Investors Buying Housing

I can reword it because I've seen it written before. I am not sure if I believe what they are saying or not, and have no real desire to get involved on either side of the argument going forward.Rewritten:> A large percentage of real estate is being purchased as investments and geopolitical hedges by extremely wealthy individuals. In many cases, this can be be literally to assist in money laundering. This effect is especially pronounced in "global cities" (NYC, London, Par

REITs buy up housing everywhere. That’s your answer - the wealthy elite need ways to keep making money.

Landlords are bidding against each other because of limited supply. People with excess capital need it to go somewhere. Stocks, bonds, real estate.It's like complaining people who buy stocks are bidding up the prices. While true, there is no vitriol against stockholders vs real estate owners.One could even argue that buying real estate does more for the economy than buying stocks - you are liquidating a developer to build more properties, and banks to give loans. Buying stocks... I gu

In many first world capitals, it's actually a common investment to buy real estate and not rent it out at all. The running costs are lower, there's no maintenance costs and no one pesters you about miscellaneous issues. All these people do is sit on the homes and wait for them to go up in price while everyone else struggles to find a place to live. Them not renting out reduces supply which further drives up prices. You don't see them up for rent because that's not the busines

This idea presupposes that owners are looking to be landlords.There is so much cash floating around the high end of the economy, thanks to QE and tax dodging and everything you've heard about, that RE is purchased simply as a way to diversify holdings beyond stocks & bonds. It never has to be used.

What you are describing is rent-seeking. Its easy to make money when house values and the stock market are expanding greater than the cost of money, particularly when you buy in at the start of the bubble.Typically the limitation for real estate ownership is lack of access to credit, or a stable job enabling you to stay in one place.

It's both: property prices have bubbled up to the point where many real buyers are investors looking to rent the houses out rather than residential owners.

The problem is when rich investors buy properties to hold, but don't actually rent them out to people. This in turn reduces the number of apartments available to the people that need them, and just drives prices artificially upwards.

It's entirely possible the units are being bought by absentee investors rather than residents.

They are not buying the homes to live in, they are buying them to rent out as investments.