How private equity is changing housing

Maintenance, “Skimping,” and Slumlords

• Debate over whether big corporate landlords or small-time owners do worse maintenance.
• Some say small landlords often ignore basics; others report corporations dragging out repairs for months.
• “Skimping on maintenance” is framed as a core profit strategy in capitalism, with costs pushed onto tenants and the public.

Is Private Equity the Villain?

• Many argue PE should be barred from owning consumer housing (can build/sell but not hold).
• Others counter that PE is a small share of total ownership nationally and mostly rides the same incentives as everyone else.
• Some see PE and corporate landlords as uniquely dangerous in healthcare and housing because they exploit inelastic demand.

Housing as Investment, Capitalism, and Rent Seeking

• Repeated claim: housing cannot simultaneously be a primary investment vehicle and remain affordable.
• Several argue rent-seeking is the logical endpoint of capitalism; others say capitalism needs genuinely competitive, non-monopolistic markets.
• Disagreement over whether “being pro-capitalism” is compatible with banning corporate ownership or capping rentals.

Supply, Zoning, and “Shortage”

• One camp: root cause is underbuilding and restrictive zoning; “build more and PE’s bet collapses.”
• Another camp: building alone won’t help if new units are still hoarded by investors or located far from jobs.
• Dispute over the claimed 4M-unit “shortage”: some call it a lie, arguing it’s really an urbanism/location problem, not a raw unit deficit.

Tax, Finance, and Scale Advantages

• Detailed discussion of depreciation, cost segregation, bonus depreciation, 1031 exchanges, and carried interest.
• Consensus that large investors can leverage tax deferral and cheap capital in ways ordinary buyers cannot, though exact magnitude is contested.
• Some highlight that primary-residence mortgages often have lower rates than investment loans, complicating the story.

Policy Proposals & Tradeoffs

• Ideas floated:
  • Ban or heavily restrict corporate ownership of single-family homes.
  • Cap number of rental units per person; shift renting to purpose-built multifamily.
  • Wealth or land-value taxes; higher tax on multi-home ownership and foreign owners.
  • Large-scale public or cooperative housing (Singapore and co-ops cited as models).
  • Vacant-home penalties or even radical “use it or lose it” rules.
• Critics warn many of these would: reduce overall supply, unintentionally kill multifamily development, or be trivially sidestepped via LLCs.

Foreign/Absentee Ownership and Vacancies

• Concerns about “empty investments” in hot cities (e.g., Miami, New England) used as offshore wealth stores.
• Others respond that vacancy data is often lower than assumed, and holding costs (taxes, insurance, maintenance) limit this strategy.

Renting vs Owning and Generational Tension

• Tension between those who see landlords as providing a real service and those who consider them “an existence tax.”
• Recognition that some people rationally prefer renting for flexibility; others see ownership as a basic right now out of reach.
• Underlying frustration from younger and median-income commenters who feel locked out while older or incumbent owners resist policies that might hurt their home values.

Overall Tone

• Highly polarized: mix of technical tax/finance discussion, ideological debate about capitalism, and raw anger about precarity, homelessness, and visible vacancies.
• Broad, though not universal, agreement that current incentives make housing function poorly as both shelter and asset, with no easy consensus on how to unwind that.