I have read a similar thread on r/wallstreetbets a few days ago. I can't find it right now, but when searching using "housing market", at least 10 threads were coming up, each with 500+ posts in them. So I let everyone go and read those alone. Here is one where the guy thinks prices are controlled by the banks:
old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/156ldc8/false_scarcity_in_the_housing_market/
"What do houses and diamonds have in common with each other? If you can control the flow of product to the open market than you can control the prices!
I have been noticing a major change in the way houses are sold as I drive around my state. More and more housing and commercial real estate is being bought and "sold" by bank owned companies. Either outright with the name on the sign out front or a shell company to hide who your dealing with. Sometimes they don't sell it and just take it off the market to wait until the market "demand" that they're artificially creating goes up.
This is worrying to me because this means that the economy is already prepared for a "2008 2.0" situation because the reality is that banks are keeping housing prices up artificially by controlling every aspect of the home buying process. Which leads to the realization that the homes people are buying for 350k are actually worth 150k in actuality.
In about 10 years a FLOOD of old well built houses are going to hit the market due to the boomers dying out and millenials are going to gobble these homes up because we can finally afford it. Meanwhile entire subdivisions and burbs are going to be left to rot with no owners. Now you would expect this to cause housing prices to decrease nationwide, but no. The banks and other large corporations that now own these properties will keep the prices of these worthless plots sky high in order to give the illusion that they are worth the insane mortgage they want you to take with an adjustable.
It might be a crack pot theory due to some sleep deprivation but this has been concerning me for months now. And not a lot of people seem to be talking about it. I don't know, would love to hear other peoples thought on the matter and discuss this. Because a super giant mega bubble might be ready to burst again and regular people are gonna have to pay the price for rich douche bags screwing around again."
The top post on this thread:
TopSpot1787 1 month ago
"My in laws are buying a house near Greenville SC. They toured a neighborhood of cookie cutter new construction. Looked like there had to be at least 40-50 vacant homes. But when they went to tour the model home and meet with the real estate agent she told them the builder has only “released” 5 of the homes and more would be released later. So of course they are being told they need to come in with a competitive bid. Idk if this is normal or not but felt like the builder was withholding homes to create bidding wars."
CommercialOccasion72 1 month ago
"That’s the whole housing market right now. I saw some “expert” come on yahoo finance talking about how the housing market is scarce and there’s no homes available, but we have some of the highest percentages of empty housing we’ve ever had right now. The whole market is owned by Financial companies now."
