How They Are Going To Steal Our Homes

[EndtheMadnessNow]

“The more that investors buy up entire communities and turn them into rental communities — people don’t have a choice anymore,” said Ms. Hilton, who moved from New York to Charlotte in 2007, drawn by the opportunity to buy a house in an affordable market. “They either can’t afford to buy anymore, or there’s nothing to buy.”

A map compiled by Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, shows a sea of dots signifying corporate ownership throughout the area; the exception is a pie slice-shaped segment extending out from downtown Charlotte — the historically whiter, wealthier neighborhoods often referred to as “the wedge.” More than 93 percent of homes purchased by corporations as of May 2021 were bought for under $300,000. Many of them were in predominantly Black neighborhoods.

But their share is growing: Real estate investors bought a record 18.4 percent of the homes that were sold in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2021, up from 12.6 percent a year earlier, according to the realty company Redfin.

And in some markets, especially in the relatively affordable Sun Belt metro areas, their share is far higher.

In Charlotte and Atlanta, investors purchased more than 30 percent of the homes sold in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to Redfin. In Jacksonville, Fla., Las Vegas, and Phoenix, they bought just under 30 percent.

With apartments in her neighborhood typically renting for $1,500 or more, Ms. Parker and other longtime homeowners worry that property tax increases will displace even more residents.
NY Times

BlackRock President: Get Used to Scarcity Inflation

Rob Kapito tells “a very entitled generation that has never had to sacrifice” that shortages will keep driving up prices.

BlackRock President Rob Kapito says “scarcity inflation” is driving the US economy, as shortages of workers, agricultural supplies, energy and housing are driving up prices.

At the meeting of the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association, Kapito also had some choice words for millennials and Gen Xers coping with rising prices and shortages of essentials like housing and groceries.

Kapito didn’t specify which generation he was referencing, but his remarks in Texas drew a withering response on social media. Comments posted by millennials noted that younger workers emerged from the recession that followed the fiscal collapse in 2008 generally less well-off than previous generations at their age, facing higher debt.

Many of the comments accused BlackRock of contributing to the surge in home rental prices with investments in home purchases for a revived single-family rental portfolio, confusing the giant asset manager with a distant cousin it is no longer related to: Blackstone Group.

When BlackRock was launched as a fledgling risk management and bond analytics firm in 1988 by Kapito and Larry Fink, it was called Blackstone Financial Management and was seeded by Blackstone founders Steve Schwarzman and Pete Peterson.

The partnership split up in 1994, with Kapito and Fink forming their own company. In what he later called one of the worst decisions of his life, Schwarzman agreed to let Kapito and Fink call their new entity BlackRock. What followed were more than 25 years of incorrect headlines in business publications attributing actions taken by the Blackstone Group to BlackRock, which no longer has a stake in Blackstone.

Blackstone Group, now one of the world’s largest alternative investment firms with an estimated $880 billion in holdings, has been an active player in the SFR market.

Blackstone Group was a prime backer of Invitation Homes, the largest US player in the SFR sector with 80,000 homes for lease, until it sold its shares in 2019.

Blackstone dipped a toe back into the SFR market with a $240-million investment in Tricon Residential, a Toronto-based company that buys single-family rentals. Last summer, Blackstone jumped back into the rental market with both feet with a $6-billion acquisition of Home Partners of America, which owns 17,000 houses in the US and specializes in rent-to-buy.

What home prices will look like in 2023, according to Zillow’s revised downward forecast (April 21, 2022)

There's no doubt about it: Soaring mortgage rates are an economic shock to the U.S. housing market. Over the past month alone, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has spiked from 3.11% to 5.11%. It's both pricing out some stretched homebuyers and causing some would-be borrowers to lose their mortgage eligibility.

Now, real estate researchers are dialing down their home price forecasts. On Wednesday, Zillow researchers released a revised forecast, predicting that U.S. home prices would rise 14.9% between March 2022 and March 2023. That's down 2.9 percentage points from last month, when Zillow said home prices would shoot up 17.8% over the coming year.

Both homebuyers and home sellers alike might want to take housing forecasts with a grain of salt. Look no further than the housing forecasts published during the COVID-19 recession. In the spring of 2020, both Zillow and CoreLogic published economic models predicting that U.S. home prices would fall by spring 2021. That price drop never came. Instead, the housing market went on a historic run that continues to today.

Fannie Mae: A recession is likely in 2023, but the hot housing market should cushion the blow (April 22, 2022)

Banks and investors are all warning that the likelihood of a recession is growing. The only question is, how bad will it be?

The biggest fears are that a contraction in 2023 might match the impact of the Great Recession. But this isn’t 2008, and there is one crucial economic metric that could prove to be the difference-maker between a severe recession and a moderate one: the red-hot U.S. housing market.

In its latest economic and housing outlook report, mortgage giant Fannie Mae concedes that a “soft landing” for the economy—wherein inflation dissipates without forcing a significant decline in economic activity—is now doubtful. But because of the housing market, a “modest recession” will likely be on the cards for the latter half of 2023.

This deceleration of prices will likely lead to a slowdown in activity—there is already some evidence of home prices cooling—but it likely won’t be enough to see the housing market contract and crash as it did in 2008.

Back in 2008 we weren't going through a globalist global revolution like we are today.