Comment on Companies that buy up homes should be known as home scalpers

FishFace@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yeah no. Last i checked there are 4 times as many empty apartments than homeless people in Germany. The housing market here is completely fucked and corporate housing ownership needs to be disincentivized or outright banned for this to be solved. Whenever people try to buy housing they will be outbid by companies that already have plenty of capital. This leads to an everlasting spiral where the rich people will always have more buying power and normal people are perpetually stuck paying absurd rents to those same rich people.

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  • FishFace@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    But the vacancy rate is not shooting up; it’s steady/decreasing: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/31454.jpeg

    I can’t find any good data on corporate versus individual ownership.

    Whenever people try to buy housing they will be outbid by companies that already have plenty of capital. This leads to an everlasting spiral where the rich people will always have more buying power and normal people are perpetually stuck paying absurd rents to those same rich people making them even richer.

    How is this different when every house for rent is owned by an individual? They have the exact same incentive to charge high rents.

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    • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      How is this different when every house for rent is owned by an individual?

      Obviously there should be limits to individual land ownership too…

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      • FishFace@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I mean, if every house for rent is owned by someone who only owns a small number of houses. They still want to charge as much rent as they can get away with. Always have.

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• MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  For companies to cause problems they have to buy so many homes they can abuse their market share by forcing rents up

  Not necessarily. Your option only applies to non-necessities. For a necessity, all you need is to own enough of the industry, that you’re the only option for some people. If there only exists enough housing to just barely house everyone who needs a home, then you could own only 1%, and set the price to whatever you want, because someone will have to live there. Everywhere else is occupied.

  which you would see as an increasing vacancy rate

  Again, this only applies to non-necessities. If you hike the price of food, people aren’t gonna stop eating.

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  • FishFace@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah if you literally only 100%, or close to it, of housing in a city, that’s true. But no company does in anywhere I’m aware of. There are cases of massive consolidation but the largest competitor acquires like 17% of housing. There are also always some vacant houses even if that number is very low.

    Housing is a necessity but there is still some elasticity. People can move in with parents, move to a cheaper region unaffected by the attempted market abuse, share with more people, live in their car or literally be out on the streets. All of those options (none of them good ones) mean that some people will not pay the higher rents if there’s an attempted squeeze - some houses would stand vacant. (Or: stand vacant for longer).

    This is not a defence of free market economics in housing; I think local authorities should heavily invest in social housing. I just don’t think that we have any evidence of the high cost of housing being due to excessive company involvement in housing. We are seeing housing crises across the western world in all sorts of cities and all sorts of distributions of ownership.

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    • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You are bending over backwards to dismiss my points.

      Yeah if you literally only 100%, or close to it, of housing in a city, that’s true. But no company does in anywhere I’m aware of.

      I’m not even sure what you’re saying here. Did you misunderstand my point that they don’t need to own 100%?

      There are cases of massive consolidation but the largest competitor acquires like 17% of housing

      That is MASSIVE consolidation! If a huge 10% of homes are unneeded, that means they can set the price for 7% as high as they want!

      People can move in with parents

      Boomers are selling their homes to these companies, because the payout is ludicrous. They pay so much more than what the home is worth, because the return of renting it back to someone needing a home is literally limitless.

      move to a cheaper region unaffected by the attempted market abuse

      You know why it’s unaffected? Fewer jobs. The pensioners selling their homes can move out there, sure… But the people who need homes in the area they just sold their old home for millions in? Not so much.

      share with more people

      Right. Because these companies aren’t chopping big apartments into smaller units so they sell each room individually. Are you suggesting people start sharing studio apartment closets?

      some people will not pay the higher rents

      Some is not enough. The whole reason this works is that these companies can squeeze people on necessities, because someone always has to buy from them. To fight this, everyone has to have access to a better option, so that these companies have zero customers. Because as long as they can squeeze someone, they can squeeze harder than any luxury industry could ever dream of.

      I just don’t think that we have any evidence of the high cost of housing being due to excessive company involvement in housing.

      This has literally been studied. It’s not about what you “think”. You are ignoring current economic facts.

      We are seeing housing crises across the western world in all sorts of cities and all sorts of distributions of ownership.

      No shit. When someone finds a way to make profit, the method gets copied. No to mention that stuff like airBnBs skirt regulation and often literally operate against local law or building rules. My very first point was that companies don’t need to own much to start hiking local prices. Heck, you could be just one wealthy individual who owns two extra houses, and by setting your rents high, contribute to the problem.

      There is a thru-line here, but because it’s so pervasive, you’re saying it can’t possibly be it.

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      • FishFace@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Your point by point objections don’t really change the picture - these are all things that people do. In a market that is not completely elastic, if you increase prices, some people will stop paying and we will see that in the data. Every time I’ve checked this for the USA (where this argument is usually made) there is no recent increase in vacancy rates.

        So how about I offer you an alternative scenario: investment companies are seeing that housing is shooting up in value already, due to low rates of building, hence making it a more attractive investment relative to other things. So they buy them up and charge high rents - but at the same time all the individual owners of rental property also see that they can charge high rents, and do so. All we’ve done is swapped who is screwing renters, not by how much.

        If this has “literally been studied” then I’d be very happy to see the studies - like I said I’ve tried to find data on this, and never found anything to suggest that replacing individual owners with corporate owners increases prices. Maybe my search-engine-fu is lacking (but also… every other time I’ve discussed this online no-one has come up with anything either. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t hold this position for lack of trying to challenge it.) But in contrast, I’ve seen plenty of studies comparing population growth to house building and coming up with a huge deficit.

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• Muaddib@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I disagree

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  • FishFace@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Oh damn, I didn’t realise

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    • Muaddib@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s okay, glad we cleared that up

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