losertalk

Ah, this begins to answer my question. I, too, "used" to watch your videos. But I quit very suddenly and I'm not sure why, which bothers me alot. Got any ideas on what it is with people who quit you guys? A bit more color here would be awesome.

Side note to Reddit: I use "alot" in a playful spirit. Both my parents were English teachers.

Upvote for the gracious entrance hall. There's some architecture porn right behind you.

Apparently this phenomenon is not massive enough to make the difference that you suggest. Home prices took a huge step up towards recovery in 2013, but now that those bargains are mostly picked off, there is no longer a huge sucking sound of single family homes entering the portfolios of investors. There was essentially a huge backlog of foreclosed/short-sale homes that got snapped up at ridiculously low prices; now that backlog is much more cleared than before. Private equity picking off massive numbers of cheap foreclosures was a one-time phenomenon.

Separately from that, there is currently a tragic and miserable impediment to getting moderate-income Americans into their own owned homes--the mortgage market is seized up. Thanks to Dodd-Frank, mortgage lenders are scared out of their gourds of making loans that might not get repaid, due to the strong repercussions to the lenders if the loans go bad. So lenders are (over?)-compensating by being super-tight with their lending. IMO that has more of an effect of turning the U.S. into "renter nation" than the phenomenon of private equity outbidding "normal" buyers.

Loosen up immigration and that supply will get sopped up quickly.

Well, why would they have to be lower income? Surely there are crap-tons of middle-class immigrants out there. Somehow we would have to research this--I guess by learning how many applicants get turned down each year for immigration and what their income level is.

But the general principle is this: bring in bodies who are willing to work, and where there is demand for labor (i.e., rich and middle-class retirees who want to be waited on), and boom! There's your middle-class income right there.