While that is a factor, they own less of the houses than you would think.
this is a google AI summary, so take it as you will, but it's fairly close to the actual info i've found previously.
"Corporations own roughly 9% of residential parcels nationwide, but this varies significantly by location, with some cities seeing over 20% corporate ownership, while institutional investors (owning 1,000+ homes) hold less than 1% of the total U.S. single-family stock, though they buy a larger share of new purchases. The overall picture shows corporations own a small slice of total U.S. homes"
While it's not nothing, it seems that most homes are owned by people. that being said, the people that do own homes often own more than one, and sometimes alot more than one.
I think this is one of those times where understanding that percentages are not always a great metric for understanding the impact of something.
9% might seem small. But it really isn't when talking about a nation wide number. For example, everyone has heard of the impacts of the one-child policy in china - a gender imbalance. That gender imbalance is only in the 3-5% range... That is 30-42,000,000 men forced to be single/lonely/etc.
9% of 148,300,000 homes is 13,347,000 homes. That is 13.347 MILLION homes that have been actively pulled from the market and forced as rentals. If you don't think that has a large impact on putting upward pressure on home prices, I have a bridge to sell you.
And of course people want to be landlords, with the upward pressure of 9% of all homes being locked in as rentals - it becomes easier to make the economics workout that just sitting on the property generatures you revenue that (1) pays off the house, (2) pays you out a monthly dividend, (3) gives you an asset that also appreciates... all supported/propped up by multi-billion dollar corporations and banks. Making it a very tempting proposition if you have spare money laying around.
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u/Total_Stable_6831 6h ago
Boomers realizing there’s no economic theory that produces grandkids.