I recently saw a law review article quote an article with the headline: "Are Hedge Funds And Equity Funds Driving Up The Cost of Housing?" The article wrote that there is a "more plausible hypothesis behind the housing affordability crisis—namely, that hedge funds and private equity firms have been … [Read more...]
Where investors invest
One argument I have run across recently is that the high cost of housing is caused by mysterious corporate investors are buying up real estate and forcing up the cost. The stupidest version of this argument is that investors are hoarding all the real estate. Why is it stupid? Because … [Read more...]
Empty Houses, part 2
The most interesting comment to my last post focused on one narrow issue: to what extent are vacant housing units second homes (and thus presumably less likely to be rented out) as opposed to units for rent/sale or held for other unknown reasons? Why does this matter? Because one might argue … [Read more...]