this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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I don't think WFH is completely to blame for that. A significant contributor to the explosion in housing prices was historically low mortgage rates (<2%) as part of the covid era stimulus plans. This triggered a wave of home buying, which in turn led to a lot of panic from people that were afraid they would be priced out of the market and fueled further home buying.
Pretty sure it was Blackrock, Vanguard, and all the shadow LLC’s from the big banks buying up homes as soon as they went on the market as well as rich pukes abusing first time home owner mechanics to buy AirBnB investment properties.
Not really normal folks buying home with low interest rates.
I'm sure large investment firms did buy a lot of homes, but to pretend no normal people took advantage of the interest rates is just ridiculous.
Homes at large went from being owned by normal people to financial institutions. Yep, some people might have got lucky, but society overall lost.
Case in point: There are eight houses on my block. Pre-COVID, one was a multi-unit rental and the rest were single family.
Post COVID? Now only my house and my next door neighbor's house, and the lady's place on the far corner are privately owned. All five of the others sold and are now either short term rentals (2) or AirBNB's (3).
...In my shitty cracked out corner of America. Where there's even this bastard who runs motorcycles in his driveway all the time (i.e. me). Who the fuck is going to want to travel to and rent an AirBNB here? Nobody, that's who. There ain't nothing here but bikes, mud, guns, dirt, and fentanyl. So they're basically full-time empty. Some asshole or asshole(s) with capital decided this would be a great "passive income" opportunity and spent big bucks to squeeze out any private buyers. My only solace is that they've got to be getting raked over the coals now, because there's no way they make enough in rentals to cover the mortgages, utilities, and taxes.