Mastodawn

MicroWave May 10, 2024

Wall Street has spent billions buying homes. A crackdown is looming.

Wall Street has spent billions buying homes. A crackdown is looming. - Lemmy.World

Lawmakers say investors that scooped up hundreds of thousands of houses to rent out are driving up home prices Wall Street went on a home-buying spree. Now, more lawmakers want to stop it from ever happening again. Democrats in the U.S. Senate and House have sponsored legislation that would force large owners of single-family homes to sell houses to family buyers. A Republican’s bill in the Ohio state legislature aims to drive out institutional owners through heavy taxation. Lawmakers in Nebraska, California, New York, Minnesota and North Carolina are among those proposing similar laws. While homeowner associations for years have sought to stop investors from buying and renting out houses in their neighborhoods, the legislative proposals represent a new effort by elected officials to regulate Wall Street’s appetite for single-family homes. These lawmakers say that investors that have scooped up hundreds of thousands of houses to rent out are contributing to the dearth of homes for sale and driving up home prices. They argue that investor buying has made it harder for first-time buyers to compete with Wall Street-backed investment firms and their all-cash offers. Non-paywall link [https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/wall-street-has-spent-billions-buying-homes-a-crackdown-is-looming/ar-AA1nQQvi]

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Boozilla May 10, 2024

Our HOA made it much harder for corporate raider types to buy and rent houses in our neighborhood. Took a lot of legwork and paying a lawyer to get the changes passed. Was well worth it, though. Sleep better at night.

I’ve mentioned this before on Lemmy, and a few pious Ackshualemmys felt the compulsion to preach about how this was just a move to keep home prices up. But it really wasn’t. The legal language still allows individual families to rent their homes if they want to. But it strictly limits how many corporate / institutional type landlords can be in the neighborhood.

My main point here is: as much as most of us hate HOAs (including me)…if you have an HOA think about leveraging it to help slow this corporate creep of mass home buying.

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HubertManne May 10, 2024

My condo does not allow rentals and never did. Its one reason it was affordable for me.

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CosmicTurtle0 [he/him]May 10, 2024

When I lived in a condo, there was a cap on the total of units that could be rented.

Rentals required an additional administrative charge to the HOA, which essentially acted as a property manager.

Basically, it was so that people who had to move temporarily for extended periods (like being deployed) could keep their house.

Imo, it was a good compromise.

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HubertManne

Yeah I would not mind that. From what I know from other people is you had to be on a list and it sorta rotated if all the slots were filled. Downside it would seem to me is if you had folks trying to keep it as rental property rather than a temporary situation. Also likely a bit harder to enforce compliance since some units are legitimately rented whereas in my situation folks would notice if you tried to rent it out. Its actually really restricted. Units can only be occupied if your on the lease or certain direct relatives like children.