> Of those, mom-and-pop investors, or those who own between 1 and 5 homes, account for 85% of all investor-owned residential properties, while those with between 6 and 10 properties account for another 5%.
They don’t provide any concrete evidence for how they classify “mom and pop” (to be fair i haven't had the time to read the original paper). It’s standard operating procedure to split investment properties between many subsidiaries to limit the financial splash damage. It’s mostly a legal fiction because the property managers are directors of multiple corporations managing dozens of properties, but the courts haven't cracked down on it yet. I’m suspicious of whatever statistics they use to classify investors.
(I’m speaking only of the investors that buy to rent extract, I have no insight into the flippers)
Not when they’re funneled through states like Wyoming and Nevada which an enormous amount of them are… both have very good privacy laws protecting the owners identity. Often times there will be a local LLC which is owned by (at least one) separate out of state LLC in Nevada or Wyoming obfuscating who the true owners are. There’s a whole industry behind this.
It's actually not, because it's a non-issue. The privacy of a Wyoming LLC doesn't mean protection. Your name isn't on any of the public records documents, but a court order can still force the disclosure of the interested parties.
It’s only a non-issue only if you have legal standing and the wherewithal/funding to push through to discovery, which in this case is a really (in)convenient catch-22 if you’re a constituent who wants to institute reform.
The fourth estate, the one that we ostensibly trust to hold power to account, again very conveniently, does not generally have that standing, FOIA excepted.
Not everyone has to be rich to want/need privacy. Maybe you had threats against your life and dont want your house and vehicle to be traceable to your name. Maybe you disagree with the automated license plate reader/tracker and this is one of the only legal ways around that.
Shit even if not something like that, 5 homes in the middle quintile in my city would be around 2.4 million dollars. That's the entire net worth of a middle class family at the end of their earning years, including their house. The only people whose mom and pop have that kind of money to invest are rich folks. It's just as much a problem as the other thing in practical terms.
>You’re not a mom and pop landlord if you’re just buying a second home to move into with intent to sell your current one.
That's my point. The person I'm replying to is being obtuse and sarcastically arguing that the investor criteria requires owning 3+ as an attempt to use absurdity to force people to admit that 2+ makes you an "investor" thereby classifying the people who are simply swapping homes like you stated as "investors".
blindriver: "you must own two homes and then buying a third makes you an investor"
me: "no, that would mean people who own one home to live in and one home to rent out are not investors. Owning one and investing in a second makes you an investor."
You: "you are sarcastically and obtusely arguing that being an investor requires owning 3+ homes!"
No, I'm not arguing that.
> "thereby classifying the people who are simply swapping homes like you stated as "investors""
Nobody was talking about people who own two homes while moving houses. But if we were then the choice is (people who own a second house to rent are not classed as investors just in case they get confused with people moving house) which is wrong permanently and silly, vs (people who own two homes while selling their old home are classed as investors for a while) which is wrong temporarily but not too unreasonable, then I will pick the latter.
That was my mom and pop in the 80s they bought about one house a year. Empty derelict houses purchased from the city for between $1000 and $15,000. The city provided matching grants to fix them up. Also the city paid the rent for the Cambodian and Vietnamese migrants that came here to live. My parents invested the organization and literal sweat equity to fix up these homes.
Intent doesn't matter; you can justify about any horrible behavior imaginable by saying you're looking after your family. I resent the commodification of housing and the destabilizing effects it has across society. Where's the upside?
In my area owning a trailer park home requires being in like the top 1% internationally. Owning 1 home in Oakland may be worse than owning 4 in Detroit, in terms of being an under-hated under-taxed elite.
Who needs more than two? You can only live in one at a time.
Why let the rentier class grow any larger than they already are?
It's not like there is an oversupply of desirable housing. And even if there were an oversupply, the answer isn't to incentivize the rich to get richer.
