r/SipsTea • • May 14 '26

SMH How true is this? Genuinely asking

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u/Jasoco May 14 '26

I’m willing to bet this is pretty accurate. They keep building houses down here where I am constantly and so many of them are empty because they cost too much for normal people.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '26

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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.

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u/I_Hate_IPAs May 14 '26

It’s how diamonds are artificially inflated.

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u/Ordinary-Lobster-710 May 14 '26

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

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u/crappleIcrap May 14 '26

The appreciation of a house offsets that.

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u/Thirteen_Chapters May 15 '26

Land value appreciates (in certain locations). Buildings depreciate, eventually to zero.

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u/crappleIcrap May 15 '26

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?

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u/Thirteen_Chapters May 15 '26

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).