Urban areas need a warehousing tax (with serious penalties for “sockpuppet rentals” -when a landlord rents out to a fake arm of the landlord…)
They need federal safeharbor laws for microhousing. Real estate developers HATE when microhousing makes their McMansions and bouji luxe rentals irrelevant! So…they run to get local ordinances passed to discourage microhousing.
And you said the other thing needed: restriction or limiting sales to private equity.
Thanks TYT for bringing attention to this. While buying a house is likely beyond the reach of most people on this site, this is one of the main reasons why that is, in fact, the case. Personally, I got hammered in 2008 to the point of filing bankruptcy, only to watch the Obama Administration not only bail out Wall Street, but chastise us Tax Payers as having been irresponsible to begin with. Fine, I will share partial responsibility for that, but was angered by the fact that Wall Street never had to take any responsibility at all, let alone lose out on their profit margins. That’s because they, Themselves, were completely bailed out by those of us who were not. We were promised at the time that restrictions would be put into place to stop these greedy sociopaths on Wall Street from taking advantage of all of us yet again. While they can no longer bet against mortgages and other such bizarre stock related games, like before, they have found new tricks up their sleeves as described in the video above. I would also add that an even bigger scandal that is brewing is the Collateralized Loan Obligation market (known as CLOs). It is literally about to deep six the Banking System yet again. Simply put, people with good credit are landing loans from banks, only to turn around and loan out the money to bad players, who would not qualify for such loans themselves, at higher interest rates. This is what a CLO is. This has come about not because these bad players and the new loan applicants with good credit that are enabling them are not making money, which they are hand over fist, but not making money “fast enough.” (Yeah, take all the time you need to think about that little twist of complete greed, selfishness, and ruthlessness.) Since all signs are pointing at another downturn in the market – which though normal, is likely to be worse than 2008 – these loans, which will fail due to the bad players not paying back the original owner of the loan when things go bad, will end up being dropped back into the Banking System, which will, in turn, go back to the Federal Government and us Taxpayers to bail them out – YET AGAIN! This is why people on both sides of the political landscape are so ticked off at both the Republicans and Democrats, yet seemingly don’t have the courage to support an independent party instead. It won’t happen, of course, but both the Senate and House of Representatives should be holding Hearings about what exactly these Billionaire investors and Capitalists do for our Great Country besides screw it over every single chance they get. It seems to me that this is a serious Security Threat to all of us.
John Oliver did a great show on how speculators prey on mobile home owners. It’s just a special form of what is going on with all residential properties in the US right now.
In case you missed it:
