Trump Targets Corporate Homebuyers — Right Idea, Wrong Fix
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Trump moves to ban corporate ownership of single family homes. Something that I’ve talked about for a long time. I’ve been against Trump when he talks about, we got a lower mortgage rates and then home people are to be able to afford homes. No, no, that’s that’s not how it works. I’ve talked about the issues with corporate home ownership for a long time, especially especially all across the South. Any type of hot market. Sunbelt states a lot.
of corporate ownership out there. They come in with cash. They come in with all cash deals and they can outbid people. I explained how the gambit works here on the program, oftentimes buying up entire neighborhoods for crying out loud, cut a deal with the home builder, buy him below market prices, and then turn around and sell a couple to themselves. Another fund, a year later at a major
Increase then you know what you got the comps raises the prices for everything no bueno No bueno, so so why do I have a little issue with what Trump is doing? I just I don’t think it’s going to survive It’s not gonna survive scrutiny. I don’t think it’s actually legal There are better ways to do it and this is what I suggest and it would benefit this entire country Well, let’s let’s go through this anyway
Trump says he wants to ban the large investors from buying single-family homes. He says, am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes and I will be calling on Congress to codify it. People live in homes, not corporations. Again, congressional approval is going to be hard to come by, not to mention the fact, it doesn’t deal with the fact that there are hundreds
of thousands of homes already existing in the hands of corporate ownership. That ban wouldn’t affect them. That’s a bit of a problem that I have. Now we all know we’ve talked about home affordability here in this country and it’s an issue. It’s an issue when it comes to demographics, people not being able to afford a home, delaying having families, less kids. The price of homes is up nationally, it’s up 50 % since 2019.
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Now, all well and good, there are markets in this country that are pretty cheap. But again, it depends on where that is. Are there jobs near there? We have those issues. Anyway, let’s talk about this because Democrats last year, right now, they’re coming out against Trump’s plan. Democrats are coming out against it because they’re saying, well, we put together a plan and you Republicans blocked it. Well, the Democrats’ plan shockingly was stupid.
Surprise surprise. Why was it stupid? Again? It wasn’t about dealing with Supply Wasn’t and I didn’t do with that. Basically. It was more we’re giving away cash. We are going to subsidize people We’re gonna make it easier for you to buy a home And we’re gonna subsidize it where you know the same crap that got us into trouble during the Great Recession and again
The history of that I’ve explained here before on the program that goes all the way back. Actually, you go all the way back to Jimmy Carter with the Community Reinvestment Act. And then he can take it even further when it was under Bill Clinton, when Andrew Cuomo was the head of Housing and Urban Development. And that’s when they started getting nuts with all of these far flung crazy mortgages out there. We made it clear. said, you know, even during the Biden administration, some of the things that they put into play, it made it
It made it better if you were delinquent on your mortgage rather than being someone that actually paid on time. That’s the type of government programs that they put into place and they wanted to extend all of that. Got various different major home builders out there saying, oh, this is a violation of our constitutional rights. You know, this is no good. The American Bar Association says the same thing.
The pushback won’t be just from our industry, says Sean Dobson, chief executive of Amherst, a single-family rental firm that owns about 47,000 homes. This is anti-free market, anti-property rights kind of policy. Will?
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can fix that. I have a solution. Ron DeSantis has a solution. Real simple. Tax policy.
Property tax policy. Again, you can also even mess around with as well capital gains when it comes to homes. You allow owner occupied homes, you allow, say, listen, you don’t have to pay property taxes, which again, makes sense. I’m gonna go through this.
One more time. I know I’ve done it a million times here, but you get blowback. Are you going to pay for that? You don’t own property in the United States. My home. My home in Florida. My home in Florida. If I stop paying the exorbitant property taxes that I pay, they take my house. Do I really own my home?
Or am I just a peasant or serf on the Lord’s manor? Think about that for a second. Get your arms around that because that’s the reality. You basically, when you say, I own my house, I own my property, no. You basically have land usage rights. That’s all you’ve bought. That’s all you bought is land usage rights from the, again, the people that lord over us, if you will.
Get away from property. Well, guess what? You can own your home free and clear. Now, the way to handle this in regards to getting, know, going after corporate ownership, making it less attractive is if you do not live in the home, well, then you have to pay some sort of property tax. Change the dynamic, wouldn’t it? We’d be better for everyone. And again, you could do it that way.
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Trump’s moving to do this. Democrats are gonna come out against it. I don’t know how this is going to play out. I would assume that you would eventually have some Republicans try to block, if there was any legislation put forward, try to block it. They might be tied in to some home builders or some of these corporate interests, whatever it may be. The best way to handle this is through property taxes, and that would benefit everyone.
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