Economy Should we limit corporations buying houses?

[RoastBeast]

It's a bad idea because the housing shortage is right now. It requires a short term solution.

But since you wanted to jump into this late. My point to him was the resolving the housing crisis has nothing to do with immigration and people who pretend that it does don't understand the problem and don't understand immigration.

So I presented 2 hypotheticals to him. Hypo #1: If we eliminated all immigration right now -- would there still be a housing shortage? Hypo #2 -- If we were able to freeze the population at it's current level -- how would be solve the housing shortage?

Hypo #1 addresses the problem with blaming immigration, either short term or long term. If we stopped immigration, we would still have a housing shortage that would need to be addressed. What does this tell us? It tells us that immigration based changes aren't a potential solution to the problem because it wouldn't alter the existing shortage. Hypo #2 addresses the problems with indirectly blaming immigration via "growing population" concerns. Why? Because the alleged immigration problem is that it grows our population in an unsustainable way. If that were true, freezing our population should resolve the housing problem. Except it doesn't. Freezing the population leaves us in the exact same housing crisis that we currently have.

So regardless of whether we freeze the population or eliminate immigration, we don't address the housing shortfall. Hence any solution that is predicated on immigration alterations being part of the path forward don't address the root cause of the problem. The root cause of the problem is not the population growth or the source of that population growth. The root cause of the problem is the failure to build more housing. The secondary cause is high wealth people/corporations buying up the housing stock for profit. Eliminating immigration doesn't build more houses and it doesn't stop wealthy capital from buying the housing and jacking up the prices for profit.

Moreover, eliminating immigration doesn't even come close to addressing the claim of indirect population elements. The elimination of immigration doesn't lead to a population decline until 2035 at the earliest, 2060 per the Census. That's the initiation of the decline, not a decline sufficient to address the housing shortfall. At the moment, we have a 5.5-6.8 million unit housing shortage. Unless the housing supply is dramatically increased, the current trends mean that new housing stock is going to be consumed by investment groups. So, looking at the numbers, relying on immigration changes to make any noticeable impact on the housing shortage is literally going to take decades. And while we wait for those decades to pass and wait for meaningful population alterations, resulting from immigration policy changes, people who are looking for housing right now and for at least the next 2 decades will continue to deal with the current housing shortfall.

A person who points at immigration as a realistic solution is only indicating that the person saying it has no idea what's actually happening in the real estate space and has defaultied into the usual behavior of the under-informed, mindlessly blaming outsiders.

I'm sorry but this is such a goofy take for you. Usually you have good points, whether I agree with you or not but you have a blatantly purposeful blind spot here that you are using as a crutch for your argument.

You are completely negating the demand side of supply and demand and pretending that any attempt at working on demand is pointless because it doesn't address the problem here and now. Guess what, working on the supply side doesn't address the problem here and now either because you can't just magically have millions of homes appear out of no where.

Your argument hinges on the only solution being a "right this minute" solution and pretending that homes aren't going to be built if immigration is slowed down.

You slow demand by having less people demanding homes and you up supply by building homes. Supply is going to catch up to demand a hell of a lot quicker if you have less people demanding. If you have a million people enter the country each year, that's a huge number of EXTRA homes that need to be built to just merely tread water.

We're in agreement that corporations should not be allowed to buy large numbers of homes.

 

[RoastBeast]

The poster I quoted said immigration policies were the root cause. Clearly you're ignoring everything else that I posted as contributors to the housing crisis. Certainly adding new bodies, whether through immigration or citizen birth will increase the population, however, as pointed out in my previous post (which was clearly ignored) opening housing up to other buyers (POC, single women) has a larger impact currently than any immigration policy unless we suddenly dump tens of millions of immigrants into the US instantly who all have the monetary capabilities to buy homes.

I don't agree that immigration is the root cause but it is a large cause. The Government can't tell people of color and single women that they can't buy homes so they can keep the market in check but they sure can stop letting in millions of unchecked immigrants each year. I know you guys want more immigrants so you can have more democratic voters in the future but you can't ignore the fact that they up demand on the market and have a hand in driving prices up.

 

[Scheme]

No one is emotional. But you have to see the humor in you side stepping facts for your imaginary scenario? I called it bullshit because we have actual data that tells us when things will happen. That's not supply/demand economics, lol. Because even supply/demand economics looks at numbers to determine their solutions. Ignoring the available data just tells me that you're "solution" has nothing to do with the problem but rather some secondary grievance you have with immigration. When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

You are emotional because you think I am attacking immigrants. I'm sorry if basic supply and demand triggers you, but it's simply a fact of life. I haven't ignored any data, reducing immigration in high populated areas will increase housing supply. It's as simple as that and the fact that you refuse to accept that shows that you lack the understanding of the basic axioms of supply and demand to continue to be argued with.

Now if you want to continue, feel free to answer my hypothetical. If Chicago got 1 million new people, would housing somehow improve or remain the same?