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Bloomberg: America should become a nation of renters

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godhandiscen

There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-06-17/america-should-become-a-nation-of-renters

I find the normalization of renting complacency disturbing. I am posting this article because I believe it should be mocked. However, what do the rest of you believe?

Oh shit, apparently this is PR to make up for the fact that BlackRock is buying single family homes over market for renting purposes.



The Atlantic is defending Blackrock too.

 
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*Nightwing

Banned
They want indentured servitude back. And they have it in everything else but name. The trade off is we live longer, healthier, and relatively happier than those in the past.
You are not wrong at all
 
Renting is just subscribing to housing. The movement towards subscriptions for everything so they can collect your money in perpetuity is just being reflected in housing. You don't own anything anymore is the goal of the wealthy and powerful. Yes, they want to bring back indentured slavery and everyone is so willing.
 

godhandiscen

There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
Home ownership is the biggest step to wealth building for the middle class.
Not according to the mass media of today. I looked up the topic and everything on the Google news carousel is telling people that it is okay to rent and Blackrock isn’t doing anything wrong.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
More renters the better. It's not like home buyers disappear.

The worst thing for investment property people (like me) is lack of renters making me need to gimp the rent to get someone to sign up. More renters, means more demand, means higher rents, means faster I pay off the mortgage.

The reason why cities (the popular ones) have endless construction building new towers is due to people wanting to buy. They dont wan to buy existing places or rent an existing home. For many it'll be their first attempt at home ownership as a condo unit usually most affordable. You make people change tune to renting out existing vacancies and construction slows down which makes property prices go up even more.
 

godhandiscen

There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
More renters the better. It's not like home buyers disappear.

The worst thing for investment property people (like me) is lack of renters making me need to gimp the rent to get someone to sign up. More renters, means more demand, means higher rents, means faster I pay off the mortgage.

The reason why cities (the popular ones) have endless construction building new towers is due to people wanting to buy. They dont wan to buy existing places or rent an existing home. For many it'll be their first attempt at home ownership as a condo unit usually most affordable. You make people change tune to renting out existing vacancies and construction slows down which makes property prices go up even more.
Yeah, you are definitely in a position that benefits from the population adopting this mindset, and I am too. However, in general I don’t feel it is good for the country long term. It will increase the wealth gap to levels never seen before.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Not according to the mass media of today. I looked up the topic and everything on the Google news carousel is telling people that it is okay to rent and Blackrock isn’t doing anything wrong.
Maybe in dead cities where prices are flat for decades or dropping.

In Toronto GTA, anyone who buys a home it goes up. Even during covid, you could had bought something during a slow time of covid and it's up 10% since last summer as rates are still low and people's fear of covid is petering out and people want to get back to moving homes.

Anyone who bought anything in the Toronto metro area 10 years ago is at least doubling their money. More like 3x if youre in a good area.

If you bought a half decent home in 2000 for $300,000 in a decent area, I bet it's worth $1.5 million. Minimum $1 million no problem. Easy money.
 
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Live in your home cube or single room in a shared habblock "home", keep your thermostat at 78 deg F so you can't sleep at night to save the planet, appreciate brownouts from renewable energy with no advancement in dirty awful nuclear power, work in the wagey cagey sending Chinese-made stuff to other people so you can afford to pay companies to pay people to send Chinese-made stuff to you, eat Organic™ bugs, drink the lithium-laced water so you don't get depressed, and enjoy not owning anything and your mandatory happiness.

What a glorious vision of the future. Definitely what I wanted when I got into Star Trek and learned about what post-scarcity could look like.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Yeah, you are definitely in a position that benefits from the population adopting this mindset, and I am too. However, in general I don’t feel it is good for the country long term. It will increase the wealth gap to levels never seen before.
I agree.

People's salaries only go up so much, so it gets to a point home prices cant keep rocketing up. At some point the demand + low interest mortgage qualifications peters out so prices can only get so high.

But somehow some places it keeps going up, so the demand from people/couples with cash is still high enough to boost home prices with bidding wars.

Its crazy what people will spend $1 million on, but people are gunning for it.
 
I agree.

People's salaries only go up so much, so it gets to a point home prices cant keep rocketing up. At some point the demand + low interest mortgage qualifications peters out so prices can only get so high.

But somehow some places it keeps going up, so the demand from people/couples with cash is still high enough to boost home prices with bidding wars.

Its crazy what people will spend $1 million on, but people are gunning for it.

People aren't buying them, though - BlackRock is.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
People aren't buying them, though - BlackRock is.
Not sure what you mean.

In the past year of covid, I know 3 coworkers who bought and sold. All included bidding wars. They dumped their homes and moved an hour outside of Toronto metro and got a place twice as big for the same price. Work from home.
 
Sucks for any first time home buyers. Of course, if there is a real estate correction, all of these pensions and hedge funds will be left holding a pretty fucking rotten bag.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I’m still in my first home with less than $50k left on the mortgage. Instead of keeping up with the joneses, we are staying put while me and my wife’s salaries grow. Living way below our means and it’s liberating.
When I retire in about 15 years, I'm dumping my place (assuming I dont jump to another place in between), and buying a modest home hours away out of town.

Bank tons of money and if I need to see friends or fam still living in the core, I'll drive a few hours each way. It's not like were hanging out every weekend or anything and by then some of my friends and fam will be dead anyway.

Chill out retired with cash. The retirement way. Did my time rat racing the office career. Time to let others do it in their prime.
 
Not sure what you mean.

In the past year of covid, I know 3 coworkers who bought and sold. All included bidding wars. They dumped their homes and moved an hour outside of Toronto metro and got a place twice as big for the same price. Work from home.

That's the thing - they bought and sold to presumably another person, so another person is building wealth and they made a profit. The practice being defended is a corporation buying up property and never selling it.

Real estate is the most powerful way you can build wealth. I currently rent because I get a really good deal (rural area) and am near my current job and places I travel to, but I've got a ton of land for my age and I will build on part of what I own and sell the rest to others to do the same. Living in a city or burb where renting takes up most of your income saps wealth creation, and that is what this article this is a good thing that needs to be expanded. And once you live in the BlackRock Habblock you are basically just living in a company house while they siphon off your wealth.
 
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Cyberpunkd

Member
I agree.

People's salaries only go up so much, so it gets to a point home prices cant keep rocketing up. At some point the demand + low interest mortgage qualifications peters out so prices can only get so high.

But somehow some places it keeps going up, so the demand from people/couples with cash is still high enough to boost home prices with bidding wars.

Its crazy what people will spend $1 million on, but people are gunning for it.
That depends on the city - to give you an idea Paris, France is 10km in straight line from one corner to the other, bordered by a highway making a ring around the city. Very few buildings were constructed after 1950. There is absolutely no space to construct new buildings. And considering the language barrier prices have a long way to go.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
That's the thing - they bought and sold to presumably another person, so another person is building wealth and they made a profit. The practice being defended is a corporation buying up property and never selling it.

Real estate is the most powerful way you can build wealth. I currently rent because I get a really good deal (rural area) and am near my current job and places I travel to, but I've got a ton of land for my age and I will build on part of what I own and sell the rest to others to do the same. Living in a city or burb where renting takes up most of your income saps wealth creation. And once you live in the BlackRock Habblock you are basically just living in a company house while they siphon off your wealth.
Could be.

Every place I've sold was to (I think) another person. Unless these corporations do it in a way that the paperwork looks like a family is signing the papers, but its really a company.

I agree on real estate wealth creation is the biggest booster. Some people have the idea people make a bunch of money from having great jobs and banking money every month. Yes, someone can save a lot of money and grow it through stocks and stuff.

But a big booster is selling a home at the right time and making 6-digits (or more).

People who dont have a lot of money criticizing wealth and wages should aim some of their efforts to home ownership policies. If you can score even a modest condo in the outskirts of town, it'll do your pocketbooks a lot more in the long run through appreciation than gunning for a couple extra bucks of hourly wages.
 
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Rival

Gold Member
So happy I bought when I did 5 years ago. I’m paying over $400 less per month than when I was renting and just refinanced at 2.5%. God only knows what my rent would be by now.best decision I ever made.
 
I'm confused why BlackRock is being singled out here in all these news stories... The actual company with black in the name that bought a fuckload of houses is BlackSTONE, not Rock. I mean sure BlackRock manages a whole lot of money and I'm sure they manage some funds with housing in it, but at one point (and maybe they still are) BlackStone was the largest single family home owner in the country, because they went crazy after 2008 buying as much housing as they could.
 
I'm confused why BlackRock is being singled out here in all these news stories... The actual company with black in the name that bought a fuckload of houses is BlackSTONE, not Rock. I mean sure BlackRock manages a whole lot of money and I'm sure they manage some funds with housing in it, but at one point (and maybe they still are) BlackStone was the largest single family home owner in the country, because they went crazy after 2008 buying as much housing as they could.

Either you are confused or talking about a separate thing. Blackrock is the world's largest asset manager with something like 8 trillion under management. They are beyond too big to fail. If they decide they are buying American houses as a regular way to invest their money, they could probably permanently make housing out of reach of the average American.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Oh, this is the latest political talking point designed to scare people. The actual statistics aren’t scary at all. 80,000 homes out of 140 million will control the market. Uh-huh. Enough with the politics.

“The U.S. has roughly 140 million housing units, a broad category that includes mansions, tiny townhouses, and apartments of all sizes. Of those 140 million units, about 80 million are stand-alone single-family homes. Of those 80 million, about 15 million are rental properties. Of those 15 million single-family rentals, institutional investors own about 300,000; most of the rest are owned by individual landlords. Of that 300,000, BlackRock—largely through its investment in the real-estate rental company Invitation Homes—owns about 80,000. (To clear up a common confusion: The investment firm Blackstone established Invitation Homes, in which BlackRock, a separate investment firm, is now an investor.”
 
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