Posted on 08/09/2025 1:02:04 PM PDT by Red6
Background: There are forces that create major shifts, and in the last years there has been a lot of talk about how "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ll_own_nothing_and_be_happy
That is what I am seeing in the real estate sector.
Does anybody have any solid sources on the topic that puts things together (an analytical piece that shows where policy changes are driving what is happening), concerning who actually owns the real estate in the US?
It appears, but I have no solid sources, that real estate is getting bought up by commercial investors, and often is longer for sale, but rather becomes rental property, and this may be the result of national level policy changes post 2008 which favor this.
Anyone have any information?
Not sure how/where to post this, if it needs to be somewhere else, please move it.
Yes. It can vary from area to area.
It requires $513,000 income for a buyer to get a 70 year old average house in Silicon Valley/ San Jose. That’s not the wealthy areas like Palo Alto and its suburbs. Just San Jose Santa Clara Sunnyvale. And lest we forget, about $450,000 cash to close escrow.
Of course, some purchases are all cash there— mostly overseas sourced money.
Incidentally, it was t always this way. I was able to pay the mortgage on a nice house at the age of 12 from
My after- school paper route profits.
House $400,000
How would you make the owner want to sell it for $300,000?
By giving the owner, a transferable option to buy it 20 to 30 years in the future (when your kids are grown-up) for $300,000 less repair costs that one of the owner’s grandchildren might want to exercise.
Notably, data reporting by the St. Louis Fed shows that the money supply in fact rose sharply in 2020, so the first part of the claim is true.
It is my understanding that the Blacksone exec that got whacked in New York last week was a key player in Blackstone’s takeover of single family residences. https://fortune.com/2025/07/30/blackstone-wesley-lepatner-killed-shooting-breit-ceo-women/
The firm I buy from owns and manages over 5,000 properties in Jacksonville...and they’re just the little guys. According to the Government Accountability Office, by June 2022, institutional investors collectively owned 450,000 single-family rental homes, with the top five investors controlling nearly 300,000 of those.
another way to get the owner to sell is to wait for the economy to completely collapse due to all of the crazy spiraling debt that we have. When people are running around naked, looking for gasoline like on mad Max, I don’t think people are gonna be wanting $4 million for their houses. Don’t want a handful of bullets and maybe some antibiotics.
For all the many times and many years I've read that referenced here and everywhere, I assumed it was an ominous phrase from Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged.
Well that would make sense, as to the mom and pop buyers. Have an LLC and own 5 or 6 homes, rent at $2,000 or or higher per month, per property. Even with standard maintenance for homes under, say 30 years old, that fattens up the monthly income quite a bit, plus leave the real estate assets to your kids at stepped up basis.
oh, also, when Social Security fails, probably fairly soon, selling those houses is gonna look really good
I’m the bad guy. I bought the most expensive house ever sold in this town. 6500 sq ft on 12 acres for $325k. Now everyone thinks they can get $400k for 3200 sq ft reno on a lot. Houses just aren’t moving. Meanwhile, everyone is trying to find a rental with 3 bedrooms for under $1000 but they have an eviction on their record.
Don’t forget Section 8 housing. The govt pays the rent like a dependable rent payer. And if the tenants damage the property, the govt pays to fix it. So some of the mom and pop small corporation LLC rental home “corporations” like renting to Section 8.
I said at the time that this didn’t surprise me. I have said for years that a detached single-family home is a terrible real estate asset for most investors.
“when Social Security fails, probably fairly soon, selling those houses is gonna look really good”
Social Security will pay out at about 80% of current amounts.
I take it he owns the stage, so no one can decide that except him.
“I have said for years that a detached single-family home is a terrible real estate asset for most investors.”
When I was young single-family houses were never considered to be rental investments.
They had twice the upkeep requirements and costs of apartments in an apartment building which would rent for nearly as much.
I remember my father looking at an apartment tower block - the cost in 1968 was about $5,000 per apartment. My father wasn’t the type to tolerate phone calls at 2am.
Nowadays, with new materials, single-family house maintenance isn’t as frequent.
1. Your best tenants don’t stay because they’re better suited to home ownership.
2. Poor economies of scale for maintenance and upkeep.
“Then there are the baby boomers who are living to be over 100 years old and so two generations are waiting for their houses to turn over,....”
Maybe it’s because of Income Tax on the accumulated Inflation of money over 48 years....
it’s been known for a while the big investment companies like black rock have been buying a large portion of the available residential real estate... upwards of 25%
they’re buying those homes with the passive 401k style investments everyone does.
of course, they could invest in America via an S&P index stock... but they’d rather take over the world bit by bit.
my personal solution was to suggest corporations could not own more than 5+ residential homes per 10,000 employees. this wouldn’t stop them from owning hotels but it would stop them from gobbling up private homes.
also, banks, being corporations, would not be able to hold foreclosed properties for longer than 30-60 days. this would stop the trend started in 2008 of foreclosing but not letting the homes hit the markets. the result is to keep the housing prices up as the supply is restricted.
of course, this was received by the 3 or 4 congress-critter offices i call like a fart in church.
Probably safe to say he bought the house, possible after getting home from WWII or Vietnam. Have you ever spoken to him, given him a friendly wave, anything? Your only thought is "get off the stage. Let go"? That's about the coldest thought possible.
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