Hacker News Reader

Comment by TrackerFF | Hacker News Reader

Imagine a future where it is impossible for the poor classes to purchase a home, because some trillion dollar real-estate funds have captured the entire marked.

View on HN

That's a problem of regulation/NIMBYsm right? Because if someone has 'captured' entire market, it means no one is living in those houses, they are just purchased and locked up. Meaning, they don't consume any resources, don't result in water, electricity networks etc. being strained, and don't result in extra congestion. Meaning, there's no problem to just build more. Unless regulations/zoning prevent it. So fight zoning, not "inequality".

Purchase rental units, jack up the price, see what the pain threshold for your tenants is. It is expensive to relocate, especially if you're poor.

Some of these real-estate investment companies own hundreds of thousands of rental units. They purchase swaths of blocks, all over the world, and do nothing but increase the price. Usually they just purchase parts, or entire portfolios off smaller companies.

The goal is monopoly. And it has worked well of the past decades with low/zero interest rate policy.

nop, corpos acquire a lot of houses in the market and rent them. They can pay more for the houses since their scope of investment (years to break even) is longer than your average mens' lifespan. rent goes up. a smaller and smaller percentage of population can buy houses because there are fewer on the market. rent keeps everyone poor. This is happening now, in every major developed country

But there's nothing preventing from building more and more houses if not zoning. Zoning is the problem enabling this.

The future you describe is already here.

Future? Is this sarcasm?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com