Yes, much of the insane drive up of home prices over last few years is because of large investment firms buying up houses and other things....
Not the only factor, but definitely a player in it.
Every so many decades we have this sort of thing happen, deep pockets decide to start playing games in real estate for various reasons, and generally it ends the same way... eventually the bubble bursts and big players get destroyed.
Real Estate investing is what took down Westinghouse... They had an investment division to make money off their reserves, they did really good with some land and oil speculation and made some really big returns... so the powers that be gave them access to more and more of the company funds.... and then the bottom fell out... and Westinghouse went from being a $10 Billion dollar company, to a $5 Billion company virtually overnight... and they just slowly sold off parts, and shrunk, etc etc...
Consulted Briefly at their Energy Center HQ’s.... it was a sad state of affairs.... building had 2 massive wings, one wing was completely empty... other wing pretty skeleton.... keeping the lights on and things.... At that time they were hoping to get permission to sell their nuclear reactors into China... they did have a bit of a resurgence years, bought by Toshiba I think in 2005.
Boomed for a while, even built a new HQ, and moved about 30 miles from their old HQ... and then went formally BK in 2017, and sold by Toshiba to a Holding Company in 2018.
“deep pockets decide to start playing games in real estate for various reasons, and generally it ends the same way... eventually the bubble bursts and big players get destroyed.”
Good post.
The “smart money” can turn into big time losers in a hurry—real estate is one of the best ways to do it—there are inevitably wild swings in the market over time.
Interesting, thanks.