I see a lot of expensive houses being built in my area. A LOT. And the weird thing is that they’re being bought pretty quickly. Are these people just making more money than me? If so, what are they doing for a living? Or are they just living house poor? How exactly are they affording these places?

Edit: For reference, my neighborhood is starting to become popular (because the other popular neighborhoods have priced most people out of affording places there). The normal price of newer homes here is $700k. My home, built in 1965, which is 2500sq ft on a quarter acre of land, is $500k.

  • Veraxus@kbin.social
    1·
    11 months ago

    They are not being bought by regular people like you - they are being bought by investment companies, hedge funds, and filthy rich investors… all for the the sole purpose of turning them into rentals.

    By turning them into rentals, they keep supply low which increases prices… which prevents people from buying, keeping rental demand high, which also lets them charge exorbitant rental rates. They are gaming both sides of the system to ensure that us peasants can be milked dry over a fundamental human need.

  • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    11 months ago

    All this talk of foreign investors. But the reality is they represent a small proportion of single family homes[1] and residential units. It’s easy to blame foreigners, but the real problem is domestic. It’s corporations. Corporations are buying all the housing[2]. And they don’t mind sitting on their invest, even vacant, for years. So yeah, y’all keep the bigotery going and blame foreing investors, you’re playing right into capitalism’s hand.

    1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/6/why-is-canada-banning-foreign-homebuyers

    Foreign owners only account for a small share of the Canadian real estate market. According to Statistics Canada, a government website, non-residents owned 2.2 percent of residential properties in Ontario and 3.1 percent in British Columbia in 2020. The percentages were 2.7 and 4.2 in the Toronto and Vancouver metropolitan areas, respectively.

    1. https://todayshomeowner.com/blog/guides/are-big-companies-buying-up-single-family-homes/

    According to data reported by the PEW Trust and originally gathered by CoreLogic, as of 2022, investment companies take up about a quarter [25%] of the single-family home market.

    • Retiring@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      Whether the investors are foreign or domestic, doesn’t matter, as long as governments allow living space to be gambled with, people like OP (I assume OP is working class) are very unlikely to ever own their house/apartment.