[HN Gopher] Investors Are Buying Mobile Home Parks. Residents Ar...
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Investors Are Buying Mobile Home Parks. Residents Are Paying a
Price
Author : ctoth
Score : 31 points
Date : 2022-03-27 18:40 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| client4 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/GVWJZ
| ctoth wrote:
| They're buying up all the affordable rental houses and increasing
| the rent, they're buying up the mobile home parks that are some
| of the "few remaining sources of affordable housing," and pretty
| soon here it seems they'll be buying themselves a trip to the
| guillotine. I'm honestly not sure how else this goes and hope I'm
| wrong but this is surely unsustainable. Stein's law says if
| something cannot continue forever it will stop.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| IMO all depends if they are buying with cash or with mortgage.
| Investment mortgages should only go towards new housing, not
| compete with existing.
|
| Arguable all housing investment should go into new housing, not
| competing.
| paskozdilar wrote:
| Either that, or the world will converge into a dystopia where a
| ruling class owns everything and working class rents and lives
| day to day.
| throwntoday wrote:
| You _will_ own nothing and you _will_ be happy
| [deleted]
| helge9210 wrote:
| I think the proper term here would be feudalism.
| solarmist wrote:
| Yeah, return to.
| black_13 wrote:
| missedthecue wrote:
| Sounds like there is not enough competition in the space. A
| result of government zoning law no doubt.
| ctoth wrote:
| Hoping my sarcasm detector is misfiring here, I still want to
| engage with this comment. Can you explain to me how zoning
| law does anything to change the reality that poor people are
| being outbid by large corporations when attempting to buy
| their homes? If the land were zoned for anything, how would
| this change the fundamental truth that a large corporation
| with access to capital can outbid poor people whose largest
| assets are the homes that are being taken away from them? If
| there were more competition in the mobile home market, okay
| cool, now the people trying to buy their land are fighting
| against even more corporations? Really hoping this was
| supposed to be a funny and I'm not getting it.
| missedthecue wrote:
| When the supply of houses is limited, but the number of
| bidders is increasing, the price can only do one thing;
| rapidly increase to meet the new equilibrium.
|
| I am not talking about more competition in the buyers side,
| I am talking about more competition in the building and
| selling side. If supply increases to match or outstrip the
| new demand, the prices of homes, mobile and otherwise, will
| fall.
|
| Clearly, selling homes is profitable because home prices
| are so high. So why are new homes not being built? The
| answer is because zoning laws in our current vetocracy
| explicitly prevent the construction of new housing under a
| variety of pretexts. We have been under-building for 10
| years now and it's time to pay the piper.
| joshcryer wrote:
| Permits are the highest they've been in the past 5 years.
| This is almost certainly supply chain and labor effects
| and we will feel them for years to come. Here's a link to
| the Census Building Permits survey:
| https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/
|
| You can read a brief info graphic here: https://www.censu
| s.gov/construction/nrc/pdf/newresconst.pdf
|
| Note that "starts" of new buildings is close to permits,
| but completions are flat. There either isn't enough
| materials to finish these projects or there's a labor
| shortage to complete these projects.
|
| edit: not agreeing with your supply and demand argument
| tho there's lots of reasons people can't build in certain
| areas (where people want to live), but house prices are
| going up across the board, there really is an effort by
| the owner class to buy everything up and flip it to
| rental.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Highest in the 5 years is still ridiculously low.
|
| With a much smaller population, we used to frequently see
| 2m+ monthly starts. We haven't been _close_ in coming up
| on 20 years. Yet the US population is higher than it has
| ever been.
|
| (image of graph)
|
| https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zYvA49j3pFA/XxGa4SdGiOI/AAAAAA
| AA1...
| salawat wrote:
| How about the fact home prices are inflated to the point
| where you must take out a loan?
|
| The ubiquity of the mortgage seems like it's more an
| enabler of corporatized property buying by turning homes
| into a financial vehicle.
|
| You can blame zoning all you want, but really all zoning
| is is trying to ensure you don't end up with something
| massively disruptive to the surrounding area popping up
| without getting due attention paid to it. Furthermore,
| the big push for "high density housing" doesn't do squat
| to make ownable housing more accessible.
|
| Face it. It's the incestuous relationship with the
| financial sector. Cut that, and you're at least not
| continuing to do the same thing over and over again, but
| expecting a different result.
| missedthecue wrote:
| The last time people normally bought houses without
| mortgages was what? Pre 1920? The housing market has been
| functional since then.
| meetingthrower wrote:
| Mobile home zoning is also now almost impossible to get, so
| supply is constrained which jacks up the price of the
| existing parks. There is basically zero chance of being
| able to buy land and start a park from scratch.
| paskozdilar wrote:
| Shelter should be a public utility, just like water and
| electricity.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Kinda. Social housing should strive to compete with private
| housing. Gov has long term investment incentive plus they
| control the demand (interest rates) AND supply (permits).
| missedthecue wrote:
| Calling something a "right" or "public utility" doesn't
| magically conjure up fresh supply.
| paskozdilar wrote:
| No, but _making_ it a "right" or "public utility" forces
| the government (which _can_ , albeit non-magically,
| conjure up fresh supply) to conjure up fresh supply.
| imapeopleperson wrote:
| > I'm honestly not sure how else this goes
|
| An entrepreneur will develop new mobile home parks and offer
| them for less. God bless capitalism
| netsharc wrote:
| Feels like the "gotta keep the wheels of capitalism turning"
| has lead to this. Maybe this is yet another kooky theory like
| the others I see here, but: government "printing" money to
| keep the economy running means corporations have so much cash
| but nowhere to invest, as well as lack of regulations ("Hey
| Senator, how's your reelection campaign going? Oh you need a
| few million dollars to give to the media companies to buy
| campaign ads? Let's go for a game of golf and we can talk, my
| private plane will pick you up.") that they've gone
| predatory...
| technofiend wrote:
| That only works up to a point. You can't live 50 miles from
| work if there's no public transportation and you can't afford
| a reliable car.
| shukantpal wrote:
| 37% of jobs in US can be remote. That's easing a lot of
| that pressure. God bless capitalism.
| paskozdilar wrote:
| I believe that many jobs in the would could cease to
| exist, and the world would still function the same, if
| not better.
|
| An example that comes to mind are the "rent brokers" in
| my city - all they do is post rent ads to a local ebay-
| like website, answer the phones and write contracts (of
| questionable legal authority). Other than that, they are
| completely useless - they provide no useful information,
| and often lie just to get you to sign. And they take the
| first rent as payment.
|
| I still have no idea why so many people choose to work
| with them.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| And state says "NEIN" to your new mobile home park.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| Who are all these investors, and is there a limit to the umber of
| people that can afford their product? I hear they buy real
| estate, then don't use it because it's 'just a place to stash
| money', or 'they'll make money on the appreciation'
|
| and it just seems like there's a limited group of people buying
| things that can no longer be used as things because they're 'held
| money'. They won't be worth quite so much if there's nobody that
| can afford them. Then what will the investors spend their money
| on?
| livueta wrote:
| I thought it was interesting/unfortunate that the role of Fannie
| Mae and Freddie Mac in this dynamic was limited to a single
| sentence at the bottom of the article.
|
| A lot of this is self-inflicted (or, depending on your
| perspective, working as intended):
| https://www.npr.org/2021/12/18/1034784494/how-the-government...
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