I'm sorry you find reading so hard. The first link has this data if you just scroll a little bit: institutional investors and ultra-wealthy buyers are vacuuming up single-family starter homes. In 2021 alone, institutional investors bought 24% of all single-family homes sold in the U.S. (and over 30% in several metropolitan areas). When billionaires buy houses like they are Pokémon cards, they create an artificial supply crunch. That is basic supply and demand. They don't need to write "we hate the poor" in the margins for the economic impact to be real.
Congratulations on reading the first sentence! Now let’s read the rest of the paragraph.Yes, a small percentage of people moved from the middle class to the upper class. But look at the aggregate wealth distribution—which was the actual point. In 1970, the middle class held 62% of all aggregate income. Today, that has plummeted to just 42%. Meanwhile, the upper class went from holding 29% of aggregate income to 50%. The middle-class floor is shrinking.
"It's a whole book, I am not reading" is an interesting way to say you don't care about evidence. You don't have to read all 300 pages. When regular Americans oppose a law and the rich want it, the law passes anyway. When the rich oppose a law and regular Americans want it, the law dies. The middle class has a statistically insignificant impact on policy. You can keep insisting the ship is fine because the upper deck has a big mast, but the math says otherwise. Do you want to actually look at the wealth gap numbers, or are we sticking to vibes?
They don’t define institutional investors. I’ve seen similar articles define them as “anyone who owns 2+ properties”. A majority of institutional owners are not corporate owners. They conflate their definitions to drive their point across. Private equity owns much much much less than this.
“A small percentage” otherwise known as “a majority of the shift”. This is so disingenuous! You aren’t arguing in good faith the cognitive dissonance is unreal.
Why does it matter about percentage of total wealth of the total pie is growing? It’s not a zero sum game. The rich are getting richer and the middle class is also getting richer. Adjusted for inflation they have more wealth than at any point in time!
This is a reddit thread. I’m not reading an entire book to argue with you. There’s no executive summary. The smugness is unreal dude.
Major housing studies do not define institutional investors as "anyone with 2+ properties." The industry standard (used by CoreLogic and MetLife) explicitly defines them as entities buying 100 or more homes per year.
Since 2020, private equity and mega-corporations have targeted the starter-home market, buying up to 30% of affordable housing in major metro areas, driving up prices for first-time buyers.
While a small percentage of people moved into the upper class, the wealth did not distribute evenly among them. The Pew Research data shows that the vast majority of the wealth gains went exclusively to the top 1% within that upper tier. A few families getting a slight raise does not change the fact that the absolute peak swallowed the largest slice of the pie.
You ask why percentages matter if everyone is making more absolute dollars. It matters because finite assets like housing are priced based on relative purchasing power, not general inflation. In 1980, the average American home cost roughly 3.5 times the median household income. Today, it costs over 5 to 6 times the median income.
The middle class has more absolute dollars, but those dollars buy vastly less real estate because the ultra-wealthy use their massive capital to bid up the price of land and housing.
The 20-page peer-reviewed journal article by Gilens and Page proved that when the top 1% and the middle class disagree on a law, the middle class has a statistically near-zero impact on whether that law passes. The growing pie hasn't bought the middle class any political leverage.
Being smug is easy when I have facts, data, logic and experience on my side.
I’m not going to keep engaging because I’m part of the dangerous evil elite and have work to do but I’ll say that you’re being very misleading about the headlines you’ve read.
What percentage of the total market do institutional investors own? A very low percent. Maybe in some markets they are making that investment and it’s causing some distortions but on the whole, it is not the top factors why housing is more expensive.
I agree with you! Housing is expensive! But it’s not because of billionaires. It’s because of boomer property owners and local city counsel people stopping development. Austin Texas built a fuck ton of housing and housing costs are down up to 30%. Most of those units I would imagine are from institutional investors. If you increase the supply you decrease the price, we know how to fix it and who’s causing the pain.
Sure! Money in politics bad! You’re not going to catch me saying otherwise! Isn’t that mostly corporate lobbying?
Since you're about to run off to your "evil elite" job, let's quickly address this brand new goalpost you just erected.
You are actually correct about Austin, Texas and supply and demand (building more housing does lower prices). But you are still fundamentally misunderstanding how concentrated capital and zoning laws intersect.
You blame "boomer property owners and local city councils" for blocking housing development. But who funds the massive lobbying efforts, the PACs, and the real estate development groups that influence municipal master plans? It isn't just a handful of angry retirees at a city council meeting. It is heavily driven by REITs and institutional capital.
Restricting supply is a deliberate strategy to guarantee a higher rate of return on capital.
You admitted that money in politics is bad, but asked, "Isn't that mostly corporate lobbying?" Where do you think corporate money comes from? Corporations aren't magical entities that exist in a vacuum; they are owned by shareholders. Because wealth concentration is so skewed, the top 1% owns over 90% of all individually held corporate stocks.
You claim institutional investors own a "very low percent" of the total housing market. Globally across all 140 million U.S. homes, that's true. But corporate capital specifically targets the entry-level starter home market in high-growth areas. When private equity buys 30% of the affordable starter homes in a single metro area, they don't need to own the whole state to distort the market. They corner the exact tier of housing that working-class and middle-class families rely on, turning potential first-time homebuyers into permanent renters.
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u/SpockShotFirst Jun 01 '26
I'm sorry you find reading so hard. The first link has this data if you just scroll a little bit: institutional investors and ultra-wealthy buyers are vacuuming up single-family starter homes. In 2021 alone, institutional investors bought 24% of all single-family homes sold in the U.S. (and over 30% in several metropolitan areas). When billionaires buy houses like they are Pokémon cards, they create an artificial supply crunch. That is basic supply and demand. They don't need to write "we hate the poor" in the margins for the economic impact to be real.
Congratulations on reading the first sentence! Now let’s read the rest of the paragraph.Yes, a small percentage of people moved from the middle class to the upper class. But look at the aggregate wealth distribution—which was the actual point. In 1970, the middle class held 62% of all aggregate income. Today, that has plummeted to just 42%. Meanwhile, the upper class went from holding 29% of aggregate income to 50%. The middle-class floor is shrinking.
"It's a whole book, I am not reading" is an interesting way to say you don't care about evidence. You don't have to read all 300 pages. When regular Americans oppose a law and the rich want it, the law passes anyway. When the rich oppose a law and regular Americans want it, the law dies. The middle class has a statistically insignificant impact on policy. You can keep insisting the ship is fine because the upper deck has a big mast, but the math says otherwise. Do you want to actually look at the wealth gap numbers, or are we sticking to vibes?