Friday, January 24, 2014

Dr. Housing Bubble — States where all-cash buying has gone wild for the new feudal lords

The growing disparity of income in the world is a major talking point at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Apparently there are only so many yachts and extra homes a rich hedge fund manager can buy. This large divide is only expanding and consequences are showing up in odd ways like large dark pools of money flooding into the once stale residential real estate market (the place where most Americans used to build their wealth). It was interesting to hear pundits act like apologists for the banking industry with the bailouts acting as if this would help the middle class. Well here we are in 2014 and most of the gains from 2009 have gone to a very small connected portion of our population. This new rentier class is dominating a large part of the residential market. In some states, more than 50 percent of residential real estate sales are going to investors. I was digging through some reports and saw that Florida, the younger sister of California had something like 62.5 percent of all sales going to all-cash buyers (that is, no mortgage was recorded on the sale). Who needs the plebs when you can buy up the entire Monopoly board!

No comments: