'm quasi homeless myself.

I currently squat in an RV on a borrowed plot in the woods.

The system of financialized housing is clearly a failure. But, it isn't going to change. This is the regime we toil under. Indeed, it is getting worse, as we've been discussing in this thread.
#15182867
Politics_Observer wrote:@Crantag @Rancid

And the rural and urban gentrification of America continues. Crantag kinda nails it when he talks about feudalism. It's sort of like rich people buying up all the property and renting to everybody else. We are like surfs or peasants and the rich people are like the Duke of Boston or the Duke of Rural Nebraska renting out land and property to peasants and getting money from them.

The peasants and surfs don't make enough to own their own land and property so they are confined to toil away for the benefit of the nobility and the Dukes and forever paying rent to them. It's like medieval England during the Dark Ages in history. I guess some of these rich landowners and investors would call this "progress" much like slave owners during slavery times in America called the chattel slavery "progress."


Damn..... yes. :(
#15182868
Rancid wrote:Damn..... yes. :(

I liked @Politics_Observer's diatribe, as well.

We'll make a radical out of you yet, @Politics_Observer.

@Rancid, you're a good chap.

Whenever we butt heads, that's just what young bulls do.

Some day, we might need to break out the tape measures, if you get my drift.

Jokes aside, this shit is a recipe for more homelessness. And, it won't be stopped. There is money in it.

Constraining the housing market would be socialist!

It's fucked up.

We have to adjust to it.

My current tentative plan is to move to Europe and live off the welfare state, at least until I get on my feet and running.

I am a shoe in for Austrian citizenship (my mom already got Austrian citizenship. Repatriation of holocaust victims program.)

I have been around. I shot my wad in Japan (literally and figuratively).

I shot a few wads in China, but not the entire wad. China is actually quite welcoming, especially compared to Japan. In Japan, it is mostly a combination of their exclusivity of being on an island chain with a highly refined culture; and partly their first world problems.

I may be on my way to Europe.

But, first I need to deal with my legal case. I am currently a victim of the American gulag.

So, I am working my ass off, trying to hire a lawyer and pay all the money to the county, which they demand.

It's a bunch of bullshit. I pulled a drunken prank, and they read me the riot act.

The American Gulag is alive and well though, and I am presently in its dragnet. Not a fun net to be in.
#15182869
Crantag wrote:
I liked @Politics_Observer's diatribe, as well.

We'll make a radical out of you yet, @Politics_Observer.

@Rancid, you're a good chap.

Whenever we butt heads, that's just what young bulls do.

Some day, we might need to break out the tape measures, if you get my drift.

Jokes aside, this shit is a recipe for more homelessness. And, it won't be stopped. There is money in it.

Constraining the housing market would be socialist!

It's fucked up.

We have to adjust to it.

My current tentative plan is to move to Europe and live off the welfare state, at least until I get on my feet and running.

I am a shoe in for Austrian citizenship (my mom already got Austrian citizenship. Repatriation of holocaust victims program.)

I have been around. I shot my wad in Japan (literally and figuratively).

I shot a few wads in China, but not the entire wad. China is actually quite welcoming, especially compared to Japan. In Japan, it is mostly a combination of their exclusivity of being on an island chain with a highly refined culture; and partly their first world problems.

I may be on my way to Europe.

But, first I need to deal with my legal case. I am currently a victim of the American gulag.

So, I am working my ass off, trying to hire a lawyer and pay all the money to the county, which they demand.

It's a bunch of bullshit. I pulled a drunken prank, and they read me the riot act.

The American Gulag is alive and well though, and I am presently in its dragnet. Not a fun net to be in.



Maybe do a 'GoFundMe' -- I've heard those things work. Also look into Legal Aid, ACLU.... (Off the top of my head.)
#15182871
ckaihatsu wrote:Maybe do a 'GoFundMe' -- I've heard those things work. Also look into Legal Aid, ACLU.... (Off the top of my head.)

Legal aid is for civil stuff.

I have about $2000 saved up right now, almost enough for a lawyer.

Next, I might try to 'mortgage' my car to pay the additional fees and shit.

I was denied a public defender because of the equity in my car.
#15182872
Crantag wrote:
Legal aid is for civil stuff.

I have about $2000 saved up right now, almost enough for a lawyer.

Next, I might try to 'mortgage' my car to pay the additional fees and shit.

I was denied a public defender because of the equity in my car.



Beemer, huh? (jk)

Best of luck.
#15182874
late wrote:Wtf?

You don't get to tell us what to do anymore, boomer.

We are in command now.

We love boomers. Our parents are boomers, and our parents' friends are/were cool.

But, you boomers don't command the controls anymore.

Get used to it.

We didn't ask for it, but it's our ship to steer now.

We are fucking it up a lot, but it is mostly because the boomers are getting in the way, whilst not knowing how to distinguish their ass from their left hand.
#15182877
Politics_Observer wrote:@Crantag @Rancid

And the rural and urban gentrification of America continues. Crantag kinda nails it when he talks about feudalism. It's sort of like rich people buying up all the property and renting to everybody else. We are like surfs or peasants and the rich people are like the Duke of Boston or the Duke of Rural Nebraska renting out land and property to peasants and getting money from them.

The peasants and surfs don't make enough to own their own land and property so they are confined to toil away for the benefit of the nobility and the Dukes and forever paying rent to them. It's like medieval England during the Dark Ages in history. I guess some of these rich landowners and investors would call this "progress" much like slave owners during slavery times in America called the chattel slavery "progress."

https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/the-marxist-theory-of-ground-rent-pt-1/the-marxist-theory-of-ground-rent-pt-2/
Frederick Engels on the ‘housing question’

In the early 1870s, articles appeared in the press of the German Social Democratic Party claiming that the relationship between house owners and tenants was analogous to the relationship between industrial workers who sell their labor power and industrial capitalists who buy it. According to these articles, the key to the “social question” was workers’ ownership, whether individual or collective, of their own housing.

Karl Marx’s co-worker Fredrick Engels sounded the alarm and wrote his booklet “The Housing Question” to refute this view. Engels’ basic point was that the key to the “social problem”—the evils caused by the capitalist mode of production including the lack of housing—is to be found not in the ownership of the means of shelter but in the ownership of the means of production.

In his booklet, Engels gave many examples of the housing crisis of the 19th century. A lot of this material is necessarily dated and largely of historical interest. But there is still much in the booklet that is all too familiar for today’s workers. Once again, the housing question is growing acute with rising homelessness, unaffordable house rents and “gentrification.”
...
Let’s examine this question more closely, because it is of great political importance. In the United States, individual home ownership is called the “American Dream.” In the sense of the “American dream,” the rising value of the homes isn’t a real increase in the value of the house as a commodity but the value of the land on which the house is built.

Why workers should reject the ‘American Dream’

The rising value of homes therefore actually expresses the rising mass of the super-profits that corporate America wrings out the world’s industrial workers, some of which takes the form of “rising home values” in the U.S. To its occupant, the home in addition to its basic use value as a means of shelter becomes the equivalent of corporate stock—which entitles its owner to a portion of the surplus value that is produced by the world working class.

In other words, the “American dream” is simply a form of the sharing of super-profits by the U.S. ruling class with sections of the U.S. working class that are able to afford to buy their own homes. This is why class-conscious workers have to reject the “American Dream” and its counterparts in other imperialist countries.

Widespread working-class “home ownership” under capitalism, especially in imperialist countries, also encourages racism. It is well known that in the U.S. “people of color,” especially African Americans, are paid less than white workers. Ground rents and therefore the “value of homes” is generally lower in areas that are inhabited by African Americans and other workers of color. In the U.S. and other imperialist countries, residential segregation, though not formally the law, remains very much a reality.

A particular neighborhood can flip. That is, it might go from white to black or from white to Latino. Particularly with the scanty system of social insurance in the U.S., white homeowners often count on the rising value of their homes for retirement. They are ever fearful that if one African American family or one Latino family moves into the neighborhood, the neighborhood will not only lose its all-white character, it will then “flip” becoming a black or Latino neighborhood. If that happens, the white homeowners may have to sell their homes at a loss or at least with a considerably smaller gain than they had been counting on for their retirement.

Therefore, white homeowners are given a material incentive to oppose the moving of African Americans or Latinos into their neighborhoods. This breeds racism, creates a voting base for extreme right-wing politicians, and breaks down the solidarity of the working class.
...
As Engels pointed out in his booklet “The Housing Question,” the basic cause of the problem does not lie in the relationship between the owners of rental housing and their tenants but rather in the relationship between the sellers of the commodity labor power and the buyers of labor power, and the inevitable extraction of ever greater masses of surplus value by the buyers of labor power from the sellers of labor power.

It is this that creates the huge mass of surplus value that leads to the astronomical incomes that enable the capitalists to drive up land prices and force ever greater numbers of workers and even middle-class people from their housing and ends in rising homelessness. The cure, therefore, lies not in the relationship between house owners and tenants but rather in the relationship between the capitalist buyers of labor power and working-class sellers of labor power.

No real solution to the housing problem is possible without depriving the capitalists of their tremendous incomes that enable them to buy up so much residential real estate. In order to do this, they must be deprived of their class monopoly on the ownership of the means of production, ending their ability to appropriate huge amounts of unpaid labor from the workers.
#15182879
ckaihatsu wrote:Beemer, huh? (jk)

Best of luck.

I drive a 2017 Honda Civic, 6-speed.

Yeah, I woulda liked to go with an accord.

But, the Civic ain't bad.

And, 6-speed, B.

It was basically one of the only manual transmitions they had on the lot.

I walked into the dealership, basically a bum off the street, trying to behave like I actually belonged there.

The credit check was lie a lottery call.

Somehow, I was approved.

And I drove out of there in a brand new Honda.

6-speed, B.

Now the courts wanna take it.

I piss on douche bags like them.
#15182880
@Crantag @Rancid

Do you want research(Page 203 with graphs or you can read it/Page 15 of pdf): https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/NPZ2018.pdf

Or news articles will do(2017 for example): https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-offshore ... 95293.html

But you can literally google "Russian Wealth Offshore" and check articles from every year.

For China the situation is more complicated due to absence of clear data sources but here is an example, one article that estimates that Chinese offshore wealth is around 45.5 of all Chinese wealth or 8.4 trillion was held abroad aka US or EU(Reality is nobody knows and the article is from 2018) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chin ... SKCN1MY0TG

This process has been clearly observed and studied by economists that investment flows from US/EU in to the rest of the world while wealth flows to US/EU for storage. This hasn't been a secret for ages.
#15182882
@Crantag @Rancid

Yeah, you certainly don't want the country ran to where literally EVERYTHING is JUST A BUSINESS TRANSACTION where there is no real rules or regulation that benefit society as a whole. Not everything in life is just a business transaction and not everything should be just a business transaction. The only people who want to do that are the people with all the money and all the political power and they ain't too worried about anybody else.

Many of them are indifferent and could care less about the hardships working people and the poor are facing today. That means they aren't going to do anything about it quite frankly speaking. I mean, that's the way it is. But you can also do what you can do to improve your own life. But that doesn't mean this sort of thing should be allowed to go unchecked and that their shouldn't be rules and regulations that ensure the benefit of all of society as a whole either though. There is such a thing as society and not just merely ONLY individuals.
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