Having a house to rent out is a great way to have both income AND asset appreciation, but now it is coming under attack by these morons who blame people doing the correct thing to fund their retirement needs.
OK, Fact Check here .... well not really, but 2 points
During Covid I heard 2 things
1. Most Rentals are owned buy large property owners [ looks like apartments not houses ]
2. Blackrock and other VC were competing to BUY UP as much available housing to create huge swaths of real estate ownership
- as there was going to be a huge push in the future to lock Americans into 15 min cities
[ when I say competing Blackrock could afford to pay over market value to get the sale pricing out the competition ]
The Rising Institutional Landlord
For regulators, the institutions represent a new layer of oversight challenge. Factors such as securitized borrowing and high-speed online buying combine with bulk sales from both government-sponsored entities led by Fannie Mae and, just recently, national homebuilders with surplus housing inventory, to further stack the deck against the already underdogged first-time homebuyer.
North Carolina's Charlotte Observer detailed one case in which an institutional buyer paid a 12% premium to the seller's asking price — tough to compete with for most working-class home shoppers, and hard to refuse even for community-minded sellers.
These sorts of questions prompted the House Financial Services' Oversight & Investigations committee to hold a June 28 hearing titled "Where Have All the Houses Gone? Private Equity, Single Family Rentals and America's Neighborhoods."
Individuals, and individual investors who own one to four properties, make up the bulk of America's homeowners. The national homeownership rate, or the proportion of homes that are owner-occupied, stood at 65.8% in the second quarter of 2022, according to Census Bureau data. That's down from 67.9% in Q2 2020, which was the highest level since the third quarter of 2008.
Before 2008, investors with five or more properties owned about 10 million single-family rental homes, according to information presented in the House report. That was a bit less than 8% of the 129.64 million single-family homes late in 2007, based on Census Bureau data. Until 2011, no single investor in the country owned more than 10,000 properties, the House committee reported.
Large Buyers Take Advantage Of Crises
By the end of 2021, Tricon Residential owned 29,000 single-family home rentals, primarily in the U.S. Sunbelt. That was up from about 11,860 units in 2018. Invitation reported owning 80,000 homes in 16 markets, largely unchanged since the end of 2018. American Homes for Rent owned 57,024 properties in 22 states, up from 52,552 in its December 2018 filing.
While the overall number of homes owned in some cases may not change a great deal, that masks the fact that homes are constantly being sold off in securitized packages. Those securities, backed by single-family home rental properties, generate the capital used to buy additional homes.
Corporate ownership of single-family home rentals rose 3% a year starting in 2010, the House Committee said in its June hearing. Over the past decade, purchases by buyers owning five or more properties ranged from 15% to 17% of total single-family home sales, according to market research firm CoreLogic. Since 2017, such investors have purchased about 1.1 million homes each year.
Large investor purchases rose dramatically after the start of the pandemic. Buying by owners of five or more properties reached 24% of all single-family houses sold nationwide last year, CoreLogic data showed. The purchases peaked in February 2022, spiking to 28% of total single-family purchases. That was the highest monthly share since 2011, in the buying frenzy that followed the housing meltdown of the Great Recession.
In March, the Federal Reserve launched its monetary tightening program, aimed at bringing down inflation. It ramped its rate hikes higher in May through September. That has driven mortgage rates higher, with a 30-year fixed-rate loan now near 7%, more than double the year-ago levels.