Lawmakers say investors that scooped up hundreds of thousands of houses to rent out are driving up home prices
Wall Street went on a home-buying spree. Now, more lawmakers want to stop it from ever happening again.
Democrats in the U.S. Senate and House have sponsored legislation that would force large owners of single-family homes to sell houses to family buyers. A Republican’s bill in the Ohio state legislature aims to drive out institutional owners through heavy taxation.
Lawmakers in Nebraska, California, New York, Minnesota and North Carolina are among those proposing similar laws.
While homeowner associations for years have sought to stop investors from buying and renting out houses in their neighborhoods, the legislative proposals represent a new effort by elected officials to regulate Wall Street’s appetite for single-family homes.
These lawmakers say that investors that have scooped up hundreds of thousands of houses to rent out are contributing to the dearth of homes for sale and driving up home prices. They argue that investor buying has made it harder for first-time buyers to compete with Wall Street-backed investment firms and their all-cash offers.
Our HOA made it much harder for corporate raider types to buy and rent houses in our neighborhood. Took a lot of legwork and paying a lawyer to get the changes passed. Was well worth it, though. Sleep better at night.
I’ve mentioned this before on Lemmy, and a few pious Ackshualemmys felt the compulsion to preach about how this was just a move to keep home prices up. But it really wasn’t. The legal language still allows individual families to rent their homes if they want to. But it strictly limits how many corporate / institutional type landlords can be in the neighborhood.
My main point here is: as much as most of us hate HOAs (including me)…if you have an HOA think about leveraging it to help slow this corporate creep of mass home buying.
My problem with HOA’s is that they seem to have no accountability if a power tripping asshole is in charge. If HOA’s lost the ability to put leans on properties and was just an organization that neighbors joined of their own volition, it might be better
Then again, if they don’t have that power then they can’t do what your HOA did.
I will NEVER live in another HOA community. To your point, it just takes a few dicks to ruin it for everyone. Sold my house to an institutional investor just to get out of one. Everyone peering out their blinds, ready to speed, dial the gastopo if a car they dont recognize appears at someone else’s residence. The 6am geriatric weed police making sure everyone’s lawns are mowed at 90’ angles. Can’t have a work truck in your own driveway, gotta repaint your house every 10 years now you wanna tell me who I can and can’t unload this paper house to? Get bent. Communities usually full of big truck, clean bed freedom lovers too.
They either speed-dial the police, OR they simply just come out and shoot at whoever they feel is “invading”. My friend had a whole list of areas he wouldn’t deliver when he was running Instacart stuff because he’d gotten shot at or threatened by neighbors (or sometimes the people who actually ordered things).
My guy YOU are the accountability. Yes, it’s another exhausting and thankless form of governance, but if you hate the board and the despots? Run a flyer campaign, run for the board/leadership, get on the finance committee and run obstruction, abuse the bylaws and force actual proper process and procedure - the power trippers rarely are actual good administrators, and generally hate procedures and checks on power.
It’s not a fun process to fight back, but “refi and run” doesn’t solve the issue of bad HOAs/leadership
its an election system and you can actually call a vote by petition of residents. I get peoples feelings but there are options to stop gross negligence. Its tougher when the person is sorta annoying but not enough to go through the pain of getting rid of them or like people deciding to run themselves and do the work. Its unpaid work and in my experience the ones doing it are more put upon than those that don’t. With a few exceptions.
My condo does not allow rentals and never did. Its one reason it was affordable for me.
Word.
They paid for a lawyer? I’m jealous. I couldn’t even get mine to create a 2024 budget…in April…which is not only needed for a lender to approve the sale, it’s a legal requirement to run an HOA. And this was after the president sabotaged the first sale because I renovated it and the appraisal would make his taxes go up. So glad I’m finally out of that place…
It was a huge PITA. Our fees are very low (thank goodness) so we don’t have much of a budget to work with. But it was one of those unicorn bipartisan things where almost everyone really wanted to do it. Even some of the nay-sayers changed their minds after all was said and done and they saw how it actually works (and not how they feared it would work).