this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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I might be wrong but the % of homes owned by corporations is really tiny. low single digits if I remember correctly.
With all the profiteering by corporations since covid, the cost to build a house has gone up substantially. That narrows the consumer base and forces builders to reduce margins. Unless of course they build a "luxury" home or apt. Then you have large investors battling it out and snapping them up. So, it is more profitable to build luxury homes rather than homes for peasants. The investors can afford to set on the empty house and hold them if they can't get the rent they want. In fact, many large investors don't even bother to try to rent and just hold the property to have secure investments during market fluctuations. So they are building like crazy, but the homes they're building can't be afforded by the people that actually need them.
So, it doesn't take a ton of housing being owned by big investors to fuck the market, they just have to be buying up all the new stock in what is already a limited market.
Its not an issue of luxury home construction vs peasant home construction I doubt this even makes a dent. Investors are not buying up empty houses and sitting on them because they are to lazy to rent them out, thats absurd.
The issue is simply that housing development is to slow. The demand to build houses in higher density is there but local zoning laws and nimby residents block the developments. In cities where zoning laws were changed to allow development we see prices decrease.
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2024/10/22/report-billionaire-investors-driving-homelessness-housing-costs/#%3A%7E%3Atext=%E2%80%9CWealthy+investors+are+buying+up%2Cestate+as+a+luxury+asset.
https://archive.is/20250110182457/https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/the-u-s-has-more-fancy-apartments-than-it-is-able-to-fill-f7bca968