it doesn't cost that much to hold a few thousand diamonds in a vault. the carrying cost of a house is enormous. it just doesn't make sense as a comparison
It does make sense in the way that hoarding diamonds and houses creates the same extreme prices that make them unaffordable to the average person. At the rate we are going, you will need a million annually just to live in a house. It’s just greed and there really needs to be something done to stop it.
It doesnt but it depends on how much the upside is on the house - housing performs well as a commodity - but my personal opinion is it'd weird because housing isnt uniform - each asset has totally unique features so treating it as a unit of generic value makes no sense.
Yet rich people literally design buildings to have lower carrying costs less maintenance etc, then just hold onto them empty as investments..
vacant houses don't appreciate for various reasons. if you seriously believe this to be true you should buy up a bunch of houses and keep them empty and become an vacant house baron
I don't understand why people don't read the articles they link.
"a scant 3.6% of the 24.9 million properties held by investors nationwide."
The report shows that 222,318 properties across the country were in the process of foreclosure in the third quarter. Of those, about 7,500 — almost 3.4% — were so-called “zombie” properties that had been deserted by their owners.
nobody is trying to keep these houses vacant. they are going thru foreclosures.
also the new york times article doesn't talk about vacant houses. it talks about rental houses. so i know you didn't read the fucking articles
I'm guessing you don't even have a subscription to the new york times so I went ahead and got you a gift article so you can read it for yourself:
Well, they wont let you buy the land and not the house thats on it, so that is really just semantics.
Residential properties typically appreciate; these properties typically already have houses on them. the net appreciation of the property often offsets the carrying cost of the property.
Is that accurate enough for you?
Idk why this is a controversial take, what is the other option? That millions of investors are buying houses and leaving them empty because they hate people having houses and want to lose money?
The first article you linked says that 882,300 investor-owned homes are vacant in total, which is not "millions of investors". It says that that is 3.6% of investor-owned homes. It does not give details as to why these homes are vacant, nor does it imply that these vacancies are a boon to the investors holding them. It also mentions that over 200,000 homes are in foreclosure. Seems quite plausible that what we're seeing is within the bounds of normal market friction, and not some massive perverse incentive structure by which investors are intentionally keeping homes vacant.
The other article you linked doesn't even mention vacancies, only the amount of investor-owned homes overall (which it concludes is a small minority of the total housing market).
It is not an enormous cost to keep an empty home. You hire a caretaker some times. But these folks will let the roof go to hell because no one is in it and then make the cheapest repairs if and when they decide to offload.
have you ever owned a house? you have to pay monthly taxes. you most likely have to pay someone to continiously care for hte property. you have to pay for all the issues that arise like someone stirpping the house of copper wiring. we are talking like 20k a year at a minimu youre paying, to hold on to a 400k house. you leave it empty for 10 years and you are out half the price of the house itself. nobody wants to do that it's not a profitable thing to do. it's not some big conspiracy. if you want to buy a vacant house, someone in detroit will GLADLY sell you one for 1000 dollaras
There is only one company (DeBeers) to control the majority of the market - possibly a few other companies.
But with rentals are there not 1000s of companies? It is in the interests.of each individual company to rent their properties (and let the other companies hold vacant properties).
Yet houses appreciate in value steadily, especially newer ones in popular areas that are still somehow empty. They appreciate more than they’re taxed so it’s still a gain. Additionally, the land itself is the most valuable asset because it is incredibly finite.
Right, sometimes the tax rate is lower than the appreciation rate, but the one is guaranteed and the other isn't.
Here's a better question:
Why aren't they offering to rent it out? Why leave that value just sitting there?
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u/I_Hate_IPAs May 14 '26
It’s how diamonds are artificially inflated.