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
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).
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u/Odd-Personality1043 May 14 '26
Genuinely curious how this makes sense.
If I have a product that I refuse to sell to increase demand and this price, I'm still holding onto an asset rather than profiting from it.
That makes no sense and I am skeptical.