For anyone who didn't click into the article, the headline may be misleading without the sub headline, which currently is "Relatively speaking, California is not a hot spot for housing investors". The map graphic shows that 19% is lower than other large states (e.g. 22% in Texas, 21% in Florida, 20% in New York). And lower than other west coast states generally (22% in Washington and Oregon, 25% in Nevada, and 23% in Arizona).
I’m interested in the methodology they use to identify investor-owned homes. Are they comparing known resident addresses to the names on property tax records? How does it work when multiple members of the same family have different last names? It seems fairly common for members of different generations of family (including in-laws) to live in a house that one person owns. How are you distinguishing an investment from a family living arrangement?
California real estate is such a tragedy, as huge portions of the population are suffering from a housing shortage caused almost exclusively by not building enough homes.
A majority of people own real estate, so they're happy with the status quo. Why would you put up with even the slightest personal inconvenience from added housing, if all it got you was a reduced value of your property?
I mean someone has to rent, to renters right? Not everyone plans to live in the same place forever, and not everyone wants to put up the capital to buy a place. Some percentage of housing needs to be owned by investors to make that capacity available for short-term living. What's the delta between 19% and neutral?
California has a massive housing problem, which is just not building enough houses. Doesn't matter much to me who owns them.
And this is _less_ than the national average. In fact, below the median.
From the article:
> By this math, 19% of California houses were owned by investors, ranking No. 36 among the states and just below the 20% national norm. By county, tiny Sierra has the most (83%) and Ventura the least (14%).
From my cursory analysis, "# of new housing units authorized" is by far the strongest predictor of rent & home values decreasing: https://i.imgur.com/BMsPrKY.png (r^2 = 0.47, P-value 0.000)
Nothing else ("% of housing owned by investors"?) is even close.
edit: Yes, obviously I included a time lag (3 years).
Since only 40% of those "owner"-occupied homes have their mortgages paid off, that means the bank owns the other 60%.
Doing the math, this means only about 28% of people actually own the place in which they live. The other 72% is owned by banks, investors, landlords, etc.
That fully 20% of homes in California - intended to be owned by families or individuals as their primary residence - are instead served out as rentals, and this is a low percentage compared to other states, is a massive indicator of the one the key issues facing Americans:
We don't own anything. Not even our own homes. Not even our lives, which we sell to others at a discount as "labor".
When we don't own anything, we have no stability. When we have no stability, we live in a constant state of uncertainty, which is just another word for "fear". Fear makes us act desperately or angrily or selfishly.
And the people who run everything use that fear to manipulate us into agreeing to be exploited by them - to work for them, vote for them, worship with/for/on them, etc.
If you actually want peace and freedom and liberty and all those things Americans claim to care about, we need to start by building stability in our lives.
That starts by taking back ownership of those things that belong to us through our efforts. The mortgage companies provide zero value to homeowners - they simply gate who gets to live in a home vs. who must pay for a rental, which is even more unstable.
Replace hierarchies with cooperatives. Stop using money as the exclusive determining factor of whether someone is housed, fed, clothed, or cared for.
Desperate people make lousy workers - ask any power and money pervert who believes in this system how hard it is to find good indentured servants who will just obey without complaining.
Stable, cared for people make excellent workers - fear may be a motivator, but gratitude is an even greater motivator. When people are stable and able to relax, they are more often willing to contribute toward keeping that stability. You see this when people who have "free" time spend it volunteering for their community.
If that stability comes at the expense of others, however, it's inherently unethical and leads us back exactly to the situation where we are now - where some people gain stability by manipulating others into working for them and stealing from them a significant portion of the value they create.
Its crazy that the article is missing the point that on an ABSOLUTE basis, 1 out of 5 homes being owned by investors is ludicrous. California's relative "not hot spot" is not the central issue.
Seems like extremely important context that 91% of these investor-owned houses are owned by entities with 5 or fewer houses: in other words, these are mostly houses that normal mom-and-pop homeowners bought.
What I find odd is that definition of "investor" is not that clear. When you click through the links you get blocked at the data provider with no context. There's also a link to another post by the same news provider. When clicking through reference to the data source, the link doesn't work.
That number needs to be broken down between institutional investors and "regular" landlords who own a second property which they rent out (and likely either just covers the mortgage/taxes/upkeep, or is an older already-paid-for property i.e., inherited). The former is a business, the latter is not.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 46.4 ms ] thread> 19% of California houses were owned by investors, ranking No. 36 among the states and just below the 20% national norm.
States with the highest share of investor-owned houses:
> Hawaii at 40%, Alaska at 35%, Vermont at 31%, West Virginia at 30%, and Wyoming at 30%.
States with the lowest are all in the Mid-Atlantic and lower New England:
> Connecticut at 10%, Rhode Island and Massachusetts at 12%, and Delaware at 13%.
Why so low in California (again, I'm baffled that this is "low")?
> the sky-high price tag for single-family homes, the third-highest nationally at $866,100
A majority of people own real estate, so they're happy with the status quo. Why would you put up with even the slightest personal inconvenience from added housing, if all it got you was a reduced value of your property?
California has a massive housing problem, which is just not building enough houses. Doesn't matter much to me who owns them.
Maybe stable white color employing businesses mixed with a constant out migration of younger people, more likely to be renters, to the coasts?
From the article:
> By this math, 19% of California houses were owned by investors, ranking No. 36 among the states and just below the 20% national norm. By county, tiny Sierra has the most (83%) and Ventura the least (14%).
Nothing else ("% of housing owned by investors"?) is even close.
edit: Yes, obviously I included a time lag (3 years).
[1] https://constructioncoverage.com/research/cities-investing-m...
[2] eg, https://www.zillow.com/home-values/10221/austin-tx/#/
Various stats put the ratio of owner-occupied residences to renter-occupied residences at roughly 70% to 30% (https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/rent-statistics)
Since only 40% of those "owner"-occupied homes have their mortgages paid off, that means the bank owns the other 60%.
Doing the math, this means only about 28% of people actually own the place in which they live. The other 72% is owned by banks, investors, landlords, etc.
That fully 20% of homes in California - intended to be owned by families or individuals as their primary residence - are instead served out as rentals, and this is a low percentage compared to other states, is a massive indicator of the one the key issues facing Americans:
We don't own anything. Not even our own homes. Not even our lives, which we sell to others at a discount as "labor".
When we don't own anything, we have no stability. When we have no stability, we live in a constant state of uncertainty, which is just another word for "fear". Fear makes us act desperately or angrily or selfishly.
And the people who run everything use that fear to manipulate us into agreeing to be exploited by them - to work for them, vote for them, worship with/for/on them, etc.
If you actually want peace and freedom and liberty and all those things Americans claim to care about, we need to start by building stability in our lives.
That starts by taking back ownership of those things that belong to us through our efforts. The mortgage companies provide zero value to homeowners - they simply gate who gets to live in a home vs. who must pay for a rental, which is even more unstable.
Replace hierarchies with cooperatives. Stop using money as the exclusive determining factor of whether someone is housed, fed, clothed, or cared for.
Desperate people make lousy workers - ask any power and money pervert who believes in this system how hard it is to find good indentured servants who will just obey without complaining.
Stable, cared for people make excellent workers - fear may be a motivator, but gratitude is an even greater motivator. When people are stable and able to relax, they are more often willing to contribute toward keeping that stability. You see this when people who have "free" time spend it volunteering for their community.
If that stability comes at the expense of others, however, it's inherently unethical and leads us back exactly to the situation where we are now - where some people gain stability by manipulating others into working for them and stealing from them a significant portion of the value they create.