How does this jive with all the talk of a housing crisis. Where’s that invisible hand of the market making things affordable. I hate capitalism
A vacant property tax would help with this.
That’s actually fewer homes that Blackstone owns than I would have thought.
Not that it makes things any better, I just would have expected the number of homes Blackstone owns to be in the millions by now. Maybe they have subsidiaries that are buying up homes under different names.
Obviously, there are plenty of other corporations that own thousands of homes so it doesn’t make much of a difference.
Add in other corps:
20% of all property purchases are for investments: 65% of those properties purchases are by people who own 10 or more properties.
Doesn’t shock me at all. Like I said, it doesn’t make much of a difference which corporations actually own them. But I’m still surprised because if someone had asked me how many homes Blackstone in specific owned, I would have guessed a lot more.
Curious to know if they’re counting buildings or units. Blackstone owning one ranch-style house would be very different than Blackstone owning a 500 unit tower block.
I don’t know, IMO a home is a home. You can buy a condo just like you can buy a house. You can buy a condo bigger than some houses.
A very big building holds more people than a very little building
What difference does that make? This is about housing prices, not capacity.
The cost of housing isn’t just the price of the unit. If you need to spend an extra $500/mo on the commute, plus random budget buster repairs, a “cheap” house can be less affordable than an “expensive” one.
What is this doing to the housing market?
I am 40 and single. I make 90k a year, I have 130k in total proceeds from the sale of my previous house I owned for 17 years which will go towards the down payment and initial repairs/upgrades with hopefully 10k to savings, and I have very good credit.
I cannot find a house I can afford. If it’s less than 350k, it’s either a complete disaster on the inside requiring 50k or more to make decent, it’s under 1500 sq feet and very claustrophobic inside, it’s a cheaply built house in a cookie cutter neighborhood that’s already showing it’s quality, or it has less than 2 full baths and a 1 car garage. Or the taxes in the area are over 7k a year.
And a LOT of the houses have the same gray vinyl flooring that’s as ugly as it is cheap.
Mass market single family housing is a disease that the developers have perfected. Using the cheapest materials, in the cheapest way, with the laziest inspectors.
It’s even worse when you get outside of the cities into the county. At least here in Texas, that means there are no building inspections. You just have to trust that the builder made it right.
And don’t depend on the warranty to save you. The common 10-year warranty is a lie. It’s 1-year cosmetic (there are no visible cracks in the wall), 2-year functional (there are cracks, but everything still works), and 10-year structural (the doors no longer close, the wiring is failing, and the foundation is more like gravel now, but the building hasn’t actually been condemned - which it won’t be because there are no inspectors).
Your comment shows American relationship with space of their homes. I live in <1500 sq feet home with my girlfriend and I wouldn’t call it claustrophobic.
It’s really dependant on how the layout is. Generally 1500sqft isn’t a problem however if it has 5 rooms squeezed into the house it begins feeling cramped especially if you have a large family. I have 1800sqft and the first floor has plenty of space but upstairs has a low ceiling (6.5ft) and about a 2ft wide hallway leading to 2 full bedrooms, a full sized bath, and a small guest room that’s only slightly bigger than a broom closet. There isn’t a way to have rooms downstairs so I consider my upstairs cramped but my overall living conditions fine. Now imagine a single floor utilizing that space needing just as many bedrooms and it begins getting cramped with the kitchen, living room, dining room.
How often do you host dinner parties? How often do more than 4 guests attend? Do you want to have family over for the holidays? Do you ever plan to have kids? These are pretty common reasons to need at least 2 baths and 3 bdrms.
I work in the development department of a city that’s and enclave for the ultra-rich. Literally every household in the city is millionaires or better.
Every house in the city is unique. Every build site requires civil and structural engineering. Every home has an architect designing it to be a unique structure. The average new build here is 8-10 million dollars, with the big ones being 50 million+.
We’re talking tennis pavilions on the roof, indoor arboretums and galleries, the works.
And they’re all built cheaply and fall apart within a decade.
They’re shitty houses, but when people are dropping 8-figures on them, they can afford to drop a couple million more on a remodel every 5-10 years.
You can’t buy a quality house anymore.
I’m starting to think the play is to buy undeveloped land and just bite the bullet on the cost of building a house/a road to the nearest govt maintained road.
Unless you’re physically building it yourself, it’s still gonna get corners cut at every stage.
Also, don’t underestimate the drainage and erosion control engineering required for a home and a road. Those cookie cutter neighborhoods have regional drainage and detention. Your undeveloped land won’t.
I’m sure with some research you could find a company willing to follow your specifications and instructions, but obviously that comes with cost.
To your second point, thanks for the heads up. There’s plenty more research that I need to do before I worry about drainage, but I’ll keep the thought in mind.
Septic and Drainage should come before any kind of detailed architecture. It’ll save you 30 grand in Engineering revisions if you don’t have to re-do the drainage plans.
Also, never let an architect be in charge of a project. It’s like having the font designer be in charge of office software.
Where are you looking?
NW ohio, no more than an hour from work.
How many baths can you be in at once?
I’m trying to think of resale value, especially since 1.5 baths around here stay on the market for a very long time.
So you want house with a high value but don’t want to pay for one. That’s your complaint.
I don’t understand. How much higher can rents go?
rent_target = your_income - beans - tent
I genuinely don’t understand why this is legal. It’s tied housing with extra steps, isn’t it?
Just wait until we find out that Blackstone’s algorithms, trained on actual real estate deals, are giving preferential treatment to a man named Dave with bad credit over a woman named Lashawnda with good credit.
The worst part is that there’s so much class discrimination that you don’t even need to bring race into it to see how broadly fucked it is. I personally have a friend that’s an older white guy who the bank wouldn’t approve for a 15% down mortgage that would cost him about $1000/mo, but he had no issues getting approved at a manufactured home lot where the lot rent alone is $950/mo, plus the $500/mo for the home itself. All because he used to be poor and had some really unfortunate financial luck, he gets the privilege of paying twice as much for objectively worse housing.
Well, okay, but maybe you should also wait.
I wonder if the board of Blackstone have names and addresses…
This shit is going to turn me into a maoist
There is one very important aspect that shouldn’t be ignored about the fact at the end. Although it may be technically correct, it is almost certainly not geographically correct. If filling those homes requires a mass movement of people requiring even something as little a a couple of hour drive, is it really relevant?
Don’t get me wrong, I hate corporate ownership of residential property, and I also think empty homes, especially if it’s a second, third, fourth, etc., should result in some kind of tax penalty. I don’t think using easily discounted facts is ultimately in our best interest when pushing for change to address these issues.
I’m no anarchist, but…
Just a
couple3000,000 pipe bombs…Just sayin’… Social problem solved.
Edit: I just ruined my chances of holidaying in the US.
Removed by mod
Edit: I just ruined my chances of holidaying in the US.
Not missing much. Just an expensive country that thinks we are more important than we really are.
Nationalize it.
Sure, and we can develop plans for where people must live and what jobs they must have. Maybe a new national plan every five years.
…… we know how well that’s worked in the past
Do you want your housing to be on the line every election? Just look at what Trump is saying today about removing immigrants and liberals from jobs and country.
No imagine he’s your new landlord too.
I didn’t mean nationalize all housing. I meant this specific company.
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