Nation of Renters

Chronicles Magazine ^ | August 2021 | Pedro Gonzalez

[Pelham]

Ordinary Americans are increasingly competing for a roof over their heads against the permanent capital of companies such as BlackRock and J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which are buying single-family homes from real estate developers at double what the middle class can afford. Indeed, the country’s largest homebuilders are betting on America becoming a nation of renters, pouring billions into the built-to-rent sector with the backing of banks and private investment firms.

Entire neighborhoods are gobbled up as the stage is set for what John Burns Real Estate Consulting is calling “another speculative investor-driven home price bubble.” The firm estimates one in every five houses sold in many of the nation’s top markets is bought by someone who will never move in—in other words, as a speculative investment, often made by financial firms. Similarly, data from the Redfin real estate brokerage firm show investors bought about one of every seven homes in the first quarter of 2021. There’s even an emergent Silicon-Valley-to-Wall-Street pipeline in which private equity firms work with tech companies to buy homes before the public ever lays eyes on them.

Neoliberal media outlets like Vox have attempted to dispel concerns over Wall Street’s role in financializing homeownership, which is the foundation of the middle class. The solution, they say, is for Americans to get over their bigotry and love of open spaces, and marry mass immigration with mass real estate development, turning American residential areas into stack-and-pack metropolises, home to one billion atomized consumers.

Meanwhile, some hail the rise of new forms of “ownership” in fractional ownership models, wherein people would own stock in entities that hold commercial and residential properties in their area. But this is nominal ownership; neighborhood real-estate investment trusts given in exchange for the financialization and further managerialization of the body politic.

[mewzilla]

If you own a house in a state with property taxes, you’re STILL a renter.