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The US needs to build 2 million houses to revive the American dream of homeownership
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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yes there is currently extra housing but, unfortunately, sites like airbnb have moved large swaths of the housing market to the luxury hotel market leading to a shortage in actual housing as wealthy, investor, and corporate class people pay premiums for short term rentals that most people simply can't compete with.
Airbnb isnt as big a problem as much as corporate owned housing is.
Companies like Blackstone need to be absorbed by the US Govt.
yeah but before airbnb this was not much of an issue. They do seem to go hand in hand.
A lot of airbnbs are owned by corporations. Also, airbnb came out around the time corporations really started investing in single family homes en masse. Airbnb started in 2008, which was at the same time as the housing bubble collapse that helped investors buy up on the cheap. It's hard to say which was the chicken and which was the egg.
yeah exactly. Its hard to say which influenced which but they are both a part of it. I mean I remember how the concept for it and the ride thing was more of a social couch surfing thing. we really need to capture these back to things like the federation and get the gross corpo profits out of it.
I disagree that airbnb is the issue here. Corporate ownership of houses that are subsequently rented out would still be an endemic issue that needs to be addressed, even IF airbnb and vrbo apps were to be outright banned (they wont be)
the airbnb's would have otherwise been rentals. I agree corp ownership is an issue regardless but that does not mean its the sole issue around a problem.
airbnb itself is not the whole problem. But its important to recognize it changed markets worldwide by pitting the luxury hotel market in direct competition with housing
so the problem is more that the internet has caused a rich market to overflow into housing - you have to also consider people are going on work trips and getting reimbursed for staying at an airbnb etc. Wedding parties as well seem to prefer airbnbs. The result is a worldwide catastrophe for residential housing.
But its very simple: A high demand, luxury market overflows into residential housing. The obvious result is residential prices skyrocket with demand.
Did Airbnb cause this? not entirely, they're just the best at it. Addressing Blackstone will help by removing some of the cash competing for residential housing, but it won't solve the problem entirely until like wedding parties and vacationers go back to using hotels and companies are no longer able to reimburse people for airbnb stays. You have to address the excess demand from the market spillover that airbnb has made its profits on. Otherwise you're just ignoring one of the primary reasons Blackstone entered the market - there are lots of individuals doing the same thing as Blackstone on a smaller scale here
So then our problem is that we allow moneyed interests to monopolize home ownership so they can extract wealth from people who actually generate it. It is quite literally the definition of rent seeking behavior.
Also boomers are both buying retirement homes and holding onto their previous homes, rather than letting them go back on the market and alleviate some of the shortage. They have more purchasing power than any of the younger generations because they have decades of equity built up, and they're trying to keep their previous homes to pass onto their children. Both are contributing to the upward price pressure.