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Re: The Corporate Ownership of Homes
Gary Berman just oozes the sense of entitlement and arrogance that typifies globalist oligarchs. His company, Tricon Residential, owns 30,000 single-family homes in the United States and is buying more at the rate of 800 per month. His $5.5 billion corporation (and companies like his) has the resources to snap up the kind of home young families would like to buy. He says it’s OK because “Millennials don’t really want to own homes.”
I tend to disagree, as the father to three “Millennials” and the uncle to several more. Millennials would very much like to own their own homes, despite being propagandized their entire lives to disdain property, to have a preference for “experiences over possessions,” to own nothing and be happy. There are very good reasons for wanting to own property; and very good reason that the oligarchs don’t want you to.
Authoritarian Government supports the trend of large corporations owning rental properties. Corporations can do things that Government Constitutionally cannot (at least not until the left gets another one or two on the Supreme Court). Government cannot censor speech, but Big Tech is happy to on the Government’s behalf. If the Government cannot mandate you to take a vaccine, your employer can threaten to fire you if you don’t. If you protest against the Government, the courts may not allow them to freeze and confiscate your bank account, but a Government-regulated bank is only too happy to oblige.
So, imagine if a few companies owned the majority of homes in the United States. Perhaps, at the urging of regulators or elected officials, they might decide not to rent to gun owners, or people who protest at school board meetings, or people who think the maximum number of sexes is two. Democrats would love this state of affairs. Republicans — to whom corporations are blameless, holy creatures — would only respond “If you don’t like it, start your own multibillion-dollar hedge fund.”
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Published in General
Our Fair City has apartment buildings popping up everywhere. So much building going on in the last couple years. We keep seeing these new buildings and asking “Who is going to live in all these? Who could possibly afford them?”
Meanwhile, single-family homes seem to be at a premium.
Locally, there’s a cry for more affordable housing, but so far I don’t see much going up that’s affordable. We’re busting at the seams and looking to move to a larger house, but prices are so ridiculous, even if we just moved to a different house the same size as ours, it’s doubtful we could afford it.
So with all these new buildings, I wonder which giant corporations own them all.
I was remarking to a friend in the building industry how Texas has 200,000 apartment units in the works. He said that Texas needs 10 times that. There is huge housing shortage, so be surprised how little building is going on.
In Texas there is a property tax break (we have high property taxes) for homeowners that live in their homes. Such things would punish investors and renters. It is certainly good politics, and is probably a good policy. I see that Joe Biden wants to tax unrealized gains, that kill the housing market.
I saw this segment of 60 Minutes and it really infuriated me – and yes, you described Gary Berman well. They said scavengers like “Tricon” have cash and pounce on these listings before they ever see the light of day. A first-time buyer, or any buyer, or a financed buyer doesn’t have a chance. They jack up the price and post the rent at very high prices or sell it at a crazy price. It’s called price-gouging.
If all of a sudden, homeownership is no longer desirable, then why the promotion to anyone and everyone in 2004-2005, even those who clearly could not afford the payments, that contributed to the 2008 bust? Some very nice communities near us have outside investors buying it all up and doing the same thing. When did our land and property become for sale to the highest scammer? Because that is what it is if you have no leg in the game. You don’t live here, you don’t care about the community. I’m sad for responsible young people who want to own property and have a life, like the professionals on 60 Minutes that they interviewed.
There are a lot of things going on in this country that are very detrimental and this is one of them.
Isn’t that crazy? “Unrealized gains,” if I understand it properly, means you get taxed if you don’t sell your home.
So nationalize them without compensation.
Like paying a penalty if you opt out of Obamacare………..Democrats hate anyone who makes money the old fashioned way so they have to get it from you some way.
They hate anyone who has the audacity to save money. To not spend money. To be frugal and live within their means.
To them, money not spent is money not taxed. And it’s probably in the wrong hands — yours.
Am INCOME tax on unrealized gains is a travesty waiting to happen. If your home increases in value ten percent in a year, you would be deemed to have received that value. If you then sell the house and are taxed on the proceeds, it’s not like you would be taxed based on the at the older lower figure. You would be taxed twice for the same “gain”.
I’m not sure how a bi-annual cycle would wind up, but I bet it would be to the government’s advantage and to your loss. For example, house gains 10% this year, loses the same amount next year (about 9%), and repeats every two years. My understanding is that even unrealized losses are credited or “written” off at a reduced basis specifically to hedge against loss-chasing except in hard-to-prevent edge cases. I’ll wager that no such protective hedge is built against gain-chasing and tax assessment of “unrealized gains”.
They can’t compete with capitalism so they sabotage it. And one way of doing that is by closing off all avenues of wealth-creation; home-ownership, for example.
From my perspective, we have already accepted that they have the power to tax retroactively since (at least) the Clinton administration. Clearly, that well greased slippery slope gives them the power to tax at any point on the real and/or imaginary time continuum. Crazy? Yes…but it is the “constitutional republic” we live in now.
(See also “Commerce Clause” for fuller definition of “Crazy.”)
I always snap back to my own un-recorded (indeed, un-written) adaptation of the RUSH song “Free Will”, in which Geddy Lee (or I) will sing:
If you choose not to decide
You still have participated in interstate commerce
Naturally, this would be accompanied by Wickard on drums and Filburn on guitar.
I don’t understand. How can you tax somebody on money which they have not yet earned?
Permanent Wickard, or A Filburn to Kings?
The tax will force them to sell. And that will drive prices down. And that will decrease the funds the government will collect.
We (two millennials) have been in the homebuying process (first time) the last few months. We finally got an accepted offer last week. It was painful and every market is suffering in similar ways. We know several other millennials in other states that have been looking for much longer than us and gotten even more rejections. Regular people, especially first-time homebuyers, are getting priced out by these investors with cash offers. I don’t think our market is super hot like some other cities, but you see some markets have like 1/3 of the buyers being investors. It’s very annoying.
Don’t these investment bubbles eventually – inevitably – burst, and then the people who invested money with them get burned? Of course the top people like Berman skate off with their yachts etc, but a message is given at least until the next time, that these are not good long-term strategies.
Our Ruling Class is quite imaginative, aren’t they?
For what it’s worth, I find that viewing The Big Short about every six months keeps my tank of cynicism on such matters from running too low.
Zackly. Don isn’t making this up. It’s really under consideration.
Great point — grab more, get less. Typical.
EDIT: The profit comes in if people just price it in and hold on anyway, until the cycling gets too much. THey would presumably pay the same increase repeatedly if it cycles. How do we get cycles to increase frequency? Increase volatility. Foster panics and temporary favorites. Declare winners and losers, and keep changing your mind. Get ham-fisted with interest rates and money supply.
Hmmm… They’re not stupid. They’re just working toward different goals. They (I know, “they”, whomever “they” are — I know it when I see it dammit!) are implacably opposed to savings and to ownership of real goods.
If, for some reason, these projects fail, there will be a big government tax-payer funded program to prevent financial loss.
Who writes the rules for the stock market? Legally, they would have to redefine what stock ownership is to create a taxable event.
The biggest problem with the idea is that it makes government dependent on stock gains for spending money. That creates a huge incentive to have the Fed create inflation and investment bubbles. In 2018, California got 11.4% of tax revenue from cap gains taxes. The budget is dependent on stock bubbles. Imagine how bad it would be if California controlled their own monetary policy!
No. Just the tax law.
This is the kind of “generational” garbage the Buttigieg gang has been saying. Reparations for past injustice against minorities. Reparations for hording resources from the rising generation.
I expect it would work like property tax. They would set a valuation on your wealth and then tax that. Your problem if the selloff lowers the value. You still pay based on their number.
Time is an unjust social construct designed to suppress . . . .
Imagine how South Dakota would benefit!
Not even that, I think the long-term goal would be for government to actually take them over. Maybe buy them up when the bubble bursts and the corporations collapse.
Taxing unrealized gains…the current Biden administration proposal is for taxing unrealized gains for people whose net worth exceeds $1 billion, or whose income exceeded $100 million over three consecutive years.
It is not clear exactly what kind of assets would be counted; this article says that the tax would apply to the valuation of stocks, bonds, real estate, and art. Publicly-traded stocks and bonds are easily valued, of course, but real estate and art must be appraised for valuation, as must private-company stocks and bonds. So if this were to be enacted, you can expect a lot of additional business opportunities for appraisers, along with the obvious potential for fraud or just for skewing things ‘just a bit’.
…and, of course, the unspoken strategy of the Biden people is surely, “Well, nobody has any sympathy for billionaires, so we’ll implement this initially for them, and then gradually move the threshold down, year by year.”